It's all about the cost to taxpayers
NY Times:
Gov. Chris Christie announced on Tuesday a highly unusual special election that was immediately criticized for costing the state $24 million and setting up a schedule that was likely to confuse the voting public. Voters will go to the polls on a Wednesday in October to cast ballots for a new senator, then return just three weeks later for the regularly scheduled general election, in which Mr. Christie will stand for a second term.
For Mr. Christie, a Republican who has cultivated an image as a tough-talking independent, the rapidly made choice represented a calculated risk — to endure short-term criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in order to protect his longer-term goals of winning re-election and positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016.
Nate Silver:
While some national Republicans are annoyed with Mr. Christie’s decision, they may not be privy to all the information he had about which Republican candidates might have been interested in Mr. Lautenberg’s seat. It’s plausible that Mr. Christie could have helped a reasonably good G.O.P. nominee to a narrow victory. But if none were interested in the race, it may have been a lost cause.
It may be reasonable to infer, then, that Mr. Christie evaluated the Republican field and did not like what he saw — and that Mr. Booker is poised to win the Senate seat with relative ease.
It was true yesterday and it will be true tomorrow. Whatever Chris Christie does is about what's good for Chris Christie.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Ariel Edwards-Levy and Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com reviews the Gallup deep dive into their recent problematic polling:
Four problems - The four problems were (1) their likely voter model generally, which according to Newport "was at least 1 point more towards Romney than the average of other polls that were using some time of likely voter model," (2) under-representation, within census regions, of the Eastern versus the Central times zones and the Pacific versus the Mountain Time zones, (3) the use of a series of yes/no questions to measure race, which distorted the weighting process and led to an over-representation of some white voters and (4) the use of non-standard "listed landline" sampling instead of random digit dial samples led to older and more heavily Republican pool of respondents. [Gallup]
Sound familiar? Not to say we told you so, but we reported extensively on the last two problems in June 2012 and March 2013.
Ever since the "mystery pollster" site that preceded pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal has been explaining how polls work. We are grateful for this explanation as well, if for no other reason than how pissed off Gallup has gotten us in the last few years. It got to the point that for a good while I removed Gallup and Rasmussen from my polling updates. With reason. [See
Why I remove Gallup and Rasmussen from the Abbreviated Pundit Round-up charts dated Aug 12.] I appreciate the explanations from Mark,
Alan Abramowitz and other experts who clarified that the Gallup problem wasn't just my imagination. And I really appreciate that
Frank Newport did not ignore the issue.
By the way, with Netroots Nation '13 fast approaching, here's a blast from the past. It's from 2009, and the panelists are Charlie Cook, Mark Blumenthal, Nate Silver and Charles Franklin. Somehow, I'm the moderator. It's a great 90 minutes, and one of the best panels NN ever hosted.
Dana Milbank:
A good indication of House Republicans’ mind-set came last week, when Rep. John Boehner’s spokesman wrote on the House speaker’s official blog that a speech by Obama on student loans was an attempt “to change the subject from its growing list of scandals.” It’s telling that the GOP leadership would view a student loan event as a distraction from scandals but wouldn’t see the obsession with scandals as a distraction from pocketbook issues.
As The Post’s Paul Kane reported Tuesday, House Republicans haven’t passed much ambitious legislation this year after they “disintegrated into squabbling factions, no longer able to agree on — much less execute — some of the most basic government functions.” One of the few things that unite them is the investigation of scandals. A few weeks ago, Heritage Action for America, an influential conservative group, suggested that House Republicans focus on investigations and avoid legislation that could divide them.
The Republicans not only can't govern, they are not even interested in trying. it's becoming so obvious, even some of the Villagers are beginning to see it.
Greg Sargent:
If current obstructionism continues, Dems may exercise the nuclear option and change the rules by simple majority to nix filibusters of nominations. With the showdown escalating, the battle is already being treated as a he-said-she-said argument in which there’s no real way to settle the core question of whether what we’re seeing from Republicans is something new and different. For example, the New York Times noted without comment the other day: “Republicans deny being slow to confirm the president’s choices for his cabinet and the courts.”
Yes, but are they right, or wrong? It is not easy to conclusively determine whether GOP obstructionism is unprecedented. But there are some data points we can look at.
For instance, Dr. Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts who focuses on judicial nominations, has developed what he calls an “Index of Obstruction and Delay” designed to measure levels of obstructionism. In research that will be released in a July article he co-authored for Judicature Journal, he has calculated that the level of obstruction of Obama circuit court nominees during the last Congress was unprecedented.
Goldman calculates his Index of Obstruction and Delay by adding together the number of unconfirmed nominations, plus the number of nominations that took more than 180 days to confirm (not including nominations towards the end of a given Congress) and dividing that by the total number of nominations. During the last Congress, Goldman calculates, the Index of Obstruction and Delay for Obama circuit court nominations was 0.9524.
“That’s the highest that’s ever been recorded,” he tells me. “In this last Congress it approached total obstruction or delay.”
Republican obstructionism isn't opinion, it's fact.