Chris Cillizza:
Republican observers are divided about the message being sent by McCain's aggressiveness: is he acting out of an abundance of caution or is he panicked by the possibility he will come up short against Hayworth on Aug. 24?
Dave Weigel (Right Now, WaPO)/John Thune:
RN: A lot of the people I talk to who were on the ground in Utah said that his vote for TARP sunk Senator Bennett. He couldn't recover from it. You supported TARP. Is it being misinterpreted or portrayed the wrong way out there? I mean, in your view, has TARP succeeded in what it was meant to do?
THUNE: It's one of those issues where it'll be really hard, probably, to measure its effectiveness. If you take steps to prevent a disaster from happening, and the disaster doesn't happen, it's hard to know whether it would have happened if you hadn't taken the steps to prevent it. I think most of us felt at the time that all the experts said the economy was on the verge of economic collapse, and it we didn't do something along these lines that there was going to be a meltdown. And so we took those steps. Many of us are, yeah, disappointed at how it was misused and how it will continue to be used. Is it misinterpreted out there? There are lot of people who are frustrated with spending, taxing, borrowing, bailouts, takeovers, and I think it fits into that overall narrative. That's something that those of us who voted for TARP will have to explain to voters.
Good luck explaining it to the tea party (i.e. your party, Senator.).
Mickey Edwards:
To be clear, Bennett's defeat in Utah was not an unprecedented challenge of an incumbent who was just not as conservative as his opponent. Ronald Reagan almost defeated the generally conservative Gerald Ford in 1976 when Ford was seeking the Republican nomination to succeed himself in the White House. But for the most part, parties have been willing to allow some departure from the party line if a legislator's overall record has been sufficiently on key.
Signs that this is changing were seen recently within the governing ranks of the GOP, with local party leaders attempting to force National Chairman Michael Steele to adopt a "purity" test to determine which Republican candidates would receive the party's financial support. Steele refused to go along but it is the same sentiment that has now ended Robert Bennett's Senate career...
Increasingly, the last two items on that list -- intelligent assessment and constitutional constraint -- are being driven from the process. One is expected to listen -- and to obey -- the preferences, indeed the demands, not of "constituents" but of that small band of constituents who dominate party primaries and party conventions.
Ironically, those who demand such mindless conformity cry out a demand for adherence to the Constitution, even as they undermine the most important principles of rational constitutional self-government.
The current GOP is getting too crazy even for former Republicans.
Thomas Friedman:
The Greek prime minister exudes Obama-like calm and knows change is in store. Is the big bailout the start of a revolution in Athens?
How many friedman units will it take to judge this time?
Harold Meyerson:
May has been a month of deregulatory debacle, of machines running out of control in the Wall Street meltdown and the Gulf oil spill, both of which could have been averted by some prudent rule-making. Such massive mishaps were prefigured, in a sense, by the Doomsday Machine -- the Soviet device, in the concluding scene of "Dr. Strangelove," that reduces the world to a cinder. Designed to automatically detonate so many atomic bombs if just one nuclear weapon is fired at the U.S.S.R. that it would deter any foe from dropping the big one, it works perfectly, with one small hitch: A U.S. B-52 drops the bomb on Russia before Americans learn of its existence, and mere humans are powerless to intervene as it blows up the planet.
Last week Wall Street stumbled upon its very own Doomsday Machine: computers programmed to go into automatic selling mode when a share price plunges unexpectedly. When the prices of several stocks declined Thursday, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in those stocks. But they continued to plunge on multiple other exchanges. Within seconds, stocks everywhere were tanking; within 15 minutes, the Dow Jones industrial average had dropped a thousand points.
I'm still playing with pollster.com's charts... I like to eliminate Rasmussen and internet polls and turn up the sensitivity (and with pollster.com charts, you get to do whatever you want.)
.
This looks like the comments from PPP that Jed highlighted yesterday:
For the first time since October a majority of Americans express approval of Barack Obama's job performance on PPP's monthly national poll. 50% give him good marks to 46% who disapprove.
Obama's numbers with Democrats are basically steady and he remains very popular within his own party at an 83% approval rating. The movement since last month has come with Republicans and independents.
My gut is that, supported by various polls such as the above and Gallup's Republican Advantage in 2010 Voting Enthusiasm Shrinks, that the Dems have hit bottom and are beginning to rebound. Why? Partly because health reform is behind us, partly because tea party members are batshit crazy and drive independents away.