BenCarsontoAlSharpton:So,whendo

Ben Carson to Al Sharpton: So, when do we debate?

posted at 7:21 pm on August 18, 2014 by Allahpundit

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To cleanse the palate, via the Corner, a debate between a conservative who’s a world-renowned neurosurgeon and a liberal who often appears to speak English as a second language is a debate conservatives should welcome. Plus, the moment seems propitious. As usual, Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have followed the media to the scene of a new racial flashpoint, but this time it hasn’t turned out for them as they’d like. Jackson allegedly got booed when he asked a crowd in Ferguson for donations while Sharpton’s taken criticism in highly visible outlets — some of it polite, some less so — for exploiting the situation. If America, black and white, has Sharpton fatigue, now’s the time to raise Carson’s profile by taking advantage.

Sharpton, by the way, claims that Carson has a standing invitation to appear on his show but that’s easier said than done. Since Carson’s a Fox News contributor, he’d need the network’s permission to do Sharpton’s show, and why would Fox do MSNBC a ratings favor like that? Let’s see a real debate, all proceeds to charity. Here’s Carson issuing the challenge plus a sneak preview of Sharpton’s opening statement.

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Tags: Al Sharpton, Ben Carson, ferguson, Fox News, Jesse Jackson, michael brown, MSNBC

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Foxpoll:IsObamarebounding? postedat

Fox poll: Is Obama rebounding?

posted at 10:41 am on August 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Well, sort of. Barack Obama’s poll numbers have cratered of late, so any movement upward will look like a bounce — and as the Washington Post notes, there is a hook for that conclusion. According to the Fox poll, about two-thirds of Americans agree with Obama’s decision to order air strikes on ISIS to slow their roll toward the Kurdish autonomous zone:

The good news for President Obama: The American people are very much behind his decision to launch airstrikes against extremists in Iraq.

The bad news: They still think he’s really weak on foreign policy.

A new Fox News poll has a rare bit of praise for Obama’s conduct in world affairs, with Americans approving 65-23 of his decision to launch airstrikes in Iraq.

But the same poll shows that, when it comes to foreign policy in general and basically every major overseas conflict — including Iraq — Obama is still in pretty rough shape.

Actually, his job approval numbers did bounce back, at least a little. Obama gets a 42/49, still underwater, but his disapproval number is back below a majority for the first time since May, and only the second time in the past year. Two months ago, that number was 41/54, and in March it was 38/54.

However, on everything else Obama scores majority disapprovals, even while rebounding slightly in some categories. He gets a 43/51 on the economy, which is better than last month’s 40/57. On foreign policy, he scores an abysmal 35/53, but that beats 36/56 and 32/60 in Fox’s last two polls. Obama has edged up slightly on health care from 39/58 in early June to 42/53 today. Only on immigration and Israel does Obama remain mired at his nadir; he gets 33/57 on the former (from 34/58) and 30/54 on the latter (29/56 in June).

What to make of this small bounce? The airstrikes in Iraq show some spark of leadership from a President who mainly seems adrift and disengaged from events. That perception might be enough to have moved the needle and rebuilt a little confidence in Obama’s stewardship of the nation. However, this is the only poll thus far showing any kind of improvement, even as small as this is, and most of the changes are either within the margin of error or just outside of it.

Bottom line: Obama remains “in rough shape,” as the Post’s Aaron Blake concludes. He may, however, have established his floor of unpopularity, unless Obama boots another crisis.

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Tags: air strikes, approval rating, Barack Obama, foreign policy, Fox News, Iraq, ISIS, poll

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Video: Interview with Gretchen Carlson and Persecuted

Video:InterviewwithGretchenCarlsonandPersecuted

Booksales,ratingsforHillarytourlessthan

Book sales, ratings for Hillary tour less than impressive

posted at 8:01 am on June 19, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Last night, Allahpundit disagreed with the idea that Hillary Clinton was imploding after a ten-day gaffe-fest on topics from her own wealth to the relative brutality of American politics. Perhaps it’s more accurate to ask whether her public persona is simply deflating. If the book and the media tour was a trial balloon for a presidential run, then the trial balloon is at least seriously sagging.

Take the book sales of Hard Choices. On Monday, we had some preliminary and indirect numbers, but last night The Daily Beast’s Jason Pinter got the hard data from Nielsen Bookscan, which represents 70-80% of all retail hard-copy book sales in the US, according to Pinter. Despite the $14 million advance and a media tour that almost no author gets, Hard Choices came in second place to the eighth in a series of fiction novels:

Based on its first week Bookscan numbers, the commercial reception for Hard Choices has been decidedly underwhelming: in its first week it sold just 85,721 print copies, compared to the 500k+ of Living History, and fewer than the week’s bestselling fiction title, Written In My Heart’s Own Blood, the latest ‘Outlander’ novel from Diana Gabaldon, which sold 88,751 copies (with no town hall).

Other political memoirs of this level over the past decade sold more than a million copies, but as Pinter points out, those were also first memoirs (including Hillary’s Living History). There is plenty of data that shows that second books do significantly worse than debuts. On the other hand, the anticipation for this release was so high that Simon & Schuster paid that ridiculous $14 million bonus to publish it, and every major network turned their Hillary interview into rock-star events. And the book still couldn’t outsell Gabaldon’s eighth book in its first week.

Speaking of rock-star events, how did the ratings look for these highly-promoted, much-ballyhooed interviews with Hillary? Her first interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer drew 6.5 million and won the Monday time slot, even though Variety reports that “it didn’t do much demo-wise.” It came in 12th for the week, with three NBA games, two NCIS episodes, 60 Minutes, Game of Thrones, and The Blue Bloods and Night Shift all landing ahead of Hillary’s interview. (It did beat the Dateline retrospective on OJ Simpson by three slots, however.)

On the cable nets, Hillary’s tour was a bust:

Beginning with CNN, the 5 p.m. hour averaged 115K viewers in the 25-54 demo and 521K total viewers. That put it barely ahead of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, which had 105K in the demo and 506K total viewers. Meanwhile, Fox’s The Five led the time slot with 336K in the demo and 1.876M total viewers.

When CNN re-aired the interview at 9 p.m. its number increased slightly to 146K in the demo and593K in the demo. While those were the best ratings CNN had all night, it still put them in third place for the hour behind Fox’s The Kelly File (377K in the demo, 2.126M total) and MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (168K in the demo, 918K total).

Relatively speaking, things did not look all that much better for Fox. That network split its Clinton interview between the last 15 minutes of Special Report with Bret Baier at 6 p.m. and the first 15 minutes of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren at 7 p.m. The first hour averaged 271K in the demo and 1.779M total viewers, which represented a nearly 20% drop in the demo compared to The Five an hour earlier.

When Greta Van Susteren‘s 7 p.m. show began mid-interview, the network clocked another drop, this time to 264K in the demo and 1.751M total viewers. When The O’Reilly Factor began at 8 p.m., Fox’s numbers reliably jumped back up to 413K in the demo and 2.415M total viewers.

Mediaite’s Matt Wilstein reaches the obvious conclusion:

Unfortunately for Clinton, this could be an indication that Hillary-fatigue has set in even among those Americans who spend their afternoons watching cable news. While Clinton’s first major interview withDiane Sawyer last week drew 6.1 million viewers on network TV, cable news couldn’t come close.

As for that book she’s been dutifully promoting, sales show some signs of flagging as well. While Hard Choices debuted at #2 overall on Amazon, it has since dropped to #5 behind a book about a 10-day green smoothie juice cleanse.

As trial balloons go, this one barely got off the ground. Maybe that should have Democrats — and the Clintons — making other plans for 2016.

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Tags: 2016 election, ABC, CNN, Fox News, hard choices, Hillary Clinton, ratings, sales

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On like Donkey Kong: Co-hosting “The Independents” tonight on Fox Business

OnlikeDonkeyKong:Co-hosting“TheIndependents”tonight

Video: Six members of Bergdahl’s unit tell Megyn Kelly he should be court-martialed

Video:SixmembersofBergdahl’sunittellMegyn

Foxpoll:MajoritybelieveObamamadeUSweaker

Fox poll: Majority believe Obama made US weaker

posted at 8:01 am on June 5, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The irony of this is that the Fox poll series is usually a little more generous to Barack Obama than some other media polling, but this is just brutal. Sean Sullivan first picked up on this last night at the Washington Post, looking past the sharp drop in approval rating to 40/54 from 44/49 three weeks ago, no doubt the result of the VA scandal. The key questions are Obama’s leadership skills, in which he falls far below Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush:

A majority of voters say the Obama administration is less competent than Bill Clinton’s and a plurality say it is less competent than George W. Bush’s according to a new Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Sixty-eight percent say the Obama administration is less competent that the Clinton administration. Forty-eight percent say it is less competent than Bush’s, compared to 42 percent who say it is more competent. Seven percent judge Obama’s and Bush’s the same.

Fifty-five percent say that the Obama administration has made the country weaker; 35 percent say his administration has made it stronger.

Obama’s leadership skills have been on the decline for a year. In May 2013, he scored a 45/55 between excellent or good/fair or poor. Last November, in the middle of the ObamaCare disaster, it dropped to 40/60, and it’s about the same at 39/61. The survey was conducted from Sunday to Tuesday, though, before the backlash against the Bergdahl swap hit full steam.

On competence, Obama scores poorly against his two predecessors. Compared to Clinton, he gets an 18/68, which may have something to do with sunny hindsight, too. (No one thought much of Clinton’s competence when he chose to have a messy affair with an intern, and then fight a civil lawsuit for sexual harassment rather than ignore it.) The sunny-hindsight syndrome certainly wouldn’t apply to George W. Bush though, and Obama falls short of the man whose competence he made a campaign issue by 42/48, outside of the MoE of the poll.

The Bergdahl swap gets a surprising split in the poll. Disapproval only barely edges approval, 45/47, although again the story is still unfolding. Eighty-four percent worry that this will encourage more hostage-taking, with a majority of 57% “very concerned.” Subsequent polls may have more disapproval, but it’s difficult to see how this concern could peak any further.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bowe Bergdahl, competence, Fox News, leadership, polls, swap

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NewBergdahlcounter-scandal:ARepublicanputsoldiersin

New Bergdahl counter-scandal: A Republican put soldiers in his unit in touch with the media, you know

posted at 1:21 pm on June 3, 2014 by Allahpundit

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The reason you have allegedly smart liberals like Chris Hayes moronically implying that the U.S. should pay any price to bring a missing soldier home, even if he went missing deliberately, is because they can’t make the argument they really want to make. The argument for defending a deal this palpably terrible is, simply, that they’re stuck with it now thanks to O and can’t afford to let the White House bleed endlessly over it. There’s no reason on the merits why this should be a partisan issue: There’s credible evidence from the men who served with him that Bergdahl deserted and there’s documentary evidence that the Taliban Five are highly dangerous. You shouldn’t have to hand in your liberal card for thinking, “Yeah, that’s a dumb deal.” But with elections five months away and Obama already wounded by a scandal related to veterans, they can’t leave him exposed to more bipartisan criticism. The Bergdahl swap is being “politicized” — by the left, of necessity.

Which is why this lame “story” is suddenly a big deal on Twitter.

A former Bush Administration official hired, then resigned, as Mitt Romney’s foreign policy spokesman played a key role in publicizing critics of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the released prisoner of war…

Reached by phone, [Richard] Grenell’s partner at Capitol Media Partners, Brad Chase, confirmed that the firm had been helping the soldiers get their story out.

“Obviously Ric is a well known Republican and these guys found him on Twitter and reached out asking for help in getting their story out,” Chase said. “Ric obviously saw that this is something that needed to be told and came to me and others in our firm, and I and some of the others determined that this was a story that we wanted to work on.”

Chase said the New York Times’ referring to them as “Republican strategists” was “100% factually inaccurate” because he himself is not a Republican. But a producer for the Michael Berry show, a radio show that one of the soldiers spoke on told BuzzFeed that Grenell was the point of contact for the bookings.

The accusations against Bergdahl have been public for at least two years, thanks to Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone. Cody Full, one of the men from Bergdahl’s unit who suspects him of desertion, tweeted his suspicions for hours on Saturday night, two days before any media found him. No one seriously believes that the allegations against Bergdahl are being fed to his squad mates by the GOP; on the contrary, I can only imagine how insulted Full and his comrades would be to stand accused of making up lies about a POW to serve some political party’s agenda. But all of that is beside the point. The point of a piece like this, treating it as unusual that partisan operatives might liaise for people who share their criticism of the other side (remember when Anita Dunn’s firm began representing Sandra Fluke?), is to imply that there’s some sort of partisan dirty trick being played without ever clearly stating what that trick might be. The “argument,” such as it is, is that there are Republican fingerprints here and therefore you don’t have to pay close attention going forward to these years-old, wholly independent accusations against Bergdahl from fellow veterans. It’s another partisan food fight, “Berghazi,” as Ed Schultz sneeringly called it yesterday.

I eagerly await the interviews with Bergdahl’s supporters from his old unit, assuming the DNC can find any. Exit quotation from this miserable, frightened partisan hack, who now occupies a seat in the U.S. Senate:

Really sad to watch Obama haters attack this kid who CHOSE to fight to protect the rest of us, just to score political points.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 3, 2014

Here's the story: "GOP Strategists Arranged Interviews With Angry Members Of Bergdahl's Platoon" http://t.co/biXxwZDsi4

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 3, 2014

Are the military’s many, many Bergdahl skeptics now “Obama haters” by definition?

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Tags: Afghanistan, bergdahl, chase, cody full, Fox News, media, republican, Richard Grenell, spokesman

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Report:“Many”inintelligencecommunityfearBergdahlmay

Report: “Many” in intelligence community fear Bergdahl may have been an active collaborator with the Taliban

posted at 5:21 pm on June 2, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Explosive stuff from James Rosen, whose private e-mail would surely be under surveillance by Eric Holder after this story if it wasn’t already.

The more damning the accusations against Bergdahl, the less the prisoner swap adds up.

A senior official confirms to Fox News that the conduct of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — both in his final stretch of active duty in Afghanistan and then, too, during his time when he lived among the Taliban — has been thoroughly investigated by the U.S. intelligence community and is the subject of “a major classified file.”

In conveying as much, the Defense Department source confirmed to Fox News that many within the intelligence community harbor serious outstanding concerns not only that Bergdahl may have been a deserter but that he may have been an active collaborator with the enemy…

Sources told Fox News that many officials in the Executive Branch are “quite baffled” by the White House’s decision to allow the president to stand alongside Bergdahl’s father this past weekend, given the father’s history of controversial statements, emails and online posts.

There’s a Pentagon file that may or may not accuse this guy of outright treason and not only does Obama still do the deal for five Taliban bigwigs, he holds a big White House presser with Bergdahl’s father? What?

Rosen’s not the only reporter hearing whispers about collaboration either. Stephen Hayes of the Standard spoke to several soldiers from Bergdahl’s squad (one of whom tweeted at length about his suspicions this weekend) and heard lots of doubts — and not just about desertion.

[S]everal military officials who spoke with THE WEEKLY STANDARD noted privately that Taliban attacks on U.S. forces in the Paktika province seemed to increase in frequency and effectiveness [after Bergdahl disappeared]…

[O]thers wonder whether Bergdahl helped the Taliban, either willfully or under duress. In the hours after he disappeared, according to sources familiar with the intelligence, U.S. troops received an intelligence report that Bergdahl stopped in a local village and asked how to find the Taliban. That report, if it exists, is not mentioned in the Wikileaks documents related to Bergdahl’s disappearance. But several sources with knowledge of the case insist that the report is true.

Says one platoon mate: “He’s friends with the delivery driver, he’s friends with the goat farmer, he’s got relationships with all the locals—and he stops to ask how he can find the Taliban? He could have just gone to Habib the local goat farmer and floated along with the locals.”

Intel officials told Hayes that the Pentagon thoroughly investigated Bergdahl’s disappearance, questioning members of his squad many times. Among the things they wanted to know was whether he had info that could have helped the Taliban, be it medical, tactical (how to deal with IEDs), or strategic. Two other sources told him that Bergdahl was, in fact, considered AWOL by the Army — but that the Pentagon ultimately backed down on formally designating him that way, probably because the politics of accusing Bergdahl while he was in enemy hands would have been simply too hot for comfort.

But if all that’s true … why was Bergdahl promoted in absentia to sergeant in 2011? Why would he be in line for another promotion, to staff sergeant, this month? And why would the White House let itself get within a thousand miles of the Bergdahl family with suspicions like these ready to bubble over? It’s one thing to do a deal to get an American back; it’s another to give away the terrorist farm as part of it; and it’s another still to give away the farm for a guy whom your own investigators think may be a Taliban sympathizer. Remember, the ostensible point of the prisoner exchange is to set a precedent so that Obama can release other detainees at Gitmo later this year and finally close the prison. The last thing you’d want to do in that case is trade five especially dangerous detainees for someone whose loyalty to the U.S. is in serious question even within the administration’s own ranks. It’s a political tornado in the making; if Bergdahl does end up being proved a deserter or worse, Democrats will run screaming from future Gitmo prisoner releases. Just doesn’t make sense. Maybe the White House has reason to believe that Bergdahl’s getting a bum rap and really was taken against his will — but in that case, why isn’t Carney or anyone else pushing back hard with that information? What’s going on here?

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Tags: active collaborator, bergdahl, Fox News, intelligence, rosen, Taliban

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Fairandbalancededitorialboards,Oregonedition

Fair and balanced editorial boards, Oregon edition

posted at 6:31 pm on May 4, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

For most all candidates seeking office, particularly in state and local level elections, meetings with the editorial board of the local dead tree press are one of the unpleasant facts of life on the campaign trail. This experience, at least for Republican candidates, tends to be proportionately more unpleasant the closer one gets to an ocean. One set of GOP hopefuls got to experience this first hand recently in Oregon when they sat down with the board of the Willamette Week. As Fox News reports, a senate candidate was asked to leave the room after pointing out activities by a reporter which were beyond the pale even for a very liberal press outlet.

A Republican Senate candidate was kicked out of a local Oregon newspaper’s editorial board meeting after daring to challenge a reporter who dissed a fellow candidate by writing “blah blah blah” in his notes instead of her actual quotes.

The entire argument was captured on video and posted online by the newspaper, Willamette Week…

The video shows an editorial board meeting where the newspaper was interviewing Republican candidates for Senate. One of those candidates, Jo Rae Perkins, was responding to a question over the phone when Callahan noticed something was amiss.

“You want to talk about disrespect, I see what you’re writing down there,” he said, pointing at a reporter at the table. “You just wrote down ‘blah blah blah blah blah’ for everything that Jo Rae said. Jo Rae is a respectable woman. Why are you not respecting her by writing ‘blah blah blah blah blah’ on your notepad?”

Even if it weren’t for the physical evidence of the reporter’s complete lack of interest in providing any sort of unbiased evaluation of the candidates’ positions, the rest of the questions were a dead giveaway. In an attempt to change the subject, Callahan was then asked if he thought climate change was “a myth or reality.” The follow-up question apparently sealed the deal.

“Where are you on the Easter Bunny?”

I’ve had to sit through a few of these over the years with candidates and they can be really infuriating events, but even in New York I’ve never run into one quite this bad. But we can’t let that discourage people from running for office. All we can do is return to the age old question which really spawned the evolution of modern blogging in the first place…

Why, oh why, can’t we have a decent media?

Tags: editorial bias, editorial board, Fox News, Oregon

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GeorgeWill:Hillary“notaformidablecandidate”

George Will: Hillary “not a formidable candidate”

posted at 3:31 pm on April 27, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Captured over at The Corner, George Will was on Fox this morning and asked (for, I assume, the 3 millionth time) about a possible Hillary Clinton run and her inevitable victory. As you’ll see in this video, Will was not impressed.

“It’s reminiscent of when Roger Mudd of CBS asked Ted Kennedy a not unexpected questionin 1980: ‘Why are you running for president?’” Will said. “By the time Ted Kennedy quit stammering he was handicapped.”

I just finished a radio interview this afternoon where the same subject came up. For my part, I think George is being a bit optimistic. As far as the Democratic nomination goes – which wasn’t what Will was talking about, I know – the only person who can stop Hillary is Hillary, and that’s if she decides not to run or some aspect of her personal life makes her think better of it. Yes, I realize that she was “inevitable” in 2008 also, but I don’t see a parallel between the two. In that campaign, Hillary was inevitable until the Democrats found somebody more inevitable and with an equally, if not more compelling narrative. The First Woman President storyline was able to be trumped by the First Black President storyline. There is nobody waiting in the wings right now who can deliver that kind of bang for the buck as far as the Democrats are concerned. And if she decides to bail out, they’ll manufacture another one to match, likely in the form of Elizabeth Warren. (Or so I hope. She’s completely beatable.)

In the general election, it’s another story, but that inevitability narrative is still probably stronger than Will is giving credit. Her numbers have sunk a bit since her time at State, but she can still muster favorability near or above 50 and that’s a fairly golden ticket. She’s also got more experience in running under her belt and a fully formed team waiting to leap into action. (Not to mention a mountain of funding ready to shower down on her from numerous PACs and other resources.)

Perhaps Will – given his Kennedy comparison – means she won’t be formidable on the stump and in debates. That’s possible, I suppose. Even she was unable to name a significant achievement of her own as Secretary of State and neither can her supporters. But will that matter to the voters? A lack of accomplishments didn’t stop them from voting for Barack Obama in droves. (Twice!) We might be expecting a lot out of the national electorate to be that discerning. Still, at least Will isn’t throwing in the towel, which would be a pretty bad omen at this early stage.

Tags: Fox News, George Will, Hillary Clinton

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Foxpoll:61%thinksObamaliesonimportant

Fox poll: 61% thinks Obama lies on important matters

posted at 9:51 am on April 17, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

The lesson here? If you like your personal approval ratings, you can keep your personal approval ratings. In the latest poll from Fox News, 61% believe that Barack Obama lies some or most of the time on “important matters,” while only 15% say Obama never lies:

About six in ten American voters think Barack Obama lies to the country on important matters some or most of the time, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

Thirty-seven percent think Obama lies “most of the time,” while another 24 percent say he lies “some of the time.” Twenty percent of voters say “only now and then” and 15 percent “never.”

Only among his strongest constituencies does Obama’s reputation for honesty remain strong — or at least relatively so:

The number of voters saying Obama lies “most of the time” includes 13 percent of Democrats.  It also includes 12 percent of blacks, 16 percent of liberals, 31 percent of unmarried women and 34 percent of those under age 30 — all key Obama constituencies.

Yet some of those groups are also among those most likely to say Obama “never” lies to the country on important matters: blacks (37 percent), Democrats (31 percent), liberals (28 percent) and women (19 percent).

Yes, those are not exactly massive statements of confidence in Obama’s honesty. The problem for Obama is that even when he pursued unpopular policy, public perception of his intelligence and honesty helped keep his approval ratings from utterly tanking. His central conceit — that he was not just another politician — is what allowed him to endure the disastrous 2010 cycle and survive the 2012 re-election. The explosion of the “you can keep your plan” lie, combined with the more recent and more flagrant “women only earn 77 cents to men’s dollar” lie, has done the predictable damage to his reputation.

Even with that, though, Obama’s approval rating actually rebounded slightly in this series. It’s back to 42/51 from 38/54 six weeks ago in this series, which was an all-time low. Believe it or not, 42/51 is actually Obama’s best approval rating in this series for 2014 — a tie on approval, and the lowest disapproval of the year.

Not that anyone else is doing much better. Fox offered a few names and entities for favorability ratings, and the only one to have a net positive rating was … Hillary Clinton, at 49/45. Obama got a 45/51, a reflection of the honesty issue, and the only one to get a majority-unfavorable rating. Surprisingly, the GOP got a 45/45, with Democrats at 44/46. Chris Christie got within the MOE at 36/38, and Ted Cruz brought up the rear with 23/31.

Hillary shouldn’t get too excited about that finish, either. The Fox series doesn’t often ask that question about her, but it’s still the lowest since April 2008′s 47/46. She peaked in August 2012 at 63/31 just before Benghazi, and still got a 56/38 in June 2013 well after Benghazi and her departure from State. The 49/45 result this week is a fairly sharp drop, and it may mean that voters think of her differently as a retiree than they will as a candidate. That also was true in 2007/8, as it turned out.

Still, she blows all of the other Democrats out of the water in the 2016 question with 69% support; only Joe Biden gets double digits at 14%. Hillary also wins the head-to-head matchups, but those are much closer and less relevant this far out, especially with her favorability numbers already dropping.

Tags: approval rating, Barack Obama, favorability, Fox News, Hillary Clinton, lies, poll

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QuestionforMarcoRubio:What’dyouthinkof

Question for Marco Rubio: What’d you think of Jeb Bush’s “act of love” comment about illegals?

posted at 6:41 pm on April 9, 2014 by Allahpundit

I want to pick up where Guy left off, with the last little bit from Rubio’s Fox appearance this morning. Skip to 4:15 of the clip below. Simple question from Bill Hemmer: Thumbs up or thumbs down to Jeb Bush calling illegal immigration an “act of love”? Here, for the sake of comparison, is what Rep. Raul Labrador said yesterday when asked the same thing:

“When you trivialize the fact that these people have broken the law, I think your message is a little bit off. I think it’s unfortunate,” Labrador said at a Tuesday event sponsored by The Heritage Foundation…

“I think comments from Jeb Bush and other Republicans — what they’re doing is they’re pandering to a certain group of people,” Labrador said. “And I’ve got news for you. If we pass immigration reform tomorrow like members of the Republican conference want us to do, they’re not going to vote for the Republican Party.”

Tough (but accurate!) stuff. In fact, Mickey Kaus had a theory that the whole point of Jeb’s comments was to set Rubio up to say something similar. Bush isn’t running for president, Kaus speculates, but he’d like to do what he can to make it easier for his friend Marco to run by making himself a convenient punching bag for Rubio on immigration. The squishier he sounds, the easier it is for Rubio to impress tea partiers by beating up on him. Kaus:

Look at it this way: The GOP establishment is desperate to suppress Tea Party conservatives and also obtain the immigration amnesty they believe will win Latinos and relieve them of the need to do too much rethinking in other areas. The problem for the establishment is lack of candidates. Rubio was a favorite, but he sabotaged himself among core Republican primary voters with his disingenuous, flip-floppy championing of the Gang of 8′s bill. That left Christie–but then Christie got caught in a traffic jam. That left Jeb, probably the establishment’s original choice–but it turns out that Jeb is still a Bush, and even the Bushes are sick of the Bushes. That leaves … well, Rubio again. Maybe he can be rehabilitated in time for the primaries! How? Hmm. Well, if Jeb takes a stand way far out in a squishy idealistic pro-amnesty direction, that creates space for his quondam protege, Rubio, to stake out a position that’s seemingly tougher–e.g. “Jeb’s off base there. Saying it’s an ‘act of love’ obscures the very real problems illegal immigration can cause, which is why I am strong on border enforcement, etc.” Of course Rubio would still be for amnesty, and the establishment would know this. But it might help smuggle him through the primaries.

Here’s a perfect test of that theory. Hemmer sets Rubio up to spike the ball on Jeb and … he politely declines, saying that the issue is complex, that the rule of law is important, but that the human side of immigration is also important and Bush’s comment “shines light” on that. If, in other words, the “act of love” business was all about making Rubio look good by drawing a contrast, Jeb forgot to clue Rubio himself in to their nascent “good cop, bad cop” routine. What you’re actually seeing here is a guy being very careful not to alienate a big-name Republican who could be an asset for him in 2016 assuming he doesn’t run for president himself. There’s a piece at National Journal today speculating that Rubio could be the establishment’s choice in 2016 if Jeb passes on the race and Christie’s campaign ends up DOA. Rubio’s well positioned to win Bushworld’s backing — hawkish, “reasonable” on immigration, friends with Jeb, the whole package. He even has some claim to the mantle of “compassionate conservatism” that marked Dubya’s first campaign. He’ll be the “Bush” in the race if there’s no real Bush to choose from. In which case, why go picking fights with Jeb, especially this early?

Tags: act of love, Florida, Fox News, illegals, immigration, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio

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Poll:60%believeObamaoversteppingauthority posted

Poll: 60% believe Obama overstepping authority

posted at 9:21 am on February 14, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

How did the State of the Union speech declaring Barack Obama’s intent to make 2014 a year of unilateral action play with the public? According to the most recent Fox News poll, not terribly well. Mixed into deep economic pessimism is a majority opinion that Obama is doing too much instead of too little:

A Fox News poll shows that most swing-voters think President Barack Obama is overstepping his legal authority whenever he decides whether and when to enforce parts of the 2010 Obamacare law.

Sixty-six percent of independents, and 90 percent of Republicans said they disapprove of “Barack Obama going around Congress and using executive orders.”

Only 15 percent of independents, and 7 percent of conservatives, think Obama’s effort to bypass Congress are “the way our government is supposed to work.”

The lopsided results in the February poll of 1,006 registered voters is a loud warning signal for Obama, who is relying on his extensive use of executive orders, regulations and unilateral actions to boost his policies and his supporters’ morale in the run-up to the November election.

Yes, it’s a Fox News poll, which means that many will dismiss this out of hand, but that would be a mistake. If anything, the poll oversamples both Democrats and Republicans (40/35), which makes those figures look rather solid. Overall, 60% disapprove of Obama going around Congress — and even 31% of Democrats disapprove. Majorities of independents (66%), women (59%), and younger voters (under 35 YO, 61%) disapprove of the go-it-alone theme.

Obama’s approval rating hasn’t been affected, at least not yet. He’s at 42/53 in this Fox poll, which is better than Gallup’s showing at the moment (39/51), and exactly the same as January’s numbers in this same series. Among independents, though, it’s crashing to 29/65, and he’s underwater now with both men (39/56) and women (50/44), and possibly so with younger voters (46/47).

On the economy, the news is even worse for Obama and his fellow Democrats. By a 21-point majority, Americans feel the worst is yet to come in the national economy (37/58). Majorities prevail in this opinion in almost every demo, except for Democrats with a weak 51/44, and self-described liberals at 56/40.  Among voters under 35, pessimism reigns by 30 points, 33/63, and it’s 31/64 among those earning under $50K.

If Obama plans to pivot to the economy, then, it might be a bad move for his party in the midterms. Furthermore, the issue of income inequality also cuts against Obama. According to a wide majority of Americans — including all party affiliations — the policies of the Obama administration have increased the gap between the wealthy and the poor over the last five years. That’s the opinion overall (60/25), among Republicans (64/21), indies (63/21), and Democrats (52/32). Every demo has a wide majority on that point, except for a near-even split among black voters, 44/43.

Nor do voters appear anxious for redistribution. While Democrats think that “spread the wealth” policies are a good idea (66/30), an overall majority opposes them, 39/55, as do indies (27/63) and both men (38/57) and women (41/53). Younger voters split 49/48, but the under-$50K earners oppose it narrowly 44/50.

Given these numbers, Obama couldn’t have possibly crafted a worse State of the Union speech.

Tags: Barack Obama, economy, Fox News, job approval, polls, redistribution, sotu, year of action

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Video:TheobligatoryObama-O’ReillySuperBowlinterview

Video: The obligatory Obama-O’Reilly Super Bowl interview

posted at 8:01 am on February 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Not obligatory on our part, mind you, but apparently on Barack Obama’s part. Why he agreed to do an interview with Fox and Bill O’Reilly is anyone’s guess, because he clearly wasn’t there to answer questions. Instead, we got this strange dance where both men almost continually interrupted each other, and the President of the United States claiming that every problem in his administration could be blamed on Fox News.

Hey. if that’s true, why did Obama give Fox the interview? Apparently, Obama can’t fire anyone.

For instance, here’s part of the exchange about Benghazi, which was a terror attack despite the White House’s initial insistence that it was a demonstration that spun out of control:

O’REILLY:  – but I just want to say that they’re — your detractors believe that you did not tell the world it was a terror attack because your campaign didn’t want that out.

OBAMA:  Bill, think about…

O’REILLY:  That’s what they believe.

OBAMA:  – and they believe it because folks like you are telling them that.

O’REILLY:  No, I’m not telling them that.

And here we have Obama’s answer on the IRS targeting of conservatives, which is again only a problem because of Fox News:

OBAMA:  I do not recall meeting with him in any of these meetings that are pretty routine meetings that we had.

O’REILLY:  OK, so you don’t — you don’t recall seeing Shulman, because what some people are saying is that the IRS was used…

OBAMA:  Yes.

O’REILLY:  – at a — at a local level in Cincinnati, and maybe other places to go after…

OBAMA:  Absolutely wrong.

O’REILLY:  – to go after.

OBAMA:  Absolutely wrong.

O’REILLY:  But how do you know that, because we — we still don’t know what happened there?

OBAMA:  Bill, we do — that’s not what happened.  They — folks have, again, had multiple hearings on this.  I mean these kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them.

Finally, here’s part of an exchange in which Obama promises to hold people accountable for the failure of ObamaCare, but when O’Reilly notes that no one has lost their job yet, O’Reilly allows Obama to offer a couple of complete non-sequiturs:

OBAMA:  – and those who are underinsured are able to get better health insurance.

O’REILLY:  I’m sure — I’m sure that the intent is noble, but I’m a taxpayer.

OBAMA:  Yes.

O’REILLY:  And I’m paying Kathleen Sebelius’ salary and she screwed up.

OBAMA:  Yes.

O’REILLY:  And you’re not holding her accountable.

OBAMA:  Yes, well, I — I promise you that we hold everybody up and down the line accountable.  But when we’re…

O’REILLY:  But she’s still there.

OBAMA:  – when we’re in midstream, Bill, we want to make sure that our main focus is how do we make this thing work so that people are able to sign up?

And that’s what we’ve done.

O’REILLY:  All right.

Seriously, I don’t know why Obama bothered to do this interview at all. The only answer he seemed interested in sharing was that Fox News is a big Meany Channel with Meany Reporters who Keep Asking Questions When I Give The Only Answers I Want To Give. I’m not sure this is doing Fox any favors, either, other than some satisfaction over putting the President on a hot seat for a short period of time when most other news channels want to treat Obama like a celebrity. Anyway, watch the video, or perhaps just follow the link to the rest of the transcript instead. You’ll find it less frustrating.

Tags: Barack Obama, Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, interview, Super Bowl

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McConnell:Acleandebt-ceilingincreaseisjustnot

McConnell: A clean debt-ceiling increase is just not gonna’ fly

posted at 6:31 pm on January 26, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The White House and top Democrats seem mightily determined that Congress should and will succumb to their demands to unconditionally raise the country’s now $17 trillion borrowing limit in the latest iteration of a debt-ceiling showdown coming at the end of February, but on Sunday morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out that their stance is a completely glib dismissal of the debt-ceiling hike’s history as an opportunity to get some major legislative stuff done. Especially considering that we are now running our biggest debt and deficits ever, we should probably do something to address that — but the election-year politics serving as the backdrop to this one are going to make it particularly tricky.

Some of the most significant legislation passed in the last 50 years has been in conjunction with the debt ceiling. … I think for the president to ask for a “clean” debt ceiling when we have a debt the size of our economy is irresponsible. So, we ought to discuss adding something to his request to raise the debt ceiling that does something about the debt or at least does something positive for our country. … I think the president is taking an unreasonable position to suggest that we ought to treat his request to raise the debt ceiling like some kind of motherhood resolution that everybody just says “aye” and we don’t do anything when we have this stagnant economy and this massive debt created under his administration.

Tags: debt ceiling, Democrats, Fox News, House of Representatives, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Senate, spending, White House

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