Romney Closes 8-Point Gap in Latest Pew Research Poll

I saw the new Pew survey earlier today, and when I got home, as I walked in to turn on the television, I found Ashleigh Banfield on CNN discussing it, with the banner across the bottom of the screen, "Obama's Slide: Romney Leads 49-45 Among Likely Voters."

Here's the Pew report, "Romney's Strong Debate Performance Erases Obama's Lead: GOP Challenger Viewed as Candidate with New Ideas."

Obama held an 8-point lead in Pew's last survey in September, and I blogged it: "Pew Research Center Poll: Obama Up by Eight in New Nationwide Survey." As I noted at the post, "Pew's one of the better polling organizations. Very reputable."

Interestingly, that's not what the lefties are saying now that the numbers have their guy under water. Banfield reported that Team Obama was whining about the partisan breakdown at the poll, and Cornell Belcher, interviewed at the CNN segment, gave the most mealy-mouth excuses for O's collapse, going so far to claim that likely-voter sampling is "more of an art than science." It was completely ridiculous. I'll post that clip when it comes available later.

But to give an idea of how really bad the numbers are for the Democrats, compare Ed Kilgore's responses to both of the Pew surveys, at the Washington Monthly. Here's Kilgore on the September survey: "Really Bad News For Mitt From Pew." And here's his response today: "Pew’s Perfect Post-Debate Window." To be consistent, and credible, Kilgore should have written a post today entitled, "Really Bad News For Obama From Pew." Because the news is bad, really bad, and there's no way to spin it for the president. Especially not with some f-king retarded excuse about how Pew perfectly polled respondents in the four-day window since last Wednesday's debate. Hello. It wouldn't be an accurate post-debate poll without surveying respondents after the debate. Someone should crush this guy's skull with one of Obama's teleprompters. I can hardly believe the mendacity.

In any case, two weeks ago I was captioning my posts at the bottom with the disclaimer, "no sugarcoating." You'll get spin around here alright, but at least the spin here's reasonably rooted in reality. The latest surveys --- and remember Gallup today also shows Romney pulling even in the horse race --- don't mean that Obama's now about to lose. The polls are showing a genuinely tight race, with the built-in Obama-Media bias favoring the Democrats now excluded. Americans saw the real thing last week, and it wasn't pretty. Democrats literally wished that O had been able to used his teleprompter, and that's after years of mocking conservatives who had been mocking the president as TOTUS.

The shit has hit the fan. I can't recall as significant an effect from any one presidential debate in the last 25 years of watching these things. Perhaps there's been as big an impact from one or another, but this time the dramatic shift has been to see what was largely looking like a flailing, possibly hopeless, GOP campaign being transformed into a surging juggernaut of Republican confidence and grassroots enthusiasm. It's been an amazing week.

There are, of course, still three debates to go, the veeps debate Thursday night and two more presidential debates. The RNC has been lowering expectations for the Biden-Ryan debate, which I think is smart. There's some chatter on the right that Ryan's going to clean the gaffe-master's clock. And I hope he does. But the real game is with the remaining top-of-the-ticket debates on October 16 and October 22. The former will be a town hall style debate on both domestic and foreign issues; the latter will be in the traditional format and will focus exclusively on foreign policy. The administration's extremely vulnerable on foreign policy, which explains why the knives are out on the left today following Mitt's formidable foreign policy address today at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Seriously. It's so bad that this morning's New York Times went with a preemptive strike on the front-page, looking to deflate Romney in world affairs: "Romney Remains Vague on Foreign Policy Details." That's all bullshit, naturally. Romney's been strong on foreign policy for years. He never stopped campaigning after 2008, released a campaign book in 2009, visited Europe and Israel recently, and has a detailed foreign policy page at his website. He's got some problems with his approach, as Barry Rubin points out quite well today regarding the speech, but the main thing is Romney's distinctive vision and refusal to apologize for American power. That's a core component of any realistic approach to foreign affairs, despite the harsh denial afflicting Romney's detractors on the left. There's going to be some fireworks in that debate on the 22nd. I'm especially eager to see how the president handles Romney's attacks on his administration's completely FUBAR response to the death of Ambassador Stevens in Libya.

I'll have more on this later...