Visual source: Newseum
Steve Lombardo, conservative regular on pollster.com:
While the focus the last few weeks has been on the tumult within the GOP primary race, gone unnoticed has been the sharp and aggressive turn that team Obama has taken toward possible re-election. The President has had the best 30 days since the first few months of 2009. Improvement in the unemployment rate, a gradual rise in the President's approval rating, a sharply focused re-election strategy (propelled yesterday by a laser like populist speech) and the stumbling of a cadre of GOP candidates who seem intent on giving away this election has made it at least a 50/50 shot that Obama wins re-election in 2012. This is quite a change since Labor Day.
Fact is, as the GOP nominees run hard right, they will lose the center. The laws of political gravity have not changed.
EJ Dionne:
The president’s speech on Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kan., the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary “New Nationalism” speech 101 years ago, was the Inaugural address Obama never gave. It was, at once, a clear philosophical rationale for his presidency, a straightforward narrative explaining the causes of the nation’s travails, and a coherent plan of battle against a radicalized conservatism that now defines the Republican Party and has set the tone for its presidential nominating contest.
In drawing upon TR, Obama tied himself unapologetically to a defense of America’s long progressive and liberal tradition.
Reid Wilson:
In today's Hotline Spotlight, we take a look at the left's new knight in shining armor. For the third presidential election cycle in a row, the liberal blogosphere has a candidate to rally around: In 2004, it was Howard Dean. In 2008, it was Barack Obama. Now, it's Elizabeth Warren.
What other Senate candidate has received as much attention as Warren has? She's already been profiled in Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and New York Magazine. Even the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sent a reporter to Brockton. Marco Rubio? Not until he forced Charlie Crist out of the GOP primary. Jim DeMint? Not until he established himself in the Senate.
The only Senate contender who received so much attention is the man Warren is trying to beat, Republican Sen. Scott Brown. His win in a 2010 special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy inspired the right and gave them hope that the country, even liberal Massachusetts, was turning against President Obama.
And that's exactly the same reason Warren is becoming such an icon to those on the left: Depressed partisans have a candidate who gives them hope amid signs their party is still struggling.
Andrew Rosenthal:
Nominations for the D.C. Circuit are particularly tricky because that court decides many important cases about the workings of government, like those about the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It is a potential stepping stone to the Supreme Court, as it was for Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Roberts Jr., whose seat has been vacant for six years since he became a justice. Ms. Halligan was nominated to fill Mr. Roberts’ former seat.
But the opposition to Ms. Halligan is entirely without substance, based largely on the old “activism” canard. When Republicans call judges activists, they only mean that they have ruled in ways Republicans don’t like. The justices in the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, who blithely overturn decades of precedent are not, of course, activists.
Mark Blumenthal:
Like any measurement of public opinion, these results are just a snapshot. Views of Newt Gingrich and his position on immigration are likely to change, particularly if they come under repeated assault in the upcoming candidate debates. For now, however, Gingrich's stand on immigration does not appear to be hurting his cause with local Republican insiders.
Josh Kraushaar:
Mitt Romney's campaign is facing a strategic dilemma: Go for the kill against Newt Gingrich now, and hope Romney can overtake him in Iowa. Or prepare for a long-lasting Republican nomination fight that could result in defeat.
Both strategies involve a significant amount of uncertainty and risk.
If Romney avoids attacking Gingrich for now -- and hope the media or other GOP candidates go after him -- Gingrich could get a head of steam, winning Iowa, coming close in New Hampshire and then winning the Southern states of South Carolina and Florida that neighbor his home state of Georgia.
Engage Gingrich now, however, and Romney forces himself to go all-in in a state that's not favorable demographically for him, risking an embarrassing setback and expending valuable resources to do so. Most importantly, he's almost running out of time to deliver a knockout message -- no matter how effective.
Tom Jensen/PPP:
Montana voters don't support the goals of either the Occupy Wall Street movement (33/44) or the Tea Party (40/44). The Occupy Wall Street numbers are pretty predictable in a conservative state like Montana, but the poor numbers for the Tea Party there really speak to how much the popularity of that movement has faded.
WaPo:
In announcing this week that he was suspending his GOP presidential campaign, Herman Cain quoted from “Pokemon: The Movie.”
He might better have referenced PBS’s “This Old House,” Discovery’s “Swamp Loggers” or ABC’s “The Bachelor” ( a shocking final-rose gag, maybe) — shows beloved by conservative Republicans, according to the media-research company Experian Simmons.
On the other hand, a Democratic hopeful looking to sound “of the people” at a gathering of followers can’t do better than to drop the names of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report,” or PBS’s “Masterpiece” — darlings of the liberal Dems.