I was driving behind a pickup truck today and admiring the bumper stickers in his back window. He had 2 Obama-Biden stickers, which is fairly unusual for this suburban area east of Tampa, Florida. He also had two pro-labor union bumper stickers, which is something you almost never see here. One said “Unions: the folks who brought you weekends.” Oh, and he was driving a | Read More »
Let’s say you are head coach of an NFL team playing in the Super Bowl. Your team is up by 1 point with 4 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. You have the best running game in the league, and your opponent has the worst run defense in the league. You have a marginal passing game, with potential for big plays but a quarterback | Read More »
For anyone wondering, Romney’s 47% comments definitely hurt him. But it’s helpful to look at the tracking poll numbers to understand HOW it hurt him. The graph below shows the Rasmussen and Gallup Tracking Poll midpoints. As I explained in a previous post, comparing midpoints is a better way to observe the impact of specific events. The purple vertical line marks 17 September, the day | Read More »
In a previous post, I explained why you can’t compare the daily tracking releases from Gallup and Rasmussen. To recap: Gallup uses a 7 day sample while Rasmussen uses a 3 day sample, so the daily results are for two different time periods. As a result, Gallup lags behind Rasmussen by 2 days when reacting to events. However, comparing the two polls by their midpoints | Read More »
Well, not quite. But he sure didn’t lose them. Not that you could tell that from the triumphant press reporting. In defense to them, it’s pretty hard to tell. Comparing different polls is pointless because the models used are different. Daily tracking polls provide the only consistent polling models across the entire time period of the convention, but they often seem to contradict each other. | Read More »
I’ve been a little discouraged for the last few days by the polling news. The conventional wisdom is that Obama got a bounce and Romney did not. But is that really true? The best way to gauge the impact of short term events are daily tracking polls. The tracking pollster uses the same demographic assumptions and polling methodology for each daily poll. This insulates the | Read More »
12 Million 16 Trillion $4.50
Have you seen Scott Brown’s new ad? It’s good. Real good. Romney needs to hire whoever made this ad. Or maybe just buy rights to use the first 2 minutes.
The primaries have now entered the math phase. Romney is chasing the magic number of 1144, competing hard in every state to maximize his delegates. Gingrich now acknowledges that it is almost mathematically impossible for him to reach 1144, and admits his strategy has switched to denying Romney the magic number. Santorum, at least publicly, says his goal is still to win the delegate race, | Read More »
I mean really, enough is enough. Every single inconvenient fact about anyone’s favorite GOP candidate is chalked up to the the evil MSM. If I had a nickel for every time someone on this forum tried to shut down a line of argument b claiming it was an MSM plot, I would be rich by now. Do you not realize what a bunch of crybabies | Read More »
Let me get this straight. We, the party of traditional family values, are seriously considering nominating for President a man who did the following: Cheated on his first wife and and divorced her while she had cancer. Cheated on his second wife for 5 years and divorced her while she had multiple sclerosis. Lied about his affair while he led the effort to impeach President | Read More »
Political commentary on the video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses has been somewhat muted, thankfully. Those who have waded in mostly done so along predictable partisan lines. Some Conservative commentators have taken the position that “war is hell” and our troops should always get our unconditional support, especially when it provides an opportunity t0 score points against the Obama Administration. This viewpoint is misguided. | Read More »
A lot of people talk about being Conservatives on this site. Most posters speak strongly of applying conservative principles to government. However, there appears to be a varying understanding of what those principles are. In particular, many people mistake positions for principles, and some seem to define Conservatism as “all the positions I agree with.” Certainly there is limited discussion of the underlying philosophy of | Read More »
Many pundits have been pounding the theme that Obama must fire General Stan McChrystal to avoid looking weak. They are dead wrong. The firing of McChrystal shows much greater weakness than keeping him would. It was an unjust action, and there is nothing weaker as a leader than taking unjust action to avoid being seen as weak.
John McCain and Joe Lieberman are teaming up to stiffen our spines again. In their latest Washington Post editorial, they preemptively warn against flagging public resolve to finish what we started in Afghanistan. It’s worth a read. I’d like to know who their national security advisor is, because he has excellent insight. He hit the crucial lesson of Iraq right on the head with this | Read More »
President Obama has recently announced his intention to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. As a statement of principle, this is unremarkable. President Bush repeatedly stated the same policy goal. However, Obama has set a deadline of one year, which would appear to end the process of kicking the can down the road. Given their ideological commitment to that goal, it is overwhelmingly probable | Read More »
One thing I don’t understand: why isn’t the McCain campaign blanketing the airwaves with a final feel-good ad reminding voters of McCain’s POW story? Let’s face it: him turing down early release is by far the most compelling part of the man’s biography. No matter how much you disagree with or even despise him, the thought of that selfless act of character and courage brings | Read More »
For weeks I’ve been noticing something odd: there are literally hundreds of McCain signs and bumper stickers in area near Tampa FL, and hardly an Obama sign or sticker to be found. Recently I’ve been making a game of “count the signs” when I go out on errands. I usually count 10 to 20 McCain signs per trip; rarely do I get 1 or 2 | Read More »
The last 2 weeks have been an education for those of us who did not believe in press bias. The speed and ferocity with which the national media have pounced on every misstep and inconsistency by the McCain/Palin campaign has been shocking. A man with a lifelong reputation for honesty and integrity has been portrayed a liar based on press indignation with two minor web | Read More »
This topic feels vaguely dirty, but I can’t really figure out why it would be out of bounds, so I’ll toss it out there: http://www.helpobamasbrother.org/ Gotta admit, as humor goes, this one cuts deep. If I’m stepping across the line by posting this, someone let me know.
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