Right Opinion
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The Polls That Ate the Presidential Contest
"I don't know," a very wise and skeptical Washington political analyst confided to me on Sunday as I limned the Romney victory I foresee. "I'd like to believe it," she said, "but I have to overlook a lot. If you're right, then a whole lotta state polls have to be wrong." Very true. But I'll climb all the way out onto a limb and assert that the state polls are wrong -- or at least misleading. Every four years we complain that the press covers the presidential contest as a horse race. This year sets some sort of new standard. This is the year that polls ate the campaign. I can't recall a presidential election that featured so many surveys or so much analysis of polls. We've been so focused on the numbers, the poll sample sizes, the partisan mix of respondents, poll biases and what we've all learned to call "the internals" that we've almost forgotten what the election is about. Every ad, slip of the tongue and peanut butter sandwich has been polled about. If married, white women in the suburbs of Philadelphia react positively to words like "bipartisanship," we've heard about it. People who cover politics are more familiar with the names Pew, Gallup, Rasmussen and Susquehana than with the names of their own children.
Mr. Top-Down Himself, Barack Obama
Before he touted "revenge" as a motive for supporting his reapplication for the presidential job, Barack H. Obama wished voters to appreciate how icky-yucky he finds "top-down economics." He renewed the theme in his closing electoral appeal. "The folks at the very top" (with Obama, it's always folks, never "people" or "citizens," but let that go), we learn, "don't need another champion in Washington." Did the gentleman ever get that one right! The top-down philosophy of governance -- I'm on top, and you're not -- has no more unbending champion in American politics than B. H. Obama himself. What Obama wishes "folks" to envision when he talks his "top-down" talk is a suite-ful of bankers, hedge fund managers and the like, all dressed in pinstriped suits. "Top-down economics," the way the president means it, is they run the show while mere middle-class strivers battle for jobs and bread.
A Jew Tours for Romney
I spent the last week of October speaking to thousands of Mitt Romney supporters in four "battleground" states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Virginia. I travelled with my Salem Radio Network colleagues Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, and the actor Jon Voight, one of the few Hollywood stars who is a politically outspoken conservative. During the tour, I often wished that every American Jew could have seen and heard what was said about Jews and Israel and how much time was devoted to Jews and Israel. The two non-Jews, Jon Voight and Hugh Hewitt, and whoever was the moderator (in no instance was it a Jew) emphasized support for Israel and the Jews -- in combatting Islamic anti-Semitism, in acknowledging the American and the Western world's debt to the Jews, and regarding the Jewish origins of Christianity -- as much as they did any American domestic issue, including the economy.
The Crazy Idea That the President Is 'Leader' of the Country
We think the president is like the CEO of our country, when in reality his job is more akin to head janitor.
You Should Vote for Obama if ...
The editors of the Washington Post, yesterday, published their closing editorial argument as to why people should vote for Barack Obama. Ok. That's not true. In fact, in the parlance of this campaign, "That's a *LIE!*" The editorial, titled, "Mitt Romney's Campaign Insults Voters" in the on-line version and "Contempt for Voters" in the print edition, was a 640 word essay on why Americans should *not* vote for Mitt Romney. That approach was, at a minimum, terribly defensive if not a sign of outright despair on the part of the hometown newspaper in a city that is about 92.5 percent Democrat, according to that same publication.
Victory or Defeat?
I'm seated here at my computer on Thursday, November 1, 2012, five days before the most important presidential election of my lifetime and very likely, the nation's. According to most polls, it's a dead heat. Frankly, I don't believe the polls. I believe that in spite of crooked voting machines, dead voters and third party candidates who will draw anti-Obama votes away from Mitt Romney, Romney will win. To some people, that will sound like wishful thinking. I won't deny I have a rooting interest. But I have believed all along that Romney would win the election once people who had been bombarded with Obama propaganda saw and heard the man unfiltered through the media. That happened during the first debate. What some Democratic partisans fail to acknowledge is that Obama didn't lose his advantage because he appeared to be in a coma, but because millions of voters got to see how much better off they and the ship of state would be with Romney at the helm.
My Voters Guide
This is my last JWR last column before the election, and my versions of a voter's guide. Vote for Obama you're OK with...
Going Out on a Limb: Romney Beats Obama, Handily
Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents, and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president. But it's also true that most voters oppose Obama's major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery -- Friday's job report showed an unemployment uptick. Also, both national and target state polls show that independents -- voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans -- break for Romney.
Rancid Rhetoric
Liberals are always up in arms over what they deem to be pollution of the atmosphere, whether it takes the form of global warming, oil exploration, fracking, coal mining or the internal combustion engine. What doesn't concern them in the least is the polluting of society, whether it's obscenity on the big screen, the small screen or, worse yet, the endless lies spewed by left-wing politicians and their whores in the media. Consider that liberals are always demanding that tax dollars be used to subsidize NPR and Public Broadcasting on the grounds that they provide education for children and adults, alike. They deny that the actual reason they campaign on behalf of these enterprises is because they are run by and for liberals. Instead, they go to the ramparts to defend Big Bird. It should be understood that Big Bird can buy and sell Mitt Romney, and needs our tax dollars about as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
Taking America's Pulse
What another lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, said of Milton's "Paradise Lost," can be said of this campaign: No one ever wished it longer. Voters, having heard enough, might agree that it is splendid that in "Hamlet" Polonius gets stabbed. He deserved this because his speech to Laertes taught politicians how to speak bromides.
The Final Days
I won't beat around the bush. I watched all of the GOP debates, I watched the Biden-Ryan debate and I even sat through all three of the presidential debates, and I don't think it's fair that I only get one vote that can be canceled out by the vote of one of those louts who got a free cell phone, thanks to Obama, or one of the guttersnipes who befouled our streets as a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In spite of that, I am feeling pretty confident about the upcoming election.
From The Comedy Store
Hurricane Sandy approached the U.S. mainland from the Bahamas and made landfall along the Eastern Seaboard. They were ready for it. Thanks to the president's economic policy, many of the businesses were already boarded up.
Was It Global Warming When Stronger Hurricanes Hit the East Coast in the 1950s?
It is frustrating to be out in front of the hurricane threat on the U.S. Coast, and then have people who either have not looked, or have, and are simply ignoring the facts, come in after the fact and make their claims. I have referred to these people as weather "voyeurs." They only look when it suits their purpose. In the private sector, our fight is every day, and the knowledge of the past and the reasons for the weather and climate are the foundations for any success in the future. A good meteorologist *has to know his weather and climate history* or he will fall prey to the whims of the computer models. Perhaps you saw some of that with Hurricane Sandy. Until the middle of the week before the storm, the U.S. generated model was taking the storm out to sea and there was denial in some circles that Sandy was going to come back and hit the coast.
Romney Will Win
As we have discussed before, someone -- and I tried to find the source of the quote, but couldn't -- said that "four years ago Barack Obama was on a crusade; this year he's in a campaign." Obama won the crusade, but Mitt Romney will win this campaign. I know ... I know. The polls are close. The national polls are tied; the state polls tilt toward Barack Obama. I know all that. But, Romney will win.
Poser of the United States: The Photo-Op Presidency
The official Obama 2012 campaign slogan is "Forward." The operational motto of the Obama administration is "Cheese." As in "say cheese." From hollow Greek columns to strategically released Situation Room candids, the Paparazzi President has put self-serving optics above all else. What did we get after four long years of expertly staged Kabuki-theater-meets-Potemkin-village productions? Sixteen trillion dollars in debt, a pile of dead bodies, troops at increased risk and a gallery of tax-subsidized Kodachrome pictures creating the grand illusion of leadership. On Monday night, as Hurricane Sandy bore down on the East Coast, Team Obama's image consultants released a photo showing POTUS purportedly in charge. The White House sent the picture out to 3.2 million Twitter followers with the message: "Photo: President Obama receives an update on the ongoing response to Hurricane #Sandy in the Situation Room."
Ellen DeGeneres, 'Sacred Cow' of PBS
The PBS broadcast of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize on Oct. 30 was a festival of tributes to Ellen DeGeneres -- which is fine, since she is quite talented comically. But it wasn't so much a tribute for the comedy as it was for her pioneering work promoting homosexuality. For laughs, consult top producer Cappy McGarr, who insisted Ellen wasn't picked for political reasons: "The Kennedy Center is apolitical. We have had so many people who have their own brand and type of humor. We don't pick winners because of any advocacy they do. It is all about funny and a funny life." DeGeneres certainly has earned her shelf full of People's Choice Awards. But in the Obama years, the Twain Prize has shifted unmistakably toward liberal politicking. In 2010, this gang chose 40-year-old Tina Fey for this lifetime-achievement honor, and she laid into conservatives from the stage. "I want to thank everyone involved with the Kennedy Center, or, as it will soon be known, the Tea Party Bowling Alley and Rifle Range."
Why Mitt Romney Will Win
A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have made this prediction, but with only days to go before the election, I'm confident Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States. My conviction has as much to do with my faith in the American people as it does my belief in Gov. Romney. Don't get me wrong, I think Gov. Romney is exactly what we need to get the economy out of the mess it's in and will make a very good president. But what I'm really counting on Election Day is the common sense of Americans to recognize they made a bad bargain in 2008. Barack Obama promised Hope and Change in 2008. Now he wants us to look Forward in 2012, which is just another way of saying 'don't look back on what I've accomplished -- or failed to -- in my first term.'
I'm Even More Confident That Mitt Will Win
I want to give you an updated list of reasons I believe that Mitt Romney will win the election Tuesday. So much information, so much confusion, so much uncertainty. But I don't think it's so complex as it seems. In 2008, a perfect storm developed for Barack Obama: an economic crisis, which was effectively, though unfairly, blamed on Republicans; war fatigue, which had been stoked by six years of Democratic anti-Bush propaganda; a messianic illusion personified in Obama, who was promising incomprehensibly wonderful yet undefined change and utopian-level bipartisanship; and a Republican opponent who all but forfeited the election to Obama (with the glorious exception of his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate).
Our Embassies, Our People
We have just observed the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In that two-week nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, President Kennedy showed a steely resolve. He was determined not to permit the USSR to move Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles within ninety miles of our shores. This would derange the whole balance of the East-West conflict, Kennedy believed. What Winston Churchill called "a balance of terror" depended on the forces of freedom not giving in under threat of violence and intimidation from the Kremlin and its Communist cats' paws throughout the world. President Kennedy's Secretary of State Dean Rusk described the denouement of the great power march to the brink of nuclear holocaust. Rusk said: "We were eyeball to eyeball and the other guy just blinked." Indeed he did blink. Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev was unwilling to fight World War III over his uncovered plot to put offensive missiles in Communist Cuba. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was enraged.
Stealth Islamist Charter Schools Under Investigation
The "Gulen Movement" empire unmasked.