Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight.com, has created a statistical model that relates presidential approval ratings to the performance of the president’s party in mid-term elections:

The correlation between the president’s Gallup approval rating immediately prior to the midterms and his party’s performance has been very strong. In fact, once the president’s approval rating is accounted for, knowing about the economy doesn’t tell anything more about how to predict the outcome of the midterms.

…While a popular president can help his party to stem its losses, his party nearly always loses at least some seats at the midterms. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of twenty-four House seats in the interim elections, gaining ground on just two of sixteen occasions. My statistical model shows that Obama will need to sustain an approval rating in the range of 65 percent to avoid losing any ground in the House. (The Senate, where the Democrats can take advantage of at least five Republican retirements, might be a different story.)

Federal stimulus money only stymies much-need restructuring in South Carolina government and wastes time, Gov. Mark Sanford told a crowd at his college alma mater.

“So if there’s any silver lining to what’s going on with the economy it is that it could force changes that in many cases have been long overdue in our state with regard to the structure of our government,” Sanford said.

…Sanford showed up late in front of a crowd of about 200 students, visitors and faculty in an open-air pavilion with an armload of charts showing the state’s debt load out of line with the rest of the nation and the nation’s debt doubling. He appealed to the crowd to get on the phone with legislators to persuade them to cut spending and pay down debt.

Spending stimulus money for ongoing programs creates budget holes and it is better to cut spending and force restructuring now, Sanford said.

“What if the economy isn’t off to the races in 24 months? Then how do you deal with it? What government services are you going to cut two years from now?” he asked.

Even if you disagree with Sanford’s stance, you can’t help but respect his courage to steadfastly adhere to fiscal conservative principles, even in the face of public disapproval and even scorn, something far too many members of the GOP in Washington failed to do during the Bush administration.  Sanford has a point when he states that South Carolina should use the recession to restructure its government.  Too bad the people in D.C. don’t favor the same approach.