Problems for Romney and Palin While Obama Rebounds

December 20, 2010 — Ron Chusid

The 2012 Republican primary race could be an interesting one as there are no clear front runners. All the major candidates have major negatives when going before the entire electorate, and some have significant problems even in the GOP. A new Public Policy Polling survey comes as no surprise in showing that Mitt Romney does the worst of the candidates they polled among conservatives. He comes in last at 14% behind Palin (22%) , Huckabee (21%) , and Gingrich (17%)  in their polling of who conservatives prefer.

While Palin leads in this survey, earlier this month Public Policy Polling showed Palin’s Republican problem. There are plenty of Republicans who like Palin but they survey identified this problem:  “It’s that a lot of the Republicans who don’t like her- in contrast to the Republicans who don’t like Huckabee, Gingrich, or Romney- aren’t willing to hold their nose and vote for her in the general election.”

Both of these polls show what we already suspected–conservatives don’t like Romney and Palin would have serious problems in a general election with even many Republicans defecting to Obama. It’s too early to say if this is part of a trend, but the Republicans might have an even more difficult time if Obama continues to improve in the polls. Politico, perhaps prematurely, reports on Obama Rebounding. This is based upon  a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll which shows that 55 percent of Americans believe the countrywould head in the right direction under policies proposed by Obama. This is up from 49 percent in January, but still below 63 percent which believed this in May, 2009. His approval and disapproval are tied at 48 percent, improved from a disapproval rating of 56 percent in September.

Obama continues to receive more support than members of Congress of either party. Republicans come out the worst, despite their recent victories.The survey found that 44 percent of Americans believe Republican  policies would lead the country in the right direction compared to 51 percent who believe their policies would move us in the wrong direction. Policies of Congressional Democrats were supported by 48 percent.

The next two years could work to Obama’s advantage. Polls show that most voters prefer Democratic policies, even if they did not realize they were the Democratic positions. If Obama manages to work out decent compromises with Republicans and provide effective government for two years, most voters will support him. If it turns into battles over policy, actually seeing a contrast between Obama’s positions and those of the Republicans should also gain him more support–provided he doesn’t make any other major blunders such as going back on his primary opposition to the individual mandate. On most issues, an outright battle between the GOP House and Obama could lead to independents and moderates turning out for Obama in 2012 in even greater numbers than in 2008.

Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Politics, Polls, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Michigan May Have Gone Red in 2010, But It Remains Solidly Pro-Obama

December 7, 2010 — Ron Chusid

I’ve thought it to be somewhat ironic that, after saving the auto industry, Barack Obama saw his party get blown out in this year’s election. Of course, besides the bad economy, that might partially be because Michigan Democrats waged an awful campaign, concentrating on Willie Horton type ads and attacks on governor-elect Rick Snyder for outsourcing while at Gateway.

It has also been a big question as to how much the 2010 election can be taken as predictive of  the 2012 election–with history suggesting no meaningful predictive value. A Public Policy Polling survey from Michigan shows that Obama leads most Republicans by double digits. The only exception is Mitt Romney, son of former governor George Romney, who manages to stay within four points due to his ties to the state. My bet is that once Michigan voters realize Mitt Romney is no George Romney this gap will widen.

Compared to the Republican field Obama’s numbers look stratospheric. Only Romney is viewed favorably by a plurality of voters in the state, with 39% holding a favorable opinion to 37% with an unfavorable one. Beyond him the GOP field ranges from slightly unpopular (Mike Huckabee’s 37/40 favorability) to very unpopular (Newt Gingrich’s 28/50), to extremely unpopular (Sarah Palin’s 34/60). What might be most striking for the Republicans beyond Romney is their numbers with independents. Huckabee’s net favorability with them is -14 (29/43), Gingrich’s is -39 (20/59), and Palin’s is -40 (28/68)

In addition to leading the GOP candidates in a hypothetical race, Obama has an approval rating of 50% and is supported by a plurality of independents 47 percent to 44 percent.

Posted in Barack Obama, Michigan News, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Politics, Polls, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Palin, Beck and Huckabee Promote Prophesies of Armageddon

October 16, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday I looked at reasons why Republicans are not likely to pick up Jewish voters, concluding by writing that Jewish voters are not going to support a fundamentalist Christian theocratic political party. Discussion of Biblical prophesies of Armageddon on Fox, including by two possible candidates for the 2012 nomination, add to the reasons why Republicans cannot be taken seriously. From Media Matters, via Steve Benen:

Yesterday, during a conversation with the conservative publication Newsmax, Sarah Palin engaged in the favorite conservative pastime of pushing for war with Middle Eastern countries and warned that allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons “is not just Israel’s problem or America’s problem, it is the world’s problem. It could lead to an Armageddon. It could lead to that World War III that could decimate so much of this planet.”

Clearly, Palin’s invocation of “Armageddon” did not bother Fox News — quite the opposite, in fact. They promoted her interview with Newsmax on Fox Nation, using her comment as the headline:

‘Palin Warns of Armageddon’

If you are unfamiliar with Iran and Israel’s role in the (always) impending Armageddon, Pastor John Hagee can help explain. Back in June, Glenn Beck hosted Hagee on his Fox News show and labeled him one of the “brave preachers” that “need to start standing up.” During that show, Beck plugged Hagee’s “excellent” new book, Can America Survive? 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation, saying that he “just started to read last night.”

Palin and Beck aren’t the only ones at Fox who are talking about Armageddon:

Fox News’ Mike Huckabee hosted Tim LaHaye — author of the Left Behind book series about the Rapture — on his Fox News program twice in July. In both appearances, Huckabee and LaHaye reportedly discussed Armageddon. During one of the appearances, Huckabee asked LaHaye, “Are we now living in the end times, from your perspective?” LaHaye responded, “Very definitely, governor.”

Of course, this is nothing new. For centuries, religious hucksters have trafficked in fearmongering about impending Armageddon. But when three of the most prominent conservative media figures in the country — two of whom are reportedly considering 2012 presidential runs — are lending credence to theories about the End of the World, it should be news.

While these conservatives are concerned about Biblical prophecies of Armageddon, they ignore very real scientific evidence of impending harm to our planet due to climate change. Glenn Beck is trying to convince the religious right to ignore the scientific consensus on global warming. He brought on a representative of  the “Cornwall Alliance — a corporate front designed to deceive evangelicals into doubting the science underpinning climate change.”

Posted in Environment, Mike Huckabee, Religion, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , , , , , . 10 Comments »

Alaska Voters To Sarah Palin: We Like You, But Don’t Run For President

September 1, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Alaska voters still like their former half-term governor, but definitely do not want her to run for president. A Public Policy Polling survey found:

If Sarah Palin runs for President in 2012 she can’t count on a whole lot of support back home. 62% of Alaska Republicans are opposed to her making a White House bid and she gets only 17% in a hypothetical 2012 primary in the state tying for her second with Mike Huckabee behind Mitt Romney.

Since resigning as governor, Palin seems to be trying to use the tea parties to form a grass roots movement to back her for the nomination. It is not working:

Among voters who say they support the goals of the Tea Party only 31% want Palin to run and even with ones who consider themselves to be active members of the Tea Party there are still only 42% who think she should make the leap.

These findings in Alaska are consistent with national polls showing that a minority of Republicans think Palin is qualified to be president. While I can’t imagine why, it is one thing for people to get excited by her and turn out to see her. It is an entirely different matter to back her for president.

Posted in Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Politics, Polls, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Support For Tea Party And Republicans Diminishing

June 12, 2010 — Ron Chusid

At the beginning of the year the conventional wisdom was that many Americans were backing the tea party movement as well as the Republicans and the Democrats were in serious trouble. Several news reports and polls suggest that the right may have peaked too soon.

The Washington Post explains that tea party candidates were hurt by the lack of organization in the movement. Like most horse race stories in the mainstream media, the story gets it partially right but misses the major problems faced by the tea party: they are ignorant on the issues and hold extremist views which most Americans would find repulsive if  news reports provided more than a superficial description.

While the media has done a poor job of describing what the tea party really stands for, at least this report does show that more Americans are catching on. They cite a Washington Post-ABC News poll which found that 50 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the tea party movement, up from 39 percent in March. This number will grow as more people understand what the tea party actually stands for.

Other polls also show a trend away from the right wing. A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that the Democrats have taken a small lead on the generic Congressional ballot for the first time this year. Another poll shows that Obama leads all opponents in  hypothetical 2012 match ups. The margin is small in some cases, but the advantages of incumbency as well as potential loss of support as the opponents come under greater scrutiny will probably increase this spread further. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney currently come closest while Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Ron Paul trail by large margins.

Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Democrats, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Politics, Polls, Republicans, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Mike Huckabee Swears To Continue The American Taliban Movement

June 11, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Mike Huckabee wants to keep the culture wars alive and doesn’t like the suggestion from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels that the next president should drop the social issues and concentrate on fiscal problems. Huckabee responded:

Apparently, a 2012 Republican presidential prospect in an interview with a reporter has made the suggestion that the next President should call for a “truce” on social issues like abortion and traditional marriage to focus on fiscal problems.
In other words, stop fighting to end abortion and don’t make protecting traditional marriage a priority.
Let me be clear though, the issue of life and traditional marriage are not bargaining chips nor are they political issues. They are moral issues. I didn’t get involved in politics just to lower taxes and cut spending though I believe in both and have done it as a Governor. But I want to stay true to the basic premises of our civilization.
Are you ready to stop fighting for traditional marriage?  I cannot.  I will not.
Can you let the tragedy of abortion go unchecked while we get our financial house in order?  I cannot.  I will not.

What would the Republicans be without the culture wars–their attempt to fight the modern world and impose their religious views upon everyone else? As Joe Klein pointed out earlier this week, the whole Republican fiscal conservative line is a farce which they have neither the interest or ability to carry out. However using the power of government to impose their perverse moral code upon others is something which today’s Republican Party can stand behind.

Really cut the budget–will never happen under the borrow and spend Republicans. Have government control the bodies of women–Republicans are all for it.

Actually pay for their wars–never. Tell others who they may or may not legally marry–a “right” Republicans will fight to defend.

Conservatives like Mike Huckabee will makes sure that the American Taliban does not go away.


Posted in Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Social Issues. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Republicans vs. Secular America

May 27, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Dan Kennedy warned in The Guardian about the leading Republican candidates who are blatantly disregarding First Amendment rights as they ignore the secular nature of our government as established by the Founding Fathers:

If you’re part of secular America – that is, if you’re an atheist, an agnostic, a religious liberal or even a mainstream believer who thinks religion should be kept out of politics and vice-versa – then you should be very afraid of what the Republican party has in store for you in 2012.

No news there, you might say. The Republicans, as we all know, have been in thrall to the Christian right since the Reagan era. But there’s something new, something more intolerant, something truly ugly in the works. And if you don’t believe me, let’s start with Tim Pawlenty, unassuming governor of Minnesota in his day job, fire-breathing Christian warrior and aspiring presidential candidate in his spare time.

“I want to share with you four ideas that I think should carry us forward,” Pawlenty said on Friday at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC. After invoking “basic constitutional principle and basic common sense,” he continued:

“The first one is this: God’s in charge. God is in charge … In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn’t say we’re endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It’s by our creator that we are given these rights.”

Never mind Pawlenty’s fundamental and no doubt deliberate misreading of the founders’ intent. (Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, is well-known for having cut up a Bible to remove all supernatural references to Jesus.) How, in practice, does Pawlenty envision “God’s in charge” as a governing principle?

Pawlenty didn’t say. But he oozed mild-mannered hatred for anyone who doesn’t share his beliefs. In a bizarre closing in which he invoked the civil war general (and future president) Ulysses S Grant as some sort of rough-around-the-edges, proto-Tea Party role model, Pawlenty trashed anyone who attended “Ivy League schools” or who go to “chablis-drinking, brie-eating parties in San Francisco”. (You can watch Pawlenty’s address at CSPAN.org, starting at the 1:38:30 mark.) It sounded like a parody of Pat Buchanan’s famous 1992 “culture war” speech. Except that Pawlenty is one of the Republicans’ two most plausible candidates for president in 2012.

The other would be former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who fell far short of the prize in 2008, but whose legendary self-discipline has put him in a strong position for 2012.

The trouble is that Romney has already declared war on secular America. In December 2007, you may recall, he delivered a speech in which he defended his Mormon religion at a time when he was under assault from evangelical Christians. It was, in many respects, a sensible plea for religious tolerance.

Except that Romney called for tolerance only among believers, explicitly omitting non-believers. “Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me,” Romney said. “And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.”

As New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote the next day, “Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious.” Brooks – a conservative, though a secular one – warned that Romney was calling for “a culture war without end”.

Kennedy concentrated on Romney and Pawlenty as he considers them early front runners but warns that two potential fringe candidates are even worse:

If you have not seen Sarah Palin asking God to build a natural-gas pipeline in Alaska, well, do yourself a favour right now (see also her recent speech at the Tea Party convention). Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, personifies the Christian right in its purest form. “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” Huckabee said in 1998. There is no reason to think he’s changed his mind.

“While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us,” wrote James Madison.

In contrast to Madison, the Republicans propose a theocracy of believers. It is an assault not just on anyone who isn’t one of them, but on the American idea, and on liberal democracies everywhere.

He excludes Ron Paul from his warnings  but I believe it is only because he has not paid much attention to Paul, not considering him a credible candidate. Despite the common misapplication of the libertarian label to Paul, he also opposes separation of church and state and in many ways is as big a threat to liberty as the establishment Republican candidates.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Separation of Church and State. Tags: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Why Mike Huckabee Is Not Fit To Govern

April 11, 2010 — Ron Chusid

I would consider this statement to be an example of why Mike Huckabee is unfit to lead the country but realize different people will see this differently. This stems from fundamentally different values. Those of us who hold liberal values  defend an individual’s right to live their life as they see fit. In contrast conservatives, while engaging in Orwellian distortions of words such as freedom, prefer to use the power of government and religious institutions to tell people how to live.

Mike Huckabee believes that gay people are unfit to adopt children and believes that gay couples shouldn’t be able to get married because it would be like accommodating drug habits of addicts. At least he does believe an atheist is fit to be president. This is from an interview in the College of New Jersey’s magazine The Perspective:

He continues to oppose any government recognition of same-sex relationships. Even civil unions are “not necessary,” Huckabee said. “I think there’s been a real level of being disingenuous on the part of the gay and lesbian community with their goal of civil unions,” he alleged, referring to LGBT activists who first claimed that their goal in several states was to enact civil unions, but subsequently launched efforts to implement full marriage rights.

Huckabee went on to draw parallels between homosexuality and other lifestyles that are considered by some to be morally aberrant. “You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

He also affirmed support for a law in Arkansas that prohibits same-sex couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents. “I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family,” Huckabee said. “And always we should act in the best interest of the children, not in the seeming interest of the adults.”

“Children are not puppies,” he continued. “This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”

In what may come as a surprise for some, Huckabee agreed that an atheist could be fit to serve as president. “I’d rather have an honest atheist than a dishonest religious person,” he said.

“It’s better to have a person who says, ‘Look, I just don’t believe, and that’s where my honest position happens to be,’” he said. “I’m frankly more OK with that than a person who says, ‘Oh, I am very much a Christian. I very much love God.’ And then they live as if they are atheists, as if they have no moral groundings at all. That’s more troubling.”

“I think it’s nice if a person believes in God,” Huckabee said. “I’d hate to think somebody was making decisions who thought that he couldn’t be higher than himself.”

I am surprised to see Huckabee’s comments on an atheist being fit to be president. After all, as is even stipulated in the Constitution, there should not be a religious test for office. However, while someone is certainly legally qualified to be president, someone who has such discriminatory views towards a portion of the country is not ethically fit to govern.

Posted in Mike Huckabee, Religion, Social Issues. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Foxy Sarah

January 11, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Sarah Palin is going to  become a contributor to Fox. It is a good match for both, considering that neither cares much for accuracy or for the facts.

Now both Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are working for Fox. For the good of the country I hope the two are paid very well–so well they never want to leave Fox and return to government.

Posted in Mike Huckabee, News Media, Sarah Palin. Tags: , , . 3 Comments »

Huckabee Wants a Small Tent

December 9, 2009 — Ron Chusid

In the past Mike Huckabee has said that it’s fine to have moderates in the Republican Party. Now he is calling for a small tent. He warns that a big tent “will kill the conservative movement.” (I thought that only a silver bullet or a stake through the heart would kill them, but that’s a different topic.)  I guess it makes sense. Only a small tent party would nominate someone like Mike Huckabee.

Posted in Mike Huckabee. Tags: . 3 Comments »
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