Team Romney: 'Shame On You, Barack Obama'

Via Reaganite:

Mitt Romney Goes Up With First Attack Ad: 'Doing Fine'

Ed Morrissey reports, "Romney goes on attack with new TV ad, “Doing Fine”."

And see Alana Goodman, "Romney’s Psych Out Ad."

Mitt Romney’s latest attack ad against President Obama (the first negative spot of the campaign, as Jim Geraghty points out) sends two messages. On the surface it’s a cut-and-dry ad criticizing Obama as out of touch on the economy, but there’s another message that seems aimed at psyching out the Obama campaign. See if you can catch it:

More at Memeorandum.

John Edwards Likely to Walk After Mistrial

At the Los Angeles Times, "In wake of John Edwards mistrial, a new trial is called unlikely."

WASHINGTON -- Having failed to convict John Edwards of campaign finance violations, the U.S. Justice Department must now decide whether to retry the former Democratic presidential candidate on the five charges for which the judge declared a mistrial.

Edwards had been charged with six counts of campaign finance law violations. He was acquitted Thursday of one charge by a jury of eight men and four women in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, N.C.

Several legal experts said a retrial seemed unlikely. They also raised questions about the trial's effect -- or lack thereof -- on campaign finance law.

"We knew this was a strange case, and it resulted in a strange trial with a strange ending," said Elliot S. Berke, a Washington attorney who  represents elected officials on campaign finance issues.

He said the jurors' inability to reach a decision on five of the six counts "largely reflected society's confusion about campaign finance law and where the lines are."

Also: "John Edwards owns up to 'sins' in wake of mistrial."

Compare Edwards to Sarah Palin....

Oh well, yeah, no comparison. The dude's a butt freak loser.

Obama Campaign Tried to Pay Jeremiah Wright to Keep Silent

At the New York Post, "The ‘bribe’ to silence Wright."

Also at Lonely Con, "Rev. Wright Claims He Was Offered Bribe to Shut Up During 2008 Campaign."

Inside Obama's Decision on Gay Marriage — Getting Dragged Along, Brutally, by His Party's Extreme Radical Base

From Ronald Brownstein, at National Journal, "Obama's Gay Marriage Leap of Faith":

But his decision also reflects a hard-headed acknowledgement of the changing nature of the Democratic electoral coalition. Indeed, historians may someday view Obama's announcement Wednesday as a milestone in the evolution of his party's political strategy, because it shows the president and his campaign team are increasingly comfortable responding to the actual coalition that elects Democrats today-not the one that many in the party remember from their youth.

Obama's senior advisers see the announcement as essentially a political wash, although polls now consistently show more Americans support than oppose gay marriage. In its latest national measure, the Pew Research Center found in April that a 47 percent to 43 percent plurality of Americans back same-sex marriage. Other recent national surveys, including those by Gallup and the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, have found majority or plurality support for the idea.

Obama's announcement might not significantly change the overall level of his 2012 support, especially in an election where economic issues will dominate. But the announcement may reflect the Obama camp's thinking about the likely composition of his support. It shows the president, however reluctantly, formulating an agenda that implicitly acknowledges the party is unlikely to recreate the support it attracted from the white working-class and senior voters who anchored Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition. Instead, the announcement shows him reaching out to mobilize the new pillars of the Democratic electorate, particularly younger people and socially liberal white collar whites.

"It was crystal clear that he didn't want to get off the fence on this issue before the election if he could possibly avoid it; this is not a bright line he wants to draw," said long-term Democratic strategist Bill Galston, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "He realizes it intensifies the divide between what might be called the emerging Democratic coalition and the pieces of the old coalition that he wanted to retain. But things had gotten to a point where he felt he had no choice."

The "emerging Democratic coalition"?

Right.

These guys are just now recognizing a new party coalition, six months before the election. Give me a freakin' break. The New Deal Coalition collapsed after Vietnam. I don't know what these people are smoking, but the party lurched to the left in the 1970s and by now it's basically a coalition of social democrats and neo-Marxists --- and that's putting it mildly. See Fred Baumann, "Our fractious foreign policy debate." And on the Democrats' gay marriage extremism, see "Gay Activists Go Ballistic on Warren Invocation."

TRIVIA: Check this search from the archives, "Democrats + Vietnam + War."

BONUS: "Occupy Wall Street to Attend Capitol Hill Meeting Chaired by Congressional Progressive Caucus."

Obama's Favorite Professor at Harvard Was America-Hating Marxist

At IBD, "Derrick Bell: The Jeremiah Wright of Harvard":

Presidential Vetting: Obama's days at Harvard have been shrouded in secrecy. But a new video lifts a corner of the veil, revealing his creepy embrace of the "Jeremiah Wright of academia."

It turns out his favorite law professor was the late Derrick Bell, a black radical who taught classes trashing the Constitution as racist.

He liked Bell so much he led a law school "strike" in support of him in 1991, when the professor went on unpaid leave to protest the lack of affirmative-action hiring on campus.

A video clip posted by Breitbart.com captures Obama praising Bell for "speaking the truth" and hugging him.

Not long before this show of affection, Bell had been called into the university president's office to explain why he had sent him a letter filled with violent fantasies — including their own death from a bomb planted in his office by white racists. Bell explained that such extremism is what it would take to get the administration to agree to grant more affirmative-action programs.

Harvard's honcho wasn't amused. Bell groused he just didn't get it. But who would? Apparently his star pupil. And that's what's so unsettling.

Bell's nutty ideas — including that America is a "racist nation" carrying out a "quasi-genocide in the inner cities" — were well known to Obama. Bell came highly recommended by Obama's America-hating preacher Rev. Wright. He and Bell were pals. In fact, Obama just traded Wright's pews for Bell's desks.

At the pro-Bell rally, Obama took to the mike as if he were his spokesman. He commended Bell's "excellence in scholarship," adding that he "changed the standards of what legal writing is about."

More at the link.

And previously: "Breitbart's Bombshell: Obama Harvard Protest Tapes (VIDEO)."

The reason progressives have attempted so aggressively to minimize the Bell video is because it hits so close to home. Soledad O'Brien chortled repeatedly, "Where's the bombshell? Is this the bombshell?" It's a sick kind of postmodern denialism that posits a different standard of truth and decency. Progressives deny Derrick Bell is radical because they're radical, and they claim their ideology is mainstream when it's in fact the diametric opposite. It's the same progressive secular moral relativism that dismisses Bill Maher's misogyny as "comedy" while demanding that Rush Limbaugh be taken off the air. And it's this kind of hypocrisy that Andrew Breitbart exposed over and over again. And that's why with Andrew gone, it's more incumbent on all of us to #BeBreitbart and never let progressives live down how f-king sick they are and how badly their programs are destroying the county.

Obama's Radical Professor Derrick Bell: They Give 'White Boys' Tenure

Via Breitbart:

The Lies of Soledad O'Brien

I'm not convinced that Soledad O'Brien is ignorant of critical race theory and that perhaps production assistants were reading Wikipedia into her earpiece. But there's no doubt that she's aggressively lying about the genuine ideological program of critical race theorists. I read "Faces at the Bottom of the Well" years ago. The book's a collection of Bell's essays and it lays out the thesis that the civil rights movement was basically a sham allowing whites to claim race progress while continuing the subjugation of blacks. The theory argues that the law is an institutional structure of the racist state. The giveaway is how hard O'Brien attempts to smack down Joel Pollak. And she does appear to stumble when defining the theory. It looks like a canned response. But she was an acolyte of Bell, so the actual degree of knowledge is less important than her program of artifice. It's really, really reprehensible.

The folks at Breitbart.com are all over this. Most closely related to the point I'm raising is Dan Riehl's essay, "Derrick Bell: Liberal Whites Are Oppressors."

But check Jeff Goldstein, who brings the heat, "“The Vetting: CNN Implodes Over Breitbart’s Obama/Bell Video”":

We don’t need to apologize for vetting Barack Obama. We don’t need to let Soledad O’Brien try to redefine and neuter critical race theory and dissemble about what its aims were. We don’t need to fear smirking innuendo that, because we have actually read and understood what “theorists” like Professor Bell advocate, we are somehow pasty racist pussies afeared of the revenge of Mandigo.

We are allowed to reject those premises — and rather than take the easy way out and try to avoid being put into positions where thinly-veiled accusations of racism are levied against us (we’re still being counseled to watch what we say, so as not to draw the attentions of those whose very goal it is to comb our political speech for snippets they can remove from context and use to create false narratives about what we believe, which they pin back on us) — we need to make our political opponents express their indictments directly, and then beat them back forcefully until they come to understand that the ease with which they launch these smears has the consequence that the public recognizes just how cynical and disingenuous and ideologically motivated they are.

In any case, check Breitbart's homepage for all the updates. Here's this, for example, "Obama Assigned Reading: Bell Says Whites Might Enslave Blacks."

BONUS: "Obama Assigned Bell at University of Chicago Law School."

Breitbart's Bombshell: Obama Harvard Protest Tapes (VIDEO)

From Doug Ross, "The Vetting of Obama begins: Breitbart reveals video of young Obama embracing racial eliminationist Derrick Bell."

And from Joel Pollak, at Big Government, "Obama: 'Open Up Your Hearts and Minds' to Racialist Prof." And John Nolte, at Big Journalism, "Ben Smith on Obama Harvard Tapes: Nothing to See Here."

Also at Marooned in Marin, "Hannity Plays College Tape Of Obama Hugging Radical Professor, Obama's Mentor Boasts "We Hid This," Rec'd Visit From Pres. Last Summer." And from Michelle Horstman, "A Few Fun Facts About Professor Derrick Bell Jr."

FLASHBACK: From Campaign '08: "Professor Obama's Radical Syllabus."

Michelle Malkin: 'This is all about Alinskyite control of who tells the story'

Michelle has just been on fire lately!

Via Daley Gator, "The Vetting: In 1991, Obama Protested in Support of Racialist Havard Professor."

More video at The Right Scoop, "Malkin: We will NOT just shrug our shoulders at Obama’s radical connections."

Sean Hannity Exclusive: Unedited 1991 Video of Barack Obama Embracing Radical Views of Harvard Professor Derrick Bell

I was looking forward to this program all day yesterday. Twitter was on fire with all kinds of #Breitbart tweeting.

HBO's 'Game Change' Depicts Sarah Palin on Verge of Nervous Breakdown

At LAT, "'Game Change': Sarah Palin on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

I'd be interested in checking it out, although who knows how much of this to trust?  See ABC News, "Critics: HBO Movie Trailer Puts Sarah Palin in Bad Light":

HBO’s critics on the Right were apparently right about the network’s upcoming movie “Game Change,” about Sen. John McCain’s run for the presidency in 2008.

While the network claimed the movie would be even-handed politically, it seems Sarah Palin doesn’t come off too well in the trailer.

Critics decried the HBO film from the get-go as a hit piece on the former Alaska governor who became the target of a merciless media and political barrage after McCain chose her as his running mate.

Starring Ed Harris and Julianne Moore — who in the past has been critical of Palin — the movie, which premieres on March 10, depicts how McCain’s team picked the former Alaska governor and then subsequently, had second thoughts about it when Palin seemed to fold under pressure.

The book of the same name on which the movie is based is about the entire 2008 election, but the filmmakers — who also produced the Left-leaning HBO movie “Recount” — chose to focus on the Palin/McCain part of the book.

Included in the trailer is Palin claiming that Russia can be seen from Alaska as Woody Harrelson, who plays McCain adviser Steven Schmidt, quips, “Oh my God, what have we done?”

More at the link.

Emerging Democratic Majority?

Michael Barone debates Ruy Teixeira on Capitol Hill, August 18th. My money's on Barone. Teixeira's been forecasting a coming Democrat majority as long as I can remember. Here's this report, shortly after the "Hope & Change" election of 2008: "New Progressive America: Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority."

Teixeira's not quite as confident today, "Key Socialist Fears “White Working Class” Could Defeat Obama."

Freakin' commie douchenozzle.

Michele Bachmann Jumps Into 2012 White House Race

Wednesday night's interview with Sean Hannity:

Jerry Brown Profiled at Los Angeles Times

Continuing my coverage of California's elections, today's Times features a glowing profile of Jerry Brown, "Older and Wiser, Brown Proudly Embraces His Father's Legacy":

At times, Jerry Brown seemed to go out of his way to distance himself from his father.

Edmund G. Brown Sr., California's governor from 1959 to 1967, called himself a "big government man." He built aqueducts, universities and freeways. He liked to shake hands with strangers and slap them on the back. A block might take him half an hour to walk because he greeted everyone he passed.

His only son, Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr., could be aloof, even acerbic. He became governor eight years after his father lost a bruising race for a third term. The son preached an "era of limits" and railed against the kind of politics his father practiced.

Now the brash young governor who thought he knew it all marvels at his father's accomplishments, both privately and publicly. He is acutely aware of Pat Brown's admired legacy, and invokes his name with reverence.

Brown says he is wiser now — an admission that he was wanting before — and that he has mastered the nuts and bolts of governance. He even tries to smile more.

"I was looking for new ideas," Brown said of his first two terms as governor. "I wanted to break the stagnation. Right now the ideas are pretty clear. We need management and forging a consensus and a common purpose regardless of party…. The very extreme positions will not hold."

Is he attempting to vindicate himself, eying his father's legacy and finding his own lacking? Or is his candidacy a calculated stroke, fueled by the strong ego and ever restless spirit that has primed his previous reinventions?

For answers, Brown points to the writings of a 4th century philosopher and developer of Christian thought.

St. Augustine wrote about "not going back to what was said before, always creating and finding new things…," Brown said. "Life is a discovery, and you are always learning and formulating anew."

Folks can read the rest.

I'm not finding anything inspiring, and my thoughts are pretty clear on a Brown governorship: Been there, done that. He's an old-fashioned Democrat --- in the pocket of big labor --- who won't do much to improve California. The state needs major structural reforms. Known previously as an independent free-thinker, Brown is all washed up. He's basically riding the pubic gravy train into retirement, hoping to put even larger stamp on his father's big government legacy. Pat Brown took office nearly 40 years ago, ultimately presiding over the gargantuan expansion of state government and popular expectations for more. Jerry Brown could do well to revisit his early motto claiming the "era of limits," except it's the state government that should be limited, not the people of California. Cut taxes and regulations, reform budgeting and pensions, and revitalize the entrepreneurial spirit. The populace will respond. California always leads the nation. We can do it again, for the next era of innovation and growth. We just need good leadership, and I'm underwhelmed by the promise of Governor Moonbeam.

Republicans Up 55 to 41 Over Dems in Latest Gallup Generic Ballot

That margin is for the "low turnout scenario," but still.

See, "Republicans Remain in Control of Race for House."

And from Charlie Cook, "Democratic House Losses Likely to be Enormous, but Senate is Hard to Read."

Enthusiasm Gap Favors GOP in Early-Voter Data

At Politico "The Early Vote: Signs of GOP Passion" (via Memeorandum):

Just over a week before Election Day, signs of widespread Republican enthusiasm are apparent in the early-voter data, including in some places with highly competitive statewide races. Yet at the same time, for Democrats there are promising data in numerous states suggesting that the idea of a devastating turnout gap may be overblown.

POLITICO surveyed early voting through Saturday in 20 states, and in 14 of the 15 that have voter registration by party, the GOP's early turnout percentage is running ahead of the party's share of statewide voter registration — whether measured against 2006 or 2008, when President Barack Obama's campaign led to a surge in Democratic voter registration. As a result, Republicans say they're turning the tables on the Democratic dominance of early voting that paved the way for Obama's victory in 2008 — and that independents' lean toward the GOP this year will do the rest.

And here's this:

California provides an illustrative example of the complexities of interpreting early returns. According to data gathered by the Atlas Project, a private Democratic consulting firm, 43 percent of California early voters have been Democrats, while 39 percent have been Republicans. Considering the Democrats' current 44-31 registration advantage in the state, the GOP appears to be outpacing its share of the electorate, while Democrats appear to be staying home. Then again, in the 2006 early vote — a great year for Democratic candidates — each party drew 41 percent, a performance that was below Democratic registration and well above the Republican share.

Like all recent articles on early voting, the Politico report cites Michael McDonald, an expert on the topic at Brookings. See, "Web Chat: Voter Enthusiasm, Early Voting and the Midterm Elections." He suggests there that neither party necessarily enjoys a clear advantage in early voting, and that other factors come into play. Dems historically do better with GOTV, athough in California I'm seeing an extremely motivated conservative grassroots, so let's hope the numbers cited above in Politico hold up for election day.

RELATED: "New Los Angeles Times Poll is Outlier: Democrats Oversampled in Survey From Left-Leaning Greenberg Quinlan Rosner."

CARTOON CREDIT: Reaganite Republican.

New Los Angeles Times Poll is Outlier: Democrats Oversampled in Survey From Left-Leaning Greenberg Quinlan Rosner

The headlines for the new Los Angeles Times poll are falsely indicating a November blowout for the Democrats in California. My hardcopy newspaper headline reads: "Brown's Lead Doubles in One Month." And at LAT's homepage, "Brown's lead over Whitman widens to 52%-39%; Fiorina not gaining ground." And the killer is the New York Times' blog post, "Brown and Boxer Have Significant Leads, New Poll Shows."

Note first that other recent surveys find the governor's race no better than "lean Democrat" (see Rasmussen's survey out yesterday, with Brown holding a four-point edge with a +/-4 percentage point margin of error). And Survey USA, which routinely tilts left, has a poll out this week with Brown at 47% and Whitman 40%. That same survey throws some particularly interesting light on the CA Senate race. The survey is leaning Democrat in all the statewide races, but is a toss-up for Boxer-Fiorina, Boxer 46%, Fiorina 44%. (This needs more investigation, but there's some interesting speculation that support for marijuana decriminalization among highly-motivated voters is lifting Boxer's numbers. I'm predicting a defeat of Prop. 19 at the polls, so perhaps Survey USA's numbers hold even worse implications for Boxer's chances.) And Rasmussen's poll out yesterday had "Boxer picking up 48% of the vote, while Fiorina draws support from 46%."

I don't want to overstate the point, since it's always uphill for Republicans in California. But there's something suspicious with the methodology at the Times, as indicated at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, who conducted the poll:

These findings are based on a random sample survey of 1,501 registered voters in the state of California conducted from October 13-20, 2010. These findings are also based on 922 likely 2010 voters. Likely voters are defined as registered voters that meet certain conditions based on previous vote history as determined from a voter file, likelihood of voting in 2010, and enthusiasm in the election. This includes respondents who have already voted, voted in both the previous two general elections who indicate they are “almost certain” or “probably” will vote in 2010 and those who have registered since the 2008 election due to ineligibility who are “almost certain,” all of whom must respond as a 5 or higher on a 0-10 enthusiasm scale.

And:

An oversample of 400 Latino registered voters were interviewed by telephone. All interviews from the Latino sample were carried out by bilingual Latino interviewers, and conducted in the preferred language of the survey respondent, English or Spanish. Overall, 41 percent of interviews with the Latino sample were conducted in Spanish and 59 percent in English. The technique of using fully bilingual interviewers is greatly preferred because it does not terminate calls with Spanish-language households and require a callback, which can be difficult to schedule with language barriers ... Upon completion of all interviewing, the results were weighted to bring the Latino oversample population into line with the racial and ethnic composition of registered voters in California. The data were weighted to reflect the total population of registered voters throughout the state, balancing on regional and demographic characteristics for gender, age, race and education according to known census estimates and voter file projections.

Folks can check other analysts (Nate Silver, for example), but given the huge Democrat advantage in California registration (see 2008 totals here at Page 4), and the tremendous Democrat enthusiasm in previous elections, it's pretty clear that the Times survey has oversampled Democrats. Likely voters are tilting toward the Dems at the Times, and Latinos are supporting Democrats this year by a roughly 2-to-1 factor: "Boxer has opened up a whopping 64% to 28% lead among Latinos."

The Los Angeles Times is pressing its fingers on the scales to favor the Democrat Party. There's widedly varied results across polls (the Field Poll had the governor's race tied at 41% last month), and Whitman may indeed be washed up, but I'd hardly count out Fiorina. Additional influences include the ground game over the next week, GOTV efforts on election day, and any last minute bombshell surprises.

ADDED: The Other McCain links: "Disinformation is the new objectivity."

Obama Zombies Losing Hope

And it's not just Shepard Fairey, either.

See James Taranto, "Now He's Lost Margaret Carlson":

By now it should be clear that the only new idea Obama introduced into American politics was the idea of Obama: Obama the voice of a new generation, Obama the brilliant technocrat, Obama the postracial leader.

The reality of Obama has been quite the opposite. The fresh-faced young leader has governed according to stale old ideas. The dazzling intellect has proved inadequate to basic managerial challenges. We haven't even been able to enjoy the achievement of having elected a black president, because so many of Obama's supporters (though not Obama himself, to his credit) won't shut up about how every criticism of the president and his policies is "racist."

Yet in America's current predicament, there is ample reason for optimism. We'd like to think that the failure of Obama's policies will discredit the bad economic ideas on which they're based, that his incompetence will discredit the notion that the cognitive elite should run the lives of everyone else, and that the phony charges of racism will discredit the long-outdated assumption of white guilt, at last bringing America close to the ideal of a colorblind society.

This is not to deny that the Obama presidency has been ruinous. But sometimes the costliest mistakes are those from which we learn the most.

Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats

I mean, seriously, if this is some kind of sign of the times we might be in the midst of the most important de-realignment in the post-1964 party era. I'll have more on this later, but check NYT:

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.

Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.

“Is the recession, which is hitting young people very hard, doing lasting or permanent damage to what looked like a good Democratic advantage with this age group?” asked Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan group. “The jury is still out.”

How and whether millions of college students vote will help determine if Republicans win enough seats to retake the House or Senate, overturning the balance of power on Capitol Hill, and with it, Mr. Obama’s agenda. If students tune out and stay home it will also carry a profound message for American society about a generation that seemed so ready, so recently, to grab national politics by the lapels and shake.

All those questions are in play here in Larimer County, about an hour north of Denver, for the more than 25,000 students at Colorado State University.

Larimer, like much of Colorado, was once solidly Republican but went Democratic in the last few elections and is now contested by both sides. It is seen as a signal beacon for an increasingly unpredictable state.

Kristin Johnson, 23, like many other students interviewed here in recent days, said that a vote for Democrats in 2008, however passionate it was, did not a Democrat make. But she bristles just as much at the idea of being called a Republican.

“It’s like picking a team when you really don’t want to root for either team,” said Ms. Johnson, a communication studies major, who said she was undecided about parties and politics going into the general election campaign.

She is not the only one. Because the university draws about 80 percent of its enrollment from within Colorado — mostly from Denver and its suburbs — it is also a sort of mirror within a mirror for Colorado’s political culture. Moderate and conservative views are common; a campus monoculture of liberalism is not.

Leah Rosen, a history major from Denver, still vividly remembers witnessing a fistfight outside her dormitory room on election night in 2008 between Obama supporters and McCain supporters. National exit polls back then gave Mr. Obama a 66 percent edge among young people, to 32 percent for Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee.

Larimer is the focal point for a nationally watched House race in Colorado’s Fourth District, where Betsy Markey, a Democrat, is fighting for a second term in a traditionally Republican seat, against a Republican challenger, Cory Gardner.

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat appointed last year to fill a vacant seat, is also in a toss-up contest against a Republican candidate, Ken Buck, who has local connections as the Weld County district attorney in Greeley, 20 miles southeast of Fort Collins.

Many students here, especially seniors nearing graduation, said that worries about the economy, and about getting a job after graduation, had filtered through the campus, dampening enthusiasm for Democrats in Congress and Mr. Obama.

But they have ObamaCare, right?

Well, maybe not.