The Des Moines Register has the scoop:

“[T]he former two-term governor is also expected this week to name staff to lead his preparations for Iowa’s caucuses, and is planning an early April return to the leadoff caucus state…

[Pawlenty] is expected to return on April 1 and 2, and is planning a spring campaign announcement.”

It will be interesting to see who is on his Iowa campaign team when he unveils it (and who those team members supported in 2008). Pawlenty has to exceed expectations in Iowa to have a shot at the nomination, so he has got to be chasing the top talent in the state.

The Billings Gazette conducted a poll last week (exact dates weren’t given) on Denny Rehberg’s challenge to Democrat Jon Tester, with results showing a virtual tie. With Montana having only one congressional seat, both are known statewide; Rehberg has actually campaigned more on a statewide basis, having been elected six times, while Tester was a state senator before winning his current seat in 2006.

Normally, an incumbent being this close would be presumed to be toast, but both candidates are effectively incumbents in this race. This should be a close one, unless the economy goes strongly up or down.

Poll Watch: Mason-Dixon Montana Senate

• Jon Tester 46%
• Denny Rehberg 45%

Among Republicans

• Jon Tester 3%
• Denny Rehberg 89%

Among Democrats

• Jon Tester 94%
• Denny Rehberg 1%

Among Independents

• Jon Tester 49%
• Denny Rehberg 37%

Among Men

• Jon Tester 40%
• Denny Rehberg 53%

Among Women

• Jon Tester 51%
• Denny Rehberg 38%

Survey of 625 registered Montana voters was conducted week of March 14, 2011 by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research for Lee Newspapers (Billings Gazette).  The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

AP sources are reporting that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will announce the formation of a presidential exploratory committee today. Pawlenty advisers say the announcement will come on Facebook at 3 p.m.  Pawlenty follows former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the second major candidate to announce the exploratory phase of their campaigns.

Honestly, if you would have asked me two months ago if Haley Barbour would have been a serious candidate for the GOP nomination, I would have probably scoffed at the notion. The guy is a caricature of every negative stereotype of the Republican Party: an overweight, white, southern insider politico prone to making racially-charged gaffes. On top of that, his main career outside of politics was as a lobbyist. I thought he was, at best, a second-tier non-starter.

But this morning, we get more news that shows just how serious (and increasingly strong) his campaign is.

Barbour has hired Sally Bradshaw, political strategist from Florida. Bradshaw worked as part of Romney’s campaign in 2008, and Politico describes her as a “top-shelf state operative”. This is certainly a loss for Team Romney and a strong pickup for Barbour in what should be an important early state primary.

After signing up Bradshaw in Florida, Barbour is heading to Nevada today to campaign for what the National Journal calls the “suddenly competitive Nevada” caucus. Barbour joins Palin, Pawlenty, and Cain as the fourth candidate-to-be who has visited the state this year.

Barbour looks like he’s playing for keeps, and intends to make a run in each of the early states — he’s already made a couple of top-rate hires in New Hampshire, one in South Carolina, and now in Florida, and is campaigning in Nevada.

Barbour is methodically and purposefully chasing the GOP nomination. The question remaining in my mind is whether or not his organization and well-built campaign can overcome the challenging narrative, noted above, that his candidacy would struggle under.

Today, Politico published a telling article about the reaction of the liberal base of the Democratic Party to President Obama’s decision to join coalition strikes against Muammar Gaddhafi:

Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Mike Capuano (Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Rob Andrews (N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) “all strongly raised objections to the constitutionality of the president’s actions” during that call, said two Democratic lawmakers who took part.

…While other Democratic lawmakers have publicly backed Obama — including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and top members of the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees — the objections from a vocal group of anti-war Democrats on Capitol Hill could become a political problem for Obama, especially if “Operation Odyssey Dawn” fails to topple Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, leads to significant American casualties, or provokes a wider conflict in the troubled region of North Africa.

…The White House has worked to put out a narrative over the last 48 hours portraying Obama as initially opposed to any involvement in a Libyan campaign, with a major change in the president’s viewpoint developing over the course of the last week as Qadhafi loyalists appeared to be gaining the upper hand and a humanitarian crisis appeared inevitable.

…Yet there is growing unhappiness within Democratic ranks on Obama’s handling of the Afghanistan conflict, and with Obama gearing up for his 2012 reelection campaign, he will need the backing of liberal and progressive factions within his party — already disenchanted over some of the president’s fiscal and tax policies — in order to defeat any Republican challenger.

I remain dubious of any high-profile Democrats challenging the President for the 2012 nomination from the left as long as Obama’s poll numbers remain above 40%. If you think defeating an incumbent president in a general election is difficult, imagine trying it in a primary.

Obama finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, at least politically; philosophically, he almost assuredly would like to stay out of the Libya situation as much as possible. However, leaning too far in that direction risks making him look aloof and unconcerned (when have we heard that before?…), hence the White House’s “he let his conscience get the best of him” messaging push.

If the U.S.’s involvement ends up persisting for a notable amount of time, as some commentators have suggested, expect to see the complaints from the Left grow louder.

It has been reported repeatedly that Cheri Daniels is adamantly opposed to the idea of her husband running for president. This would be pretty much a stopper, as any married man knows.

However, a recent interview indicates that her opposition should not be assumed.

In an interview this past week, Indiana’s first lady told The Indianapolis Star that she hasn’t taken a stance for or against a presidential run by her husband.

“At this point, I guess I’m still thinking it’s awfully early to have any real strong opinion about it,” Cheri Daniels said. “But I think it’s obviously a great honor to have people even talking about you for that position. Again, we just have an awful lot to think about.”

This is certainly not a ringing endorsement of a run, but shows she’s keeping an open mind. She also said that it would be a family decision:

Asked whether the couple and their four daughters have had a family sit-down about a campaign, she said: “Well, sure. I mean, we’ve been talking about it ever since the rumblings began. And all I can tell you is it will be a complete family decision. It affects every single one of my daughters and their families, too. So, yes, we’ll be in talks.”

The big question, I think, is the behavior of the Democrats in the state legislature. They might try to eliminate Daniels by continuing to hide out in Illinois.

Added note: Funny line from Daniels’ Gridiron presentation:

I bring greetings from my beloved Indiana. South Bend is in the north. North Vernon’s in the south. And French Lick is not what you hoped it was.

Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics discusses the ongoing debate on the Left regarding Obama’s road to re-election in 2012. Put simply, the choice seems to be one between winning back white seniors, blue collar Midwesterners, and white collar voters in the Northern suburbs, or doubling down on the Rocky Mountain West, using Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico as an Electoral College firewall. Money quote:

This “Colorado Strategy” is derived at least in part from Michael Bennet’s surprising win in the 2010 Colorado Senate race, and Obama’s strategists have signaled that this could be the strategy they pursue in the 2012 Presidential race. In his original essay – and in a follow-up piece in which Galston answered his criticis – he urged Obama instead to try to bring white working class voters back into the fold, focusing on Midwestern states like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Especially Ohio.

…

(But) the Democrats’ problem in the industrial Midwest and in the Mountain West and “New South” are the same problem: It generally lies among college-educated, white voters. All other things being equal, they tended to swing more toward the Republicans.

All of this raises the question of whether Democrats can really run with the Ohio strategy anymore.

As always, I encourage you to read the whole thing, but I think what Sean is saying is that there’s a certain type of voter that can make or break the Democrats’ chances in 2012: educated, white collar, creative class urban and suburban whites. These folks, of course, are more readily associated with Colorado than with Ohio, but they exist everywhere, and they are largely responsible for the new purplish hue of states like Virginia, North Carolina, and the Rocky Mountain West, all areas with budding, New Economy metropolises that are magnets for the creative class.

The reality is that as the West is becoming more populous, it is also becoming less friendly to Republicans. This is because the New West is filled with voting blocs that Republicans have long avoided attempting to woo. Population growth in the West is largely due to the aforementioned creative class voters, and to Hispanics. Both groups, for different reasons, spell trouble for a Republican Party that is far more comfortable marketing its message to rural Iowa than to these “new, fangled” demographic groups.

Earlier this year, I wrote extensively on the Republicans’ Hispanic problem, concluding that the challenge for the GOP wasn’t one of ideology, but of delivery and implementation. Hispanic voters pretty much have the same concerns as non-Hispanic voters. A Republican Party that is able to reach out to Hispanics and explain how conservative policies would positively impact them, while doing so in a way that puts down the Tancredo Kool-Aid, and lays off the cultural cues that are designed to appeal to downscale whites, should be able to pretty much match Democrats’ performance among this crucial voting bloc.

Similarly, by tailoring its messaging to rural and religious voters over the past 10-15 years, Republicans have made themselves seem rather foreign to the secular, suburban voters who comprise the bulk of the creative class. In the 1990s, Republican strategists began to focus like a laser beam on winning over evangelicals, rural whites, and a new generation of Southerners who had no psychological or tribal connection to the Democratic Party. This strategy was apt in its identification of voting blocs which would be prime targets for the GOP message, and much of the party building of the past two decades has been due to these very groups manning the phone banks and trudging through New Hampshire’s perma-freeze.

But politics is often like herding cats, and while Republicans were making efforts to bring religious Americans and downscale whites into the party, groups like secular, educated whites, as well as Asian-Americans, all of whom voted thrice for Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, have jumped out of the pen. The result is that the Republican grassroots nominates one of its own for public office, someone like Sharron Angle in Nevada or Ken Buck in Colorado, and the Democrats succeed in transforming these candidates into “the other” due to their cultural redness, such as their religious beliefs or their colloquialisms.

But has the West really changed that much due to the migration of the creative class? This survey of religious self-identification by state suggests that it has. Between 17 and 25 percent of Americans in the following states self-identify with no religion: Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. Compare that to the 3 percent of North Dakota residents who self-identify in the same manner. Or the 12 percent of Pennsylvanians, which makes the Keystone State seem like the buckle of the Bible Belt compared to Colorado, where 21 percent of its residents claim no religious identification.

Neither the depth nor breadth of religious adherence in any given state necessarily translates to a more politically right-wing or left-wing population. But states with large secular populations, while not necessarily more liberal politically, will ultimately be less comfortable with, or less welcoming to, candidates and messaging that is designed by religious campaign strategists, to appeal to religious voters. And that same dynamic allowed Harry Reid to turn his opponent into a religious zealot during an election cycle in which social issues were pretty much off the table.

All of this leads me to believe that Republicans should put most of their chips on the Midwest in 2012, as I suspect that a Toomey-style victory in Pennsylvania will actually be easier for the GOP than a win in many of the Rocky Mountain states. It is clear, however, that simply folding up shop in the West is not a viable long-term political strategy for a serious national party. The challenge going forward for Republicans will be to learn how to win over the sorts of voters who are becoming increasingly dominant in a number of key states and regions, and who are leading indicators of where our nation is headed demographically and politically.

The libertarian-leaning founder of Wikipedia and president of Wikia, Jimmy Wales, is seriously considering entering the Republican race to unseat Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in Florida.

Exhibit A: On January 25th, Jimmy Wales tweets: “Should I run for the Senate?”  (http://twitter.com/#!/jimmy_wales/statuses/29834979840098304)

Exhibit B: A couple of weeks ago, this website (http://draftjimmywales.wordpress.com/) and this Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/jimmywales2012) pop up.

Exhibit C: On March 18th, Jimmy Wales re-tweets the following message from one of his supporters: “@jimmy_wales would you consider running for the Senate? FL needs a better supporter of liberty than Bill Nelson! Jimmy Wales for Senate!” (http://twitter.com/#!/MatthewMGather/status/48790553005010944)

Wales entering the Senate race would certainly be a game-changer.  His notoriety combined with his strong limited government views will definitely make him a Tea Party favorite.  Could he be the next Rand Paul?

The Daily Caller recently published a lengthy, in-depth piece on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels that is a must-read for any prospective supporter of the would-be presidential candidate. It’s tidbits like these that reinforce my belief that Daniels could be a winning horse for the GOP next year:

Mitch Daniels is cheap.

The Indiana governor and former Office of Management and Budget director for President George W. Bush who is now spoken of as the favorite 2012 candidate of the Washington elite used a gardening glove when he first learned to play golf, unwilling to spend the money for a real golf glove.

“He had the same raincoat, which I always thought was too short for him, for about 20 years,” a former aide said, recalling another tale of Daniels’ frugality.

“He doesn’t like to spend his money, and he doesn’t like to spend the people’s money,” Al Hubbard, who headed up the National Economic Council during Bush’s second term and is considered part of Daniels’ inner circle, explained.

…

Neil Pickett, who worked with Daniels at the Hudson Institute, of which Daniels was president and CEO from 1987 to 1990, and later served as senior policy director during Daniels’ first term has governor, called Daniels extremely intelligent, the first quality most people mention when speaking about the governor.

“I worked for Herman Kahn — he’s a futurist who founded the Hudson institute. He’s generally thought of as one of the smartest people ever in the world,” Pickett said. “Nobody in my mind equals Herman Kahn. But Mitch Daniels is pretty darn close.”

“He is both quantitatively, not just literate but expert, and one of the most articulate and effective communicators, especially in writing, that I’ve ever seen,” Pickett continued.

But he was initially skeptical that Daniels would be successful in politics. As a candidate, the former colleague expected Daniels would be “maybe a little stiff and not effective.”

“That proved to be absolutely wrong,” he said. “He’s an incredibly effective retail politician.”

…

“He’s like the chess player that’s always 12 moves ahead of you,” said Pete Seat, communications director for the Indiana Republican Party. “The moves that he makes may not make sense in today’s context, or tomorrow’s context, but six months down the road, you go ‘holy moly, this guy knew what he was talking about.’”

The author is showing her dearth of exposure to flyover country with her exotic description of Daniels’ flinty nature. What is perceived by the rest of the country as “cheap” is par for the course in the Rust Belt, the region from which Daniels emanates, which prides itself on its prudence, modesty, and which considers personal beliefs and private lives to be, well, private, which is why Daniels’ call for a “truce” on social issues was misunderstood by folks from the colorful South, the in-your-face Northeast, and the flamboyant West.

As such, Daniels strikes me as pitch perfect for states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and, of course, New Hampshire, which is politically similar to the Rust Belt despite its geographic status as sort of the West Berlin of New England. Given that Democrats appear to be in the process of building a Western firewall against a GOP takeover of the White House, Republicans can either hope that Colorado falls into line, or try to replicate Pat Toomey’s win in Pennsylvania and Scott Walker’s win in Wisconsin to have any hopes of winning the Electoral College, and that’s assuming that Florida and Ohio come back into the fold. Given that New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were all “redder,” at least in the big ticket elections, than states like Colorado and Nevada in 2010, selecting a nominee who speaks the language of the Rust Belt has not receded in importance. Gov. Daniels could pull this off better than most, which is why I continue to hope that he decides to take the plunge into the presidential race.

Sarah Palin gave a speech in India. It was followed by a Q&A. The Right Scoop has the video:

I must say, it is refreshing to watch her being questioned by a professional interviewer who isn’t looking down his nose at her. The questions for the most part were serious, upfront, and weren’t gotchas.

The above video is about a half an hour long and well worth your time.

From CNS News:

Former House Speaker New Gingrich (R-Ga.), a likely 2012 presidential candidate, told CNSNews.com today that he does not regret supporting the enactment of the Medicare prescription drug plan which now presents the federal government with a $7.2 trillion unfunded liability.

An unfunded liability is a benefit the federal government has promised to pay that is not matched by tax revenue to fund it and thus represents an anticipated increase in the national debt.

Read more>

Twenty years ago during the first Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush called upon the people of Iraq to rebel against Hussein. The Kurds and the Marsh Arabs took him up on his offer.

The Americans and their coalition drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and Bush declared the war over after only 100 hours. Hussein, now free of any foreign threat, turned his military upon the rebels. He was merciless.

Bush’s response? It was a combination of two things. First he pointed out that we had never actually promised to support the rebels. If they misconstrued our suggestion that they rebel as a promise of support, we’re so sorry. It wasn’t our fault they did what we had encouraged them to do.

Then Bush did an incredibly stupid thing. While the rebels were getting plastered by the Iraqi military, he took a three-day fishing trip to relax after the war. The optics were jarring. The media was full of pictures of men, women, and children getting slaughtered for rebelling against Hussein — and pictures of the President who had encouraged them to rebel taking it easy on a fishing boat.

Bush cut his vacation in half and returned to Washington. Once there, he announced a “No-Fly Zone”.

Flash forward twenty years to today. Obama encouraged the Libyan rebels by stating Gahafi had to go. Then days/weeks later when the rebels have all but been wiped out, he sort of agrees to some sort of “No-fly Zone” brokered by the U.N.  In the meantime, President Obama is filling out his NCAA March Madness bracket, started up his golf game again, and is leaving to take a three day vacation in Rio.

Déjà vu, anyone?

Twenty Years Ago — Part 1 may be seen here.

I was thinking earlier this week about doing a post titled something like Should Obama Resign?

The idea (in jest, obviously) was that Barack Obama doesn’t really seem to like being president very much. Oh, he likes having people fawn over him and flatter him, and getting to play golf whenever he wants, and preening for the cameras, all of which is part of the presidency. But he doesn’t like the other part – making difficult decisions. The kinds of decisions where you’re going to be wrong either way, because there are no good options, and where one side is going to be at best dissatisfied while the other side is outraged.

When he was in the Illinois legislature and the US Senate, ducking big decisions was pretty easy – just don’t vote. But now he can’t do that. Or, anyway, he’s not supposed to, but since he seems to be unable to make decisions, he just puts them off.

What’s really bad is that even his friends and allies, in the press and elsewhere, are noticing this trait and criticizing their erstwhile golden boy. A few recent examples.

USA Today and Washington Post on Obama’s failure to lead on the deficit:

USA Today: If fiscal sanity is to be restored, Americans need to be told the hard facts — not just that the national debt is out of control and that deficits can’t go on and on, but that getting the nation’s finances in order will require going everywhere in the budget: domestic programs, defense spending and the big entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that already consume three of every five dollars the government spends. If leaders are to be truly forthright, they’ll also have to admit that revenue increases are needed to bring the nation’s ability to pay for benefits in line with its appetite for devouring them.

Obama’s own fiscal commission laid out exactly such a plan in December that drew a surprising number of bipartisan votes from the panel’s braver politicians. But the president has acted as if the plan is radioactive, and on Monday he mostly ignored it.

Washington Post: THE PRESIDENT PUNTED. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck.

Hillary reportedly annoyed with Obama’s dithering on Libya:

“Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily.

Our European allies are equally frustrated with him:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meetings in Paris with the G8 foreign ministers on Monday left her European interlocutors with more questions than answers about the Obama administration’s stance on intervention in Libya. [...]

Clinton stayed out of the fray, repeating the administration’s position that all options are on the table but not specifically endorsing any particular step.

Barack really doesn’t like being criticized. So, since the job sucks, why not resign?

Of course, there are two problems with my proposal:

1)      It isn’t going to happen, and

2)      If it did, Joe Biden would be president

The first really negates the horror of the second, but if I might be semi-serious for a second, I would like to point out that there is a reason for the 25^th Amendment – it is dangerous for the presidency to be vacant for an extended period. As bad a president as Joe Biden would be, he would be better than no president at all, which is what we have now.

Related: Not specifically a criticism of Obama, but this is interesting in that it demonstrates that the left is becoming aware of the need for budgetary sanity, on which Obama is taking a pass. Ruth Marcus on why (from a liberal’s perspective) it’s important to reduce the deficit (and acknowledging that we must cut entitlements to do so):

Failing to deal with the debt will hurt everyone, but the neediest will suffer the most. The economy-wide consequences of doing nothing – higher interest rates, slower economic growth, lower standards of living – will hit hardest those least well off. Meanwhile, the budgetary reality of mounting interest costs will eat away at the government’s ability to provide a reliable safety net.

Sarah Palin v. Newt Gingrich – Who’s Worse?

Tough call, but Debra Saunders makes the case for Newt. After noting a recent poll that shows Palin with significantly higher negatives among Republicans and Rep-leaners, she notes:

Here you see another example of how what you say gets you in more trouble in this world than what you do. Palin, after all, was a good Alaska governor — well, before she quit. But to call her gaffe-prone would be kind.

Gingrich on the other hand was a disaster as House Speaker. Democrats kept Nancy Pelosi after she lost the House. In 1998, Republicans ousted Gingrich while they still held the majority. His personal life has been a mess. And he recently credited “how passionately I felt about this country” for his poor personal conduct. What more does he have to do to take the lead in the unfavorable column?

Bringing Some Sanity to the Radiation Panic

Remember back in ’50s and early ’60s, when we set off something like 900 atomic bombs in Nevada? And how we just let the fallout blow wherever and it landed all over the eastern US? And how it wiped out life as we know it and all that was left from Colorado to the Atlantic were six-legged rats battling two-headed cockroaches in the glowing ruins?

Yeah. Exactly. So shut up with the panic already.

Global Warming Caused the Earthquake

I pretty much expected this:

The president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Staffan Nilsson, issued a statement calling for solidarity in tackling the global warming problem.

“Some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” said Nilsson. “Has not the time come to demonstrate [our] solidarity — not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?”

“Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do,” he added.

Wholesale prices up 1.6 pct. on steep rise in food

Food prices were up 3.9% last month, the most since 1974. Those who lived through those years remember with chills the era of ‘stagflation’ – the combination of a protracted period of high inflation and low/no growth. I’ve feared for months that this recession, coupled with huge deficits, will lead to a repeat of the seventies. It may not, but this is not a good sign.

Related: The CBO finds that Obama’s deficit forecast is $2 trillion low. That’s kind of a big miss, even by government standards, don’t you think?

Where Americans Are Moving

This interactive map shows the numbers of people moving from and to county pairs. Lots of fun for demographics geeks like me.

Add your own subjects of interest in the comments.

Update: I added a paragraph about European frustration with Obama’s inability to make a decision. It’s not good when you’re weak even by European standards.

PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Senate Survey

• Sherrod Brown 49%
• Drew Carey 34%

• Sherrod Brown 49%
• Jon Husted 34%

• Sherrod Brown 49%
• Jim Jordan 30%

• Sherrod Brown 48%
• Steve LaTourette 30%

• Sherrod Brown 48%
• Josh Mandel 32%

• Sherrod Brown 49%
• Mary Taylor 30%

(more…)

One of deans of political polling, and the dean of polling for conservative Republicans in the 1960′s through the 1980′s, Dick Wirthlin, passed away earlier this week.  In the late ’60′s through much of the ’70′s there were two prominent GOP polling firms:  Market Opinion Research, headed by the late Bob Teeter, who generally worked with moderate to liberal Republicans and Decision Making Information, headed by Dick Wirthlin, who generally worked with conservative Republicans.  Wirthlin’s first prominent political client was Barry Goldwater in his 1968 campaign for US Senate.  Goldwater recommended him to the recently elected Governor Ronald Reagan of California.  While the DMI firm had many well known political and commercial clients, Reagan quickly became his most prominent, and by the late ’70′s his predominant, client.

In the 1976 and 1980 campaigns, Wirthlin was a highly valued senior advisor to Reagan and the campaign leadership as he helped with the wording and presentation of Reagan’s philosophical message in a way that would win wide appeal.  He continued to work for Reagan throughout the presidency and also advised Margaret Thatcher at various points during the same period.  Dick Wirthlin was not only a pioneer of modern political polling but more importantly a key behind the scenes figure in the history of the conservative movement and in Republican presidential history.

PPP (D) 2012 Ohio GOP Primary Survey

• Mike Huckabee 19% [19%] (17%)
• Mitt Romney 18% [15%] (14%)
• Newt Gingrich 16% [18%] (19%)
• Sarah Palin 15% [21%] (20%)
• Ron Paul 7% [6%]
• Tim Pawlenty 5% [3%] (6%)
• Mitch Daniels 4% [5%] (3%)
• Haley Barbour 2%
• Someone else/Undecided 13% [11%] (18%)

(more…)

Larry Sabato has issued his most recent ratings and commentary. I’m not a real big Sabato fan, but he has some good stuff. The article is very lengthy, but worth reading; what I’ve done is extract just a few nuggets on all the major candidates and a few of the others.

This is an updating of his January list, so I’ve put the newer comments in italics, and in a few cases I’ve added a comment of my own in [brackets].

FIRST TIER

Mitt Romney

… if the Republican field has a frontrunner, it is Mitt Romney …

You know you have a problem when your opponents in the White House are praising your Massachusetts health care bill, in a new negative tactic called “killing with kindness” …

Romney has been going tieless and trying to loosen up his stiff image. Yet in the end, candidates have to be who they really are, or voters will sense phoniness.

[There's that p-word.]

Tim Pawlenty

Pawlenty hopes that his blue-collar background will contrast with the Bluenose candidacy of Mitt Romney, if indeed Romney is able to maintain his front-runner status.

Pawlenty has insisted, maybe a little too strenuously, that he has been comprehensively conservative during his public life.

[I strongly agree, as I noted in a thread a few days ago, that Pawlenty is trying way too hard. The same advice Sabato applied to Romney in terms of Romney's efforts to relax his image could also be applied to Pawlenty: Be yourself.]

No candidate has gone further, faster so far than Pawlenty. It is not that he has made any big breakthroughs. Rather, Pawlenty is always where he is supposed to be, doing a bit better than expected in straw polls and cattle shows.

Pawlenty wants to be contrasted with Obama’s glitz and glamour. But the contrast is currently too stark.

Haley Barbour

There is no better political strategist in the party, and no one who understands Republican politics discounts him.

… racial politics, Mississippi’s record, and a lobbying past continue to dog Barbour in the early going—not to mention a former aide telling off-color jokes.

… Barbour continues to assemble an impressive campaign team. No one understands the system better than Barbour.

Mike Huckabee

Huckabee has substantial residual support in Iowa, South Carolina, and other places where fundamentalist Christians are a big part of the GOP base.

Huckabee is a blue-collar Republican rather than a blueblood one. It is no surprise, then, that Huckabee and Mitt Romney do not like one another very much; it is far more than a policy dispute between the two. No doubt, Huckabee will do what he can to stop Romney from getting the Republican nomination, whether Huckabee runs or not.

[Again, this fits in with a recent conversation here.]

Huckabee claims he can wait until summer to announce a decision, but that’s doubtful—unless the decision is no.

… even though Huckabee insists he is at 50-50, more and more observers do not think Huckabee is running … He isn’t showing up in his strongholds such as Iowa, enabling other candidates to win over some of his previous base.

Sarah Palin

Should she enter the 2012 contest, Palin will instantly become one of the frontrunners. But is she really interested in giving up the empire she has built to trudge through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire and endure the indignities that come automatically to all candidates, famous and obscure alike? The record is not encouraging, given her midterm resignation from the one significant office she has ever held, that of Alaska state governor.

… even in the Tea Party, Palin is viewed in a mixed way. The activists appreciate what she stands for, but wonder whether she can win a general election …

It is now difficult to find a senior Republican that thinks Palin will jump into the ring for 2012. Perhaps everyone is wrong, but Palin’s nowhere to be found in Iowa and New Hampshire, and most of her public appearances are by satellite studio from Alaska, on Twitter, or at paid speeches.

[Unlike some, I do not consider Palin stupid. Intellectually lazy -- yes; stupid -- no. She can read the polls and she knows she has no chance. I'm going to be very surprised if she runs. But then, she's proven herself to be a bundle of surprises.]

Mitch Daniels

… the old political rule of ambition usually applies: you have to want the White House so badly that the fire in your belly can substitute for heating oil all winter long.

If Daniels does run, he has an impressive record to tout … [but] … while Daniels fits the old definition of conservative to a T, he is not much of a revolutionary from the Tea Party perspective, and he is suspected of having moderate tendencies on both ,,, the possible need to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit as well as the kind of priority a president should give to controversial social issues.

The notices for Daniels have been glowing—from National Review to the Gridiron Club to a host of conservative opinion leaders to Beltway high priests. But nobody can detect the early moves required to become a real contender.

[The more we see Barbour ramp up, and Daniels do little in terms of preparation, added to his runaway legislature, the more it looks like Daniels won't run. For now, I'll continue to hope.]

SECOND TIER

Newt Gingrich

Other than Sarah Palin, no candidate in the 2012 GOP field is as well known as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. As with Palin, however, 100% name recognition is a mixed blessing.

His two messy divorces are part of the heavy baggage Gingrich would carry into the 2012 Republican nominating battle.

… it will be difficult for the polarizing, controversial former House Speaker to present himself as a winning alternative to President Obama. Overall, Gingrich does poorly in the general election matchups with Obama, and this undoubtedly will influence many Republicans during the primary season.

It will now be a surprise if Gingrich backs away from a White House bid

Nothing’s changed about Gingrich’s baggage, though. He’s going the “religious forgiveness” route, confessing to Christian Broadcasting Network that his serial adultery was simply a product of virtuous overwork and passionate love of country, or something. And for eons, humans had thought that it was actually the idle mind that was the devil’s workshop.

Chris Christie

There is no such thing as a presidential draft these days, so Christie would have to change his mind about seeking the White House in 2012.

We’ve had occasion to hear Christie’s stump speech twice recently—and make no mistake, it is a stump speech easily adaptable to the presidential race.

The electricity that crackles around him is in stark contrast to the tepid reaction most of the announced or probable GOP presidential candidates get …

It is just possible that, if the Republican field falls flat through early fall, a grassroots cry for Christie may be heard throughout the land. Just. In the meantime, he’s the best show on the road.

Jon Huntsman

… his ambassadorial appointment was seen at the time as a clever move by Obama to remove a potential 2012 GOP rival from seeking the White House. Apparently, that calculus may have assumed less ambition than Huntsman possesses …

Maybe Huntsman can sell this to a politics-weary nation as bipartisanship, but we doubt a conservative GOP electorate is going to buy that.

We now know that Huntsman is deadly serious about his presidential bid. He has resigned as U.S. ambassador to China as of April 30, and has been assembling a campaign staff. But he still has all the problems we outlined in January. As with Mitt Romney, the Obama White House has enjoyed killing Huntsman with kindness …

THE REST

Rick Santorum

Santorum, a two-term senator from Pennsylvania, lost his seat in 2006 by a massive 18 percentage points. Not many would consider this a qualification to run for president, assuming a party hopes to win …

Still working hard, still scoring among social conservatives, still unelectable …

[You didn't think I could resist a bit of Santorum Snark, did you?]

John Bolton

All’s quiet on the Bolton front, even though the democracy revolution sweeping through the Middle East and the Libyan civil war would appear to give Bolton an opening to discuss his strengths.

[Not that Bolton matters in the least, but certainly this is an issue tailor-made for him, and yet he has been, as far as is known, totally absent from the debate. It's also telling that, until now, nobody noticed his absence.]

Gary Johnson

Much like John Bolton, but from a different direction, he will enrich the debate by being in the race. But Johnson’s chances of nomination are mighty slim, and that is putting it kindly.

When Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) retired recently, some Land of Enchantment Republicans hoped they could attract Johnson back to his state to run. No dice. Johnson is in the presidential race to stay despite the enormous odds against him.

David Shedlock’s post about the conversation between Rush Limbaugh and one of his callers, where they talked about Palin being a mom and a politician, sparked a furious (in every sense of the term) debate. While I usually don’t do this, I’m going to bring a little personal perspective to this. I guess you could say I have a unique perspective on this topic because my mom is a politician.

The first time my mom ran for office was back when I was 15 years old, a high school freshman. Before making that decision, my mother, my older sister, my father and I all sat down at the dinner table to debate the pros and cons of her running. Before any formal decision was made, we all got a say and a vote. Both my sister and I said she should run. So, she did. My mom won that election and has been in elected office ever since.

So, what’s it like having a politician mother? Well, she’s very busy, with meetings all the time and having to go to various events throughout the weeks and the like. Does it mean that we spend less time together than we did before? Yes, but the time we do spend together we now have a new passion to talk about. Really, having a mom who is involved in the political arena was one of the things that helped spark my own fascination with politics. And the people we’ve gotten a chance to meet and deal with combined with some of the opportunities that have been opened for our family really does help balance out some of the extra time we don’t get to spend together.

Now, the situation between my family and the Palin’s family is very different of course; her children are younger than me or my sister and her youngest son is a special needs child. However, I’m not going to pass judgment on the Palin’s for how they raise their kids (that’s up to them and really none of anyone else’s business) or if Palin wants to be a politician and a mother. I just thought I’d post this to give you, I guess we would call it an “insiders” perspective on mom’s and politics.

Warning: Be civil in the thread or your comments will be gone by the time you press the enter key.

As a Christian, and a vocal and theologically-minded Christian at that, I’ve gotten into a fair number of (generally quite civil) conversations with atheists and agnostics. One of the most common comments I’ve gotten about God from agnostics is “I’ve got no problem with God, I just don’t like his fan club”. is anyone else starting to feel that way about…all the major candidates, or is it just me?

Look, I understand the passions of the presidential season make political junkies hot under the collar. I get the fact that you think your guy or gal is the only true and proper conservative who can save us all from Obama. But, seriously, trashing everyone else in the field and mindlessly spewing your guy’s talking points isn’t swaying anyone at this point. And there are some attacks that really ought to be beyond the pale. Since some of the “fan club” members seem incapable of grasping the basic tenets of civility, let me lay out a few areas that should be obvious no-go zones.

1. Don’t personally insult other commenters or posters. Do I really have to mention this? Judging some of the threads I’ve read recently, yes. Calling other posters “losers” “cowards”, telling them to “get a life/job/house/girlfriend” are all not particularly polite. Also, what exactly does it say about you if you’re reduced to insulting people you don’t know over the internet? Don’t doo it.

2. Don’t attack other candidate’s families. Seriously, really I have to say this? Spouses, kids and parents should be off-limits, unless they are under criminal investigation, or say or do something which negatively effect the candidate’s campaign. Kids in particular. I’m also of the opinion that we probably shouldn’t criticize people’s family decisions *cough, people criticizing Palin*. In Palin’s case, there’s actually a decision process the family uses, which is detailed in Kayleen Johnson’s biography of Palin. Read before criticizing.

3. Don’t criticize another candidate’s looks. C’mon people, this really isn’t that germain to electoral politics. Look at portraits of Lincoln, Taft and Maddison to ensure that presidents come in all shapes and sizes.

4. Don’t insult a candidate’s religion. Now, some candidates try to use their religion for political purposes, and that’s fair game. If you don’t agree with the way a candidate is using his/her Christianity/Judaism/Buddhism/Mormonism/Islam/rastafarianism, just say so and move on. But using them to smeer the religion itself, and assuming things about other candidate’s personal faith, really isn’t cool.

5. You represent your candidate. For better or worse, most of us probably have never met your candidate, and will probably judge him/her based on your behavior. It isn’t fair (mostly to your candidate), but it is what it is. Those of us who are Christians in grad school, and/or conservatives in blue states (or conservatives in grad school, for that matter), have to do this with real people on a daily basis. Get used to it, and act accordingly.

6. Keep your eye on the ball. Remember, the point is to beat Barack Obama in 2012. That’s the first priority of all the candidates you represent. None of the candidates considering running–not one–would be more harmful than a second term of Barack Obama. (Even a Ron Paul presidency could probably be managed, though it would be exceedingly difficult). All of them are a lot better conservatives than Barack Obama is. Competition, the healthy inter-change of ideas and a vigorous discourse over which candidate is the best standard-bearer is all good. I personally have no problem calling someone’s ideas stupid, if you must, and if you’re willing to back it up with logical arguments. But can we tone down the circular firing squad a bit?

Now, bets on how long it takes someone to make “Only supporters of that other candidate do this; my candidate’s supporters are perfect” comments?

Continuing their string of fantastic posts this past week, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake, of The Fix, have penned a fascinating missive about the voting trends of Independents. The highlights:

Taken together, the average margin among independents in those five elections [the Presidential elections between 1992 and 2008] is five points, with the Democratic nominee winning among that electorally critical group four of those times.

…There have been five midterm elections since 1992, but there is exit polling in only four of them. (The exit polling in 2002 proved too unreliable to be cited.) The average margin in those four elections is more than 13 points, and three times — 2010, 2006 and 1994 — one party won independents by a double-digit margin, a phenomenon that has never happened in a presidential election.

…The most obvious explanation is that most independents are not, in their hearts of hearts, genuinely independent. (Any number of poll breakdowns and studies have been dedicated to the idea that some portion of independents are essentially partisans-in-disguise. Although, for our money, the one the Post did a few years ago is the gold standard.)

While these nominal independent voters tend to swing from party to party in midterm contests where the stakes seem smaller and the media coverage is considerably less, they tend to revert to their natural partisan tendencies in the high-profile, big stakes world of presidential elections.

If that theory is right — and it makes good sense to us — that means that the true independent voters in a presidential election are not the 29 percent (or so) of people who identify themselves as such in recent exit polls, but in fact a far smaller contingent that rates in the high-single or low-double digits.

That reality means that independents are not as up for grabs as some might believe. It also puts a premium on identifying and targeting them heading into 2012.

This certainly challenges much of conventional political thought. One can argue that it supports the notion of nominating candidates that especially mobilize their respective party bases. The GOP successfully implemented a strategy resembling this in 2004.

On the other hand, one can also reason that the possibly-more-partisan-than-expected electorate makes winning over the remaining TRUE independents even more important, since we can assume that the voters with at least somewhat of an ideological bent will “come home” for presidential elections.

This raises some excellent points of discussion and debate. So, Race community, what do you think?

PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Presidential Survey

• Barack Obama 46% (44%)
• Mitt Romney 40% (42%)

• Barack Obama 48% (45%)
• Mike Huckabee 41% (44%)

• Barack Obama 50% (47%)
• Newt Gingrich 38% (41%)

• Barack Obama 52% (49%)
• Sarah Palin 36% (42%)

(more…)

Gov. Gary Johnson ups the ante on Sen. Rand Paul’s proposal to cut $500 billion from the budget immediately.  Johnson demands an immediate $1.6 trillion budget cut, which would merely balance revenues with expenditures for the federal government:

-This has been cross-posted at Caffeinated Thoughts.
___________________________________________________________________________________

On Tuesday, Angela, a mother of five children from Prince William County, Virginia, called the Rush Limbaugh show. She no doubt represents millions of conservative voters in her viewpoint that moms with small children should stay at home. She said she won’t vote for Sarah Palin because she is not impressed with how Palin protected her young daughter during the 2008 campaign season, but it was obvious her bigger point was that mothers should be at home with their children (not fathers).

Talker Limbaugh did three things that, I think, could turn millions of Republican listeners similar to Angela away from Sarah Palin.

First, America’s Truth Detector, Rush Limbaugh, claimed she was a seminar caller (this is Rush’s term meaning a “fake caller” – a liberal pretending to be a nut-burger conservative).

“We gotta make a note to hire you again. You’re one of the best paid actors we’ve ever had on this program.”

This means Limbaugh essentially called her a liar, suggesting people like her don’t really exist. That would be a huge political miscalculation, I think. Here is what Limbaugh said after she hung up:

“All right, Angela, it was. That is Angela in Dumfries, Virginia. You do have her number, right? You got her number? Okay, call her agent.”

Second, he called her a sexist. And by modern feminist standards (those sadly now being embraced by many evangelicals and others on the right), she probably is “sexist”. But she represents millions of Christians, many of us politically active, who believe that it is God’s ordained order for mothers to stay at home with their children. But we are not a monolithic bunch. Some believe that it is fine if Sarah Palin runs for President, but don’t think it ought to be the norm for mothers. Others, like Angela, think she should not run.

Here is the key exchange on that point:

RUSH: You’re not disappointing me. You’re just a sexist.

CALLER: Am I? Well, that could be it, too.

RUSH: A little sexism going on here, but that’s fine, everybody has, you know, boundaries to allow some of that stuff to happen….

CALLER: Thanks for allowing me to talk.

RUSH: Who would you vote for in the Republican field?

CALLER: Say it again?

RUSH: In the current Republican field, who would you vote for?

CALLER: Mitch Daniels.

RUSH: He’s got kids.

CALLER: Well, his kids have a mother.

RUSH: Okay. So it’s okay for a father to have all kinds of kids and abandon ‘em and leave them –

CALLER: No, he wouldn’t be abandoning them.

RUSH: — with the mother.

CALLER: That’s right. I’m a traditionalist, Rush, and I think a lot of conservatives are.

RUSH: Well, Sarah Palin’s kids have a father.

CALLER: That’s a father, what’s that have to do with being a mother? Because he’s a father?

Limbaugh has bought into the paradigm that fathers and mothers have an equal responsibility to raise the children at home, that there is no distinctive role for mothers. Or if he ever held the view at one time, he has abandoned it in order to justify criticizing non-Palin voters.

Third, he assumes that voters like us are worthless and should be ignored or insulted. But that is a political loser. Though many Mitt Romney supporters have accused evangelicals of being bigots for opposing him because of his Mormonism, Romney never stooped so low as to articulate that view himself, even if he believed it. He is a smart guy. He needs to win those folks over, not alienate them. Many moderates have mocked Mike Huckabee for being a creationist, and for denying the essentials of evolution, but he is not putting it in the faces of these opponents. He is trying to win them. John McCain stumbled badly in 2000 by insulting evangelicals and it may have cost himself the nomination. It took him eight years to mend those fences, but having done so, he was able to win the GOP primaries by getting lots of evangelical voters to forgive him. Sarah Palin has twice called those who think mothers should stay at home “Neanderthals”. This is no way to influence people who probably think Margaret Thatcher an equal to Ronald Reagan.

I believe Limbaugh exhibited a rare goof with his last line:

RUSH: It seems to me all this hating going on on Sarah Palin, for whatever reason, there are a lot of people who just don’t like the idea of a strong woman. Well, isn’t that what we heard in explaining the criticism of Hillary? We did.

Rush, who said that? Who said Hillary was opposed because she was a strong woman? The women you call Feminazis. Now you are saying the same thing about opponents of Sarah Palin that they oppose her because she is a strong woman. What does that say about you, Rush? Of course, everyone knows you are not a feminazi.

PPP (D) National Political Survey

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Charlie Sheen?

• Favorable 10%
• Unfavorable 67%

If the candidates for President next year were Charlie Sheen and Barack Obama, who would you vote for?

• Barack Obama 57%
• Charlie Sheen 24%

Among Independents

• Barack Obama 57%
• Charlie Sheen 22%

If the candidates for President next year were Charlie Sheen and Sarah Palin, who would you vote for?

• Sarah Palin 49%
• Charlie Sheen 29%

(more…)

I could not settle on just the right word to describe the subject, so I selected a number of them, hoping that, taken together, the reader gets my point exactly.

The subject is the state of political discourse, the rhetoric of elected officials, and the language of bureaucrats. It is my belief that not only are we suffering a nationwide financial deficit in running our government, we are also very much in the hole in regard to our public speech, both written and spoken. We risk our pubic discourse being overtaken by pettifoggers, blatherskites, gasbags and blowhards.

A few years ago, a very admirable movement took place in the American legal community to transform the language of contracts and other legal agreements into plain, understandable English. If only such a movement would arise in our political discourse, and in our public policy communities!

I am going to illustrate my point with only one example.

We are coming to the conclusion of the story involving the state of Wisconsin. Like most states, but perhaps more acutely than some others, the state of Wisconsin is facing a financial crisis involving the cost of its government, particularly the cost of its public employees. In the recent election, the Republican nominee for governor said he would, if he were elected, act decisively to rein in these costs and change the relationship of the state with its public employees. The Democratic nominee, supported by the unions which represent the public employees predictably disagreed. Democrats have long controlled the capitol in Madison, and the outgoing governor was a Democrat supported by the unions. Over time, the wages and benefits of most public employees have soared since, after all, the very persons they collectively bargained with were the same persons whose campaigns they had largely financed and staffed. The public negotiators, it also must be pointed out, had no equity ownership in the enterprise they represented, and thus any concessions they might offer to the unions and the employees they represent used no money out of their own pockets. (I am not suggesting that in the case of industrial and service unions with two truly adversarial sides, each of which has a material interest in negotiations, that collective bargaining is not appropriate.)

Mr. Scott Walker, the Republican nominee, went on to win the general election in Wisconsin by a wide margin. So did majorities of Republicans running for the state house and senate. So did the GOP nominee for the U.S. senate seat held by a long-time Democratic incumbent. So did a number of Republican candidates for U.S. Congress, defeating or replacing Democratic incumbents.

I think you could say that the voters of Wisconsin spoke their mind in a clear way.

To keep their promises to the voters, the new GOP officeholders prepared legislation to cut back the salaries and benefits of public employees, and to take away the collective bargaining of their unions.

A media-piercing hue and cry arose from the public employee unions and their Democratic minions in the state legislature. Employing a technicality, the entire Democratic membership of the state senate hastily, and under the cover of night, beat it out of Madison and crossed the border into neighboring Illinois where they holed up in self-righteous and self-congratulatory seclusion in a motel . Denying a quorum, they did stop temporarily the GOP-controlled senate’s ability to pass the legislation.

This soon became a sensational national story, and union members across the country rallied to their brethren’s cause. Union members and their supporters camped out in the state capitol while a fawning national media reported their every declamation and threat as if the public employees were the victims in this matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. The unions had lost the last election and could only postpone the inevitable. A few days ago, the Republicans figured out a technical way to overcome the lack of a quorum caused by the runaway Democratic state senators. A bogus national poll was contrived which made it seem that the public was on the union’s side, but none of this fol-de-rol could hide the fact that the Wisconsin public employees unions and their Democratic clients were acting illegally, irresponsibly, and ultimately anti-democratically.

Finally, the “refugee” senators came home to Madison, and were greeted as heroes. Many reporters and editorial page writers from around the nation, most of whom are newspaper union members, continued to report about them sympathetically.

But the legislation was passed, and Governor Walker signed it into law. A number of other state legislatures in the country began to take up similar laws. Yet, having acted illegally to prevent the passage of the legislation which the Republican legislators told voters they would do if they were elected, having thwarted the democratic process in Wisconsin, and having lost everywhere they turned, the Democrats now initiated recall elections of Republican senators! Their crime? Doing their duty. Fulfilling their campaign promises. Following the law.

As if they were trying to re-make the movie “Animal Farm” by George Orwell, the union’s discourse of this dispute saw every concept being turned into its opposite. Those who were following the law, and doing their duty, were cast as the victimizers, and those who ignored the election results, broke the rules, and failed in their duties, cast themselves as the victims.

Fortunately, the public saw through this nonsense, and the majority in the legislature accomplished what they set out to do. Common sense, the rules, the state constitution were observed, and the right outcome achieved.

Union members and their union organizations can now freely prepare for the next elections, and thus try to overturn this legislation. If they can rally and gain majority voter support, they can properly achieve their goals two years from now. Acting as a threatening, bullying mob did not work. In fact, it set them back. Union support had been declining, and now it has lost much good will among many independent voters who were appalled by thuggish tactics.

As for the Democratic state senators, they are exactly the opposite of heroes. They took an oath to follow the state constitution when sworn in, and they now have broken their oath.

The true losers in this matter were the union rank and file. In New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie also confronted the public employees unions, the unions similarly yelled and screamed about the governor’s actions. Mr. Christie went directly to them and said, “Don’t blame me for the actions I have taken. Blame the union leaders and your own elected officials who told you that you could have all these benefits without consequences on the state budget.”

That is clarity of discourse. The days of careless government are now over. Salaries, pensions, and health care benefits must be reasonable, justifiable, and paid for. This is clarity of action.

_______________________________________________________________________

-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

In this edition of Donald Trump says the darndest things, we’ll go through some choice words that the Donald had on the rest of the potential GOP field:

On Sarah Palin
“She did fine as the governor. I think, personally, she made a tragic mistake when she left early. I think she’s more qualified than Barack Obama was, when he became president.”

On Mitt Romney
“…doesn’t seem to resonate [with voters].”

On Tim Pawlenty
“[Isn't going to] captivate the voters.”

On Jon Huntsman
“When you work for somebody else, as he has worked for Barack Obama, you don’t leave and then run against that person. It’s very disloyal.”

On Mike Huckabee
“I really like him; he’s the kind of a guy that maybe could really get some votes.”

BONUS COMMENTS
On John Boehner
“I don’t like the crying. I do not like it. I don’t understand it. I really like him as a person…I think the crying is an emotional thing that, frankly, probably makes him a very nice man. But, you know, I don’t like to see it in a leader.”

He also gave some nods to birthers in this interview. Here’s a link for more details. As always, Trump is a fascinating character who knows how to keep himself in the news.

_______________________________________________________

-Matt Newman is a conservative blogger from Maryland who blogs at Old Line Elephant and Tweets far too often.

The year was 1991. The first Gulf War had been over for a month. President George H. W. Bush was in office and basking in the glow of incredible polling numbers. I remember one poll from back then that showed Bush with an approval rating of 94%.

94%!!

Let that sink in for a bit.

The Democrats were in turmoil. Who could possibly win against such a formidable foe? All the better known Democrats on the national scene became gun shy. Now was not the time to run for President. Who wants to be a sacrificial lamb?

Bush was riding high. His re-election seemed assured. It seemed that nothing could stop him from winning in 1992. Guess what? That is exactly what happened. Nothing DID stop him from winning.  For twenty months that is what he did — nothing.

There was a steady stream of Republicans to his office. They were the Governors, the Senators, the Mayors. They were the activists, the business leaders. They came to encourage the President to do something. They all wanted him to spend some of that massive amount of political capital on accomplishing something. Social Security reform, perhaps. Taking a meataxe to the Federal bureaucracy, maybe. Welfare reform, possibly. “Do it, Mr. President”, they all said. “Another opportunity like this one will not likely come again in our lifetimes”.

Bush would listen to them politely. He expressed sympathy for their concerns. He promised to take their ideas and concerns under advisement. He would then smile, shake their hands, clap their backs, and see them out.

He would then seek out counsel and advice — from his political team. Their advice was always the same. “Don’t rock the boat. Your reelection is in the bag. Don’t do anything to jeopardize it.”

And that is exactly what he did for twenty months, nothing. Meanwhile, his approval ratings slowly but surely slipped away. It’s very hard to highly approve of someone who just does the minimum their job requires.

When the 1992 elections rolled around, the question on everyone’s mind was, “What’s the point in electing Bush to a second term if he couldn’t be bothered to do anything in the later half of his first?” And the country elected Bill Clinton instead.

Flash forward twenty years to today. Have you been watching Barack Obama as of late? He seems to be taking a page from Bush Senior’s book. The world is in turmoil. Protests are happening in Arab countries. Libyan rebels are down to their last refuge. A massive earthquake and tsunami has struck Japan. The price of oil and gas are skyrocketing. The Congress is in a struggle over the budget. The country is suffering from massive debt. A deep recession lingers on.

And what is the President of the United State, the Leader of the Free World doing? Why filling out his NCAA March Madness bracket, of course. That and coming out against bullying in school.

But don’t lose hope. His ambassador to the UN announced today that, “we need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include but perhaps go beyond a no-fly zone”, in the Libyan crisis. You got that? “[W]e need to be prepared to contemplate…”

As Bush did twenty years ago, Obama is listening to his political advisors. “Don’t do anything”, was the advice to Bush back then. It is the same advice to Obama now. “Rest on your laurels. Let the other guys make the mistakes.” And Obama, never one to take the lead on anything he doesn’t have to, is happy to oblige.

As the political March Madness continues, we are seeing the race begin to take shape.

Mitt Romney remains atop the field with another solid month.  Romney caught a big break with Sen. John Thune’s decision to stay out of the race.  Thune was well positioned to be a credible establishment alternative to Romney and his departure leaves one less obstacle in the former governor’s path.  With Thune out, Romney’s chances have only improved.  His odds were also boosted by Justice Roger Vinson’s ruling against President Obama’s healthcare reform law, reinforcing Romney’s argument in defense of his own Massachusetts health legislation.  However, Romney’s chances could be damaged by the emerging organization of Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who could infringe on Romney’s LDS donor base and cut into his New Hampshire strength.

Tim Pawlenty has probably benefited the most from Sen. Thune’s departure from consideration and from Gov. Mitch Daniels’ continued uncertainty.  With them out of the way, Pawlenty is fast becoming the top alternative to Gov. Romney among the establishment while also building a comparable organization.  Gov. Pawlenty has also seen his outreach to the Tea Party begin to pay off as his numbers among their ranks steadily improve.  Pawlenty’s positioning as a compromise candidate to unite diverging factions will continue to improve, and will skyrocket if Gov. Daniels decides to pass on the race.  His recent staff additions continue to show his strength, even if the very early polling hasn’t caught up.

Mike Huckabee continues to produce solid poll numbers, but little else.  Most non-partisan polls continue to show Gov. Huckabee locked into ties with Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin or both. His recent book tour was relatively unimpressive when compared to those of Palin, Romney, and even Pawlenty.  The tour was largely overshadowed by a series of gaffes that dominated the headlines. For a candidate with the second highest name recognition (only Palin rates higher), his organization and fundraising remain alarmingly poor.  Huckabee’s position has also been hurt by several key staffers joining the organizations of his potential rivals.  Adding to his burden are the campaigns of two powerhouse GOP southerners, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.  Both men have the means and the money to cut significantly into Huckabee’s southern base, as well as the establishments of Iowa and South Carolina.  Gingrich and Barbour will join Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum, who have been working hard cultivating the supporters Huckabee depends on, as well as the emerging Michele Bachmann effort, which is showing surprising early strength.  The best news for Gov. Huckabee is that few candidates are moving towards announcements anytime soon.  The longer the start of the campaign is delayed, the longer it will help him to recover from these disadvantages.

Sarah Palin has seen her nosedive in the polls continue, and more and more Republicans are showing the willingness to criticize her chances openly.  It was originally thought that a late start would work for Palin due to her rockstar status, but her diminishing numbers have to be a major concern.  The longer she waits, the more cemented those views of her become.  It seems now more then ever that she will pass on a run, and perhaps the increased interest from Rep. Bachmann is an indication that Palin has already decided to pass on the race. However, Palin will be heading to both India and Israel, signs that she may still be serious about a run.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich announced that he will begin exploring a candidacy for president, but the botched roll-out has already raised some flags about Gingrich’s undisciplined past.  Former Sen. Rick Santorum continues to build a surprisingly strong staff while maintaining the busiest early state schedule in the field.  Rep. Ron Paul continues to hint towards a run on the heels of his big PAC and 501(c)4 haul.  Horizon PAC, the campaign-in-waiting of Jon Huntsman, has brought on members of John McCain’s New Hampshire team. High level GOP operatives in New Hampshire have said that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has been making calls to potential supporters in the state. Billionaire real-estate developer Donald Trump seems to be seriously looking at a run, something he’s contemplated a few times before, though some believe it to be nothing more than a publicity stunt.  Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer formed an exploratory committee to run for president and appears to be basing his campaign around campaign finance reform.

On to the rankings:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Tim Pawlenty
3. Mike Huckabee
4. Newt Gingrich
5. Sarah Palin
6. Haley Barbour
7. Mitch Daniels
8. Michele Bachmann
9. Jon Huntsman Jr.
10. Rick Santorum

Honorable Mention: Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson, John Bolton, Buddy Roemer

This article, posted over at Real Clear Politics, is a must-read for any political junkie, and I assure you that its longevity is worth the ultimate payoff. Essentially, the author contrasts the low-tax, low-regulation, business-friendly economic climate of the red states with the insular, iron-clad benefit, union-friendly economies of the blue states, and demonstrates how the reds are blowing the blues out of the water with their far more rational approaches to managing an economy. Money quote:

There are a lot of reasons to like the old blue model: for many Americans it brought high wages, secure jobs and great benefits — especially cheap health care and generous defined benefit pension plans. Back in the day, if you were a white, male American worker with a high school education you could reasonably expect a lower middle to middle middle class lifestyle with a job guaranteed for life in unionized industries.

…

(But) Coaster capitalism is most clearly doomed; there are too many people playing catch up too well. Countries and states that do not provide business friendly environments cannot attract new investment; that might be OK for countries like Germany and Japan with falling populations, but the United States still has a lot of growing to do and we have millions of families north and south who want to build a higher standard of living moving ahead.

All in all, a timely piece given the rising fetish on the Right to return to the world of Mad Men, and to “bring the manufacturing jobs home” or whatever other rubbish that we keep hearing from the nostalgic set. As this article demonstrates, the “blue” economic model only works if it operates in a vacuum. The instant that an outside economy, be it another state or another country, is able to offer more favorable terms to any of the players involved, be it investment capital, business, labor, etc, the whole model falls apart.

The reality is that globalization is here. It’s not coming. It’s here. And it’s not going away. And as this article concludes, even the red economic model of many of America’s Southern states, while preferable to the economies of the blue states, is not enough to compete with China and India. In order to move forward, America has to become the world’s innovator again. That’s a brave new challenge worthy of a brave new world.

Today, in The Fix, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake analyzed the new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has spent the better part of the last five years working to convince conservatives that he is one of them. And, if the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll is right, he’s done it.

Sixty percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view the potential GOP presidential candidate favorably, while just 21 percent see him in an unfavorable light.

That’s an improvement from where he stood in early January 2008 – in the heart of the GOP primary fight – when 55 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents viewed him favorably and 36 percent felt unfavorably toward him. And back in November 2007, Romney’s favorable score stood at 42 percent while 28 percent felt unfavorably toward him in Post/ABC data.

Perhaps more important for Romney as he gears up for a second presidential bid in 2012 are his numbers among the most conservative segments in the GOP. Sixty-eight percent of self-identified conservatives view Romney favorably; his numbers are even higher among the portion of that group who identify themselves as “very” conservative – with 71 percent seeing the former governor in a favorable light.

Cillizza and Blake also caution that the true measure of Romney’s standing among the party base will come once the primary season actually heats up, bringing with it the obligatory negative campaigning and criticism from opponents.

You can bet that, as the authors note, Romney’s competitors will insistently tie Masscare to Obamacare, especially on the heels of recent polling giving them more ammunition to do so.

As the title of this post suggests, time will tell whether the WaPo/ABC poll represents an aberration or a concrete shift in voter sentiment. If the latter becomes reality, the nomination might be Romney’s to lose.