HALF-FULL REPORT 09/14/12

Shortly after I predicted in last week’s HFR that "Mitt Romney is likely to pull away in the coming weeks," a spate of polls were released which indicated Barack Obama had gotten a big bump from the Democratic convention.  Most in the punditocracy declared the president a prohibitive favorite..

I had a nervous weekend. Did I let wishful thinking corrode my assumptions?

It’s happened before.  My formative experience in politics came when I ran the Goldwater campaign in Columbia County, Wisconsin, because the senior party wanted nothing to do with him.  I was sure Barry would win, because – because I wanted him to.  He was brave, he was honest, and he was saying what I believed.

As you may recall, Barry didn’t win.  Ever since, I’ve been able to distinguish pretty well between what I would like to have happen in an election, and what I think will happen.  I haven’t been wrong about the outcome of a presidential election since 1964, and I’ve been surprised by the margin only once, in 1980.

So why was what I said in the HFR so dramatically at odds with the polls released over the weekend?

I did miss the dramatic impact of Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC.  He demonstrated why he is the most popular politician in America.  If he were on the ballot in November, we’d get our clocks cleaned.  Fortunately, he’s not.

But I addressed the most important reason in my July column on Charlie Brown Conservatives.  Most of us know the news media is biased, but few of us appreciate the magnitude of their mendacity.  So we keep expecting Lucy to hold the football.

Rush Limbaugh understands. The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it.  Yours.  They want to depress the heck out of you, and they want to suppress your vote.

In presidential elections from 1984 on, Democrats have had, on average, a 3 percentage point advantage in turnout, according to exit polls.  Their best was a 7 point spread in 2008.  But Republicans and Democrats tied in 2004, and tied again in the 2010 midterms.  In August, according to Rasmussen, for the first time since the Depression, more people said they are Republicans than said they are Democrats. Other polls indicate Republicans are more excited about voting this year than Democrats are.

Factor all this together, and turnout this November should be somewhere between the modern average of D+3 and a tie.

Yet in the CNN/ORC poll Tuesday that showed Obama leading, 52-46, the sample was D-38, R-26.  The.  The ABC/Washington Post poll this week, which showed Obama leading, 49-48, among likely voters, had a D+6 sample.  A Pew poll in July had a sample of D+19. The disparity between the samples and reality is so great it can’t be accidental.

Polls which showed an Obama lead were contradicted by their own internals. The CNN/ORC poll showed Romney leading, 54-40, among independents.  If that’s true, there’s no way Zero could be leading overall.  (In 2008, Obama won independents, 52-44.)  And it probably is true.  A Democracy Corps poll two weeks ago showed Romney leading among independents, 53-38.  There are other anomalies:

*Zero won the youth vote in 2008, 66-32.  But in a Zogby poll Aug. 15, he led Romney among 18-to-29 year olds by just 49-41.

*Zero got 78 percent of the Jewish vote last time.  An IBD/TIPP poll this week showed him leading among Jews this time, 59-35.  That’s the lowest since Carter, 25 percentage points less than in 2008.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse said Monday polls showing a post-convention bump for Obama were a "sugar high" which would rapidly dissipate.  He was right.  By Wednesday, the bump was gone.  The race was in the same position it had been before the conventions.

And that, remember, is not a good place for Zero to be. 

No president with a job approval below 50 percent has ever been re-elected, Jay Cost reminds us. In a poll for The Hill newspaper last week, 54 percent of respondents said that based on his job performance, President Obama does not deserve re-election. 

And no president has ever been re-elected when the economy has been this bad.

This could change.  There’s a first time for everything. But that’s not the way to bet.  The panic that gripped many conservative pundits this weekend is as unwarranted as it is unseemly.

Little illustrates media mendacity more than how the big foot journalists have covered the events of  9/11/2012.

*An Egyptian mob chanting "Obama, Obama, we are all Osama" suggests Zero’s policy of outreach to Islamists is an epic fail.

*The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi is President of Egypt in part because Obama swiftly abandoned the flawed, but pro-American Hosni Mubarak.

"It’s starting to feel like 1979," said Reagan biographer Steven Hayward, referring to the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran. President Jimmy Carter believed the Ayatollah Khomeini was a moderate reformer, so he helped him push the flawed, but pro-American Shah off Iran off the Peacock Throne.

Perhaps even Zero wonders now if dumping Mubarak was such a good idea.  In an interview with Telemundo Wednesday night, he said in response to a question: "I don’t think that we would consider (Egypt) an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy."

That set off Richard Engel, NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent. "For the President to come out and say, well, he’s not exactly sure if Egypt is an ally any more but it’s not an enemy, that is a significant change," he said. "It makes one wonder, well, was it worth it? Was it worth supporting the Arab Spring, supporting the demonstrations here in Tahrir Square?"

Mr. Obama’s remark set off a lot of hemming and hawing and backing and filling over at State.  Watch spokeswoman Victoria Nuland flail here.

*It is customary for U.S. Marines to guard our diplomatic installations.   But security at the consulate in Benghazi was put in the hands of Libyan nationals.  An official from the Libyan Foreign Ministry told CBS Wednesday, that after having moved Ambassador Chris Stevens within the compound, someone in that security force tipped off the mob to where he could be found.

*A British newspaper reported the State Department was warned in advance that an attack on the consulate in Benghazi was imminent, but ignored it.  The Obama administration has issued a non-denial denial.

If I were a journalist at ABC, NBC or CBS, the New York Times or the Washington Post, I would want to know more about that London Independent story. Other questions I’d ask are:

*Why weren’t the Marines guarding the consulate in Benghazi?

*The president has invited Mr. Morsi to come to the White House next month, but has refused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a face to face meeting.  What kind of message does this send?

*Mr. Obama plans to give Mr. Morsi’s government an additional $1.6 billion in aid.  In view of what’s happened, is this a good idea?

*It’s plain now that declarations the War on Terror is over were premature.  So is the president reconsidering his plans for massive defense cuts?

I’d also like to know if the president now regrets skipping so many intelligence briefings, and whether he thinks it was appropriate to compare his campaign workers to the diplomatic personnel who are being attacked.

But for most in the "mainstream" media, the big story this week wasn’t the collapse of Zero’s Middle East policy.  It was Mitt Romney’s criticism of Zero’s Middle East policy.  He was injecting politics into a tragedy, many said.  In vivid contrast, of course, to how Democrats and journalists refrained from criticizing President Bush’s conduct of the Iraq War.

Before the attacks Tuesday, many of these same journalists criticized Romney for not talking about foreign policy.

On the network evening news Wednesday, 20 times the broadcast minutes were devoted to criticizing Romney than to criticizing administration policy.  It was pretty much the same on the morning shows Thursday. 

The media ought to have followed up on the British newspaper report about the State Department being forewarned, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough acknowledged today (9/14), but it’s Romney’s fault they didn’t.

"Those questions are going to be asked in the coming weeks," Mr. Scarborough said.  "But they weren’t asked in the first 24 hours because Romney was holding this horrific, irresponsible, press conference."

At that news conference Wednesday morning, Jan Crawford of CBS and Ari Shapiro of NPR were caught on an open mike plotting how to ensure it would focus on the timing of Mr. Romney’s criticism rather than on its substance.

Over the past several months, there hasn’t been one major political story line pushed by the mainstream press that hasn’t been perfectly in sync with the Obama campaign’s strategic messaging plan, Investors Business Daily said today.

More than any time in the past, reporters and editors working at mainstream outlets have shirked their duty to be independent while still pretending to provide the public with legitimate, unbiased and fair news coverage.

This isn’t just some idle concern. When the media voluntarily take on the role of propagandists, a genuine threat to our democratic system of government is posed.

Whoops.  I’m running long on space and short on time.  So a few quick hits:

TTP subscriber Randy Clark has created NATIONAL MUTE BUTTON DAY, which will run until Nov. 6. 

"All you have to do is participate is >> MUTE The Empty Chair every time he appears in any media," Randy says. Submit two favorite Obama video URLs to get MUTED >> in one of the 51 videos (one per day) at YouTube channel >> http://www.youtube.com/user/emptychairvideos

For more info, contact Randy at: [email protected]  801 427 8900

* * * * * * *

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke has made an $80 billion campaign contribution to Barack Obama.  Inflation ahead.

* * * * * * * * *

Never before have the Democrats and their news media allies been so blatantly dishonest.  Obama has been kept afloat by a bodyguard of lies.  The "mainstream" media have made it clear they will do everything they can to avoid reporting the truth.

By reality is starting to crash in upon their mythical president.  The unrest is spreading in Middle East.  There’ll be no more victory laps over killing bin Laden.  The teacher strike in Chicago is a civil war within the Democratic party.  The economy continues slouching toward recession.  It’s much harder now for the liars to puff up the empty suit.

For the United States of America, the glass this week is near empty.  Zero’s chickens are coming home to roost.  But it darkest before the dawn.  For those of you fretting about last week’s polls, I want to leave you with a happier perspective.  Kevin Dujan is a well-connected gay activist in Chicago.  He’s been a big fan of Hillary Clinton, which is kind of easy to guess because he calls his blog "Hillbuzz."

But Mr. Dujan got turned off by Obama because of dirty tricks played in the 2008 primaries, and then by Democrats generally.  He’s now a big supporter of Mitt Romney.  He writes here of a lunch he had earlier this week on the Southside with influential black community leaders who call themselves "The Think Squad."  Read the whole thing, it will make you feel better.  Here are the highlights:

As one person at the table noted by waiving her hand at the scene out the window, "What the Hell has gotten any better since he became President.  Where’s all that hope and change?  All I see is crime and trash".

"Listen bud, there’s no second term nothing and they know as much," a Think Squader told me between bites of his bodacious sandwich. "All this is for show.  Axelrod has already moved on but no one knows what to do and they’re kind of just limping around without a plan hoping those Romney people mess up or the media drags them across the finish line.  But ain’t nobody in that top tier who thinks he’s going to win. It’s just not happening because they can’t fool people a second time".