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In the National Review, Jim Geraghty asks Scott Rasmussen some interesting questions about polling.
…GERAGHTY: Have you ever re-polled a race after getting results that didn’t sit well with your gut?
RASMUSSEN: We release the data and then we go poll it again if something is going on. There are two races right now where I am very curious about what our next polls will show, one in West Virginia and one in Alaska. In both cases, I can come up with a logical argument as to why the numbers are the way they are; I can also come up with a logical argument as to why they show the race as closer than it really is. But we want to get the information out there and let other people engage in that discussion, and we’ll poll again and see where it ends up. …
…GERAGHTY: Can Republicans blow it in the last two months?
RASMUSSEN: It depends on how you define “blow it.” Is it possible that they will blow it to such extent that this ends up being just a “normal” midterm, with the Democrats losing 15 to 20 seats? No, I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t think that they’re going to have only minimal gains in the Senate. But how close they get to gaining control of the Senate and whether or not they gain control of the House, that’s still up in the air. But that ultimately has less to do with Republicans than with Democrats, because this election is all about the party in power.
This election is a referendum on the Democrats — it’s not a referendum on incumbents as much as on the Democratic party. We put out a poll last week that I think captures some of the basic mood. Most Americans believe, as they have for decades, that cutting government spending and cutting taxes is good for the economy. That’s just sort of a bedrock belief of the American people. At the same time, they believe that the Democrats in Congress want to increase spending and increase taxes. That creates a tough road when you’re the party in power, when you’ve got that kind of perception out there. …
In Powerline, Paul Mirengoff has a disturbing story that needs investigation.
Bill Otis, at the Crime and Consequences blog, notes an under-reported aspect of the story of Rev. Terry Jones plan (which he subsequently called off) to burn the Koran. It is this: FBI agents visited Rev. Jones shortly before he changed his mind about the book burning.
The AP story about the FBI’s visit linked it to concern about public safety. But, as Bill observes, any reasonable public safety concern stemming from the action of Rev. Jones and his church would have only a local dimension — i.e., retaliation against him and his church. Thus, Bill, a former federal prosecutor, concludes that there is “no visible nexus whatever for FBI involvement.”
This raises the suspicion that the FBI visit was an attempt to intimidate Rev. Jones. A vist for this purpose would be an entirely improper infringement on his (and by extension our) civil liberties.
I had no sympathy for Jones’ plan to plan the Koran — better that Americans should read the book and evaluate the relationship between its words and the behavior of jihadists. But Jones has a constitutionally protected right to do what he was planning to do, and the FBI should not throw its weight around attempting to “persuade” Jones not to exercise that right. …
Peter Wehner shares interesting commentary on a number of issues regarding Obama’s recent speeches. We highlight the most surprising:
…And what is striking is how Obama, under growing political pressure, increasingly feels sorry for himself. “They talk about me like a dog,” the president told a crowd in Wisconsin earlier this week. “That’s not in my prepared remarks, it’s just — but it’s true.” And echoing the remarks made this morning by his top aide David Axelrod — who insisted “we didn’t create the mess we’re in” — Obama in his Cleveland speech said, “When I walked in [to the White House], wrapped in a nice bow, was a $1.3 trillion deficit sitting on my door step — a welcoming present.”
What’s so revealing about Obama is that comments about how terribly unfair life has been for him since he assumed office are extemporaneous, off the cuff, from the heart. For example, neither Obama’s claim that “they talk about me like a dog” nor his statement in Cleveland about his “welcoming present” were in the prepared text. …
What we are seeing, then, is Barack Obama unplugged. …
“This is more than an inconvenience,” David Axelrod wrote in a memo to Obama on November 28, 2006, in raising concerns about Obama’s thin skin. “It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don’t know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. … ” …
Ed Driscoll, in Pajamas Media, comments on recent Obama gaffes, including the misattributed quote on the Oval Office rug.
…The error perfectly encapsulates the shallowness of Barack Obama’s intellect and his lack of rigor. Obama is a man who accumulated academic credentials while giving no evidence whatsoever of achieving any depth. He was the only president of the Harvard Law Review to graduate without penning a signed article in that esteemed journal. His academic transcripts remain under lock and key, as do his academic papers. …
…For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia. But now that he has actual responsibilities — including relatively trivial ones like custodianship of the inner sanctum of the presidency — his lack of substance keeps showing up in visible, embarrassing, and troubling ways. …
Also in Pajamas Media, Alex Knepper discusses character and the president’s performance.
…It’s been said that some people ascend to the presidency because they want to do something, while others fight for the job because they want to be someone. That is: some men come into the office captured by a vision of what the world should look like — Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan can be counted among them — while others, usually less consequential, want to be president simply because it’s another notch in their belt. Think George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton (and Mitt Romney). The tea party movement thinks that Obama is in the former camp: that he is trying to remake America in a socialist image. They are wrong. Men with a vision don’t let the cries of protesters shake their poise. Rather, they tend to believe, much like George W. Bush did, that the course of history will vindicate their choices. Obama, interestingly, seems not to believe this. Instead — and this is not just bad for the Democrats, but for the country — he is panicking.
Obama came into office drunk on his own hype. He thought that he was bigger than the job; that his charisma and cool alone could shape history. (“This campaign is about you,” his campaign’s website said. That’s a good tip-off: whenever someone says that it’s not about them, it’s always, always about them.) …
…Alas, the charade, beautiful as it was, couldn’t hold. Obama has found that the inertia of his oratory won’t budge that stubbornly persistent unemployment rate. The Taliban doesn’t care one whit about his being the first black president. … Abroad, the narrative of history won’t vanish the problems of the here and now. Domestically, the institutions are too much for the man’s arsenal of verbiage. Our civic traditions are too entrenched to be knocked down by one man, however important he thinks he is. The system, after all, is designed to stop change that’s too rapid. Trying to steamroll your agenda through is, historically speaking, a pretty inept way of getting something done. That’s what our separation of powers is all about. “Party of No” is no misnomer — a strong opposition party is vital to a potent republic. Criticism of the powerful must be unrelenting. If the agenda is strong enough, it will withstand the force of the assault. Obama’s simply upset that his agenda can’t withstand such a withering attack.
Poor Obama… He simply has no idea what to do. Such a neophyte is he — both in practice and in worldview — that he is actually flabbergasted that his critics speak harshly of him. This is, I’m sorry to say, total amateur hour. But he is, after all, an amateur. …
William Jacobson dissects Obama’s Labor Day speech, in Legal Insurrection, and what it reveals about Obama’s thinking.
…But you really need to read the entire speech. It is classic Obama, living in a time warp, declaring that unions are the past and the future of prosperity, and focusing on large infrastructure programs as if this were the 1930s.
The entrepreneurs and workers who built the great technology companies that drive our economy are nowhere to be found. It is the proletariat of the old economy who live in Obama’s imagination.
But what was most Obama-like about the speech was the launching of vicious attacks on his opponents, only to then cry foul over the fact that his opponents push back. Obama, as he did throughout the campaign and has done throughout his presidency, painted a picture of his political opponents as heartless victimizers of others, and of the capitalist system as cruel and inhumane. …
Glenn Reynolds passes on reader Hugh Akston’s recommendation to Obama on how to proceed.
I think its time for President Obama to pull a “Costanza”. Remember the Seinfeld episode when George realized that every decision he ever made had been wrong? Then he decided to do the opposite of what he thought he should do. He ended up with an awesome job with the Yankees, dating a great girl, and moving out of his parents’ house. That’s kinda where I think President Obama is today. He seriously needs to re-think his position on almost every major issue. Perhaps its time to do the opposite of what Rahm thinks…. No new stimulus package, re-new the Bush tax cuts, leave a few more combat soldiers in Iraq, throw a bone to Israel, leave Arizona alone, etc., etc. …
Pickings on July 25th this year contained a small Pickerhead rant about the president’s attitudes towards Great Britain that some readers properly criticized. Today we have a long piece from Forbes by Dinesh D’Souza that provides an excellent explanation of the sources for the president’s ignorance.
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government’s control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama’s approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President’s actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling.” Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling–but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama’s backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro–not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.
More strange behavior: Obama’s June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans “consume more than 20% of the world’s oil but have less than 2% of the world’s resources.” Obama railed on about “America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.” What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world’s resources?
The oddities go on and on. …
…It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.
… Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world’s energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America’s carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.
…Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.
But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father’s time machine.