More Election Frolics

It's better to review the polls than to write about Virginia and Oklahoma going about the business of passing Personhood Bills. We can expect some roadblocks up ahead since now the meme is that Obama is going to be re-elected. We are so far out from November that no one can be sure. At best Charlie Cook says that Obama's re-election chances now face a yellow-light and his prospects have improved over the past few months.

PPP produced an eye-popping poll today of Michigan, which showed a departure from their past two polls which showed Obama with roughly a 4 to 7 point lead. Today, Obama beats Romney there by 54 to 38. This would effectively retire Michigan as a swing state. Romney's favorable/unfavorable rating in his own home state is a stunning 29/58 split.

My morning started with an e-mail from a Romney stalwart in Michigan, who promised his readers that only a Romney victory in Michigan would enable the Republicans to have a chance to change the Obama Administration. As Romney said, "This is personal". The writer sounded desperate and frantic. Romney is about to dump millions into attacks ads against Santorum to destroy him in Michigan but Santorum continues to surge there. Santorum is out of the box first with his Rombo ad, which accuses Romney of spending $10 million to smear fellow Republicans.

While this internecine fighting is benefiting the Democrats,the Romney people feel they can pivot to the more reasonable Romney by the general election time. But the damage to Romney's credibility may be permanent. Nationwide, Romney now has a favorable rating of 31.2% and an unfavorable rating of 48.6%.

Today's CNN poll has Obama cresting to a 50% approval rating and a 13-pt drop in Republican enthusiasm for the presidential election. However, Republicans still retain a 51 to 49% edge over the Democrats in terms of the enthusiasm factor.

While Romney is the only one left with deep pockets, observers are pointing out that his personal campaign chest may have problems because he is totally dependent on $2,500 donors. Only 9% of his election campaign comes from small donors, compared to the millions supporting Obama. Of course, he can overcome this deficiency through his SuperPac that depends on Wall Street and Hedge Fund Managers for its millions. But the strictly campaign funding remains a problem further down the road.

The Dailykos decided to launch "Operation Hilarity".Since primaries like Michigan are "open", they urge Democrats to cross the line and vote for ole'Frothy Mix,an idea many of the site's bloggers find offensive. It resembles Rush Limbaugh's stunt last election of "Operation Chaos" of urging Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton to prolong the Democratic race.

At this stage, Santorum has pushed into the lead in Ohio,leading Willard by 36 to 29 and Gingrich a distant 20%.

Romney is beginning to resemble Rodney Dangerfield because he can't get no respect. Today, he signed a pledge against pornography, when it was revealed that he has accepted large donations from porn producers. And Politico slips a knife in when it reported a story that two of Romney's sons admit that the famous family pooch Seamus, who had been strapped to the top of the car, actually ran away in Canada, when the trip was finished.

Then Elie Wiesel,The Nobel Prize winning author and survivor of The Holocaust,demanded that Romney denounce the Mormon practice of posthumously baptizing Jews, particularly those who perished in the Holocaust. The Mormons were most recently under attack for baptizing celebrated Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

And, meanwhile in Waldo County, Maine, county Republican leaders are crying foul, saying their votes were not counted in the Maine Caucus and their county favored Ron Paul by 12 to 5. The local Republican chair said if Romney was the nominee he would vote for Obama.

Fox News decided to poll ten states in different regions, where Obama won by very small margins in 2008. In all ten, President Obama tops Romney by 8 and Santorum by 9. The reason I don't mention Gingrich is that Obama simply crushes Gingrich in almost all polls in the last couple months.

So I guess it is back to the religious wars. Yes, I am following them with disgust. But I have to hail the courage of Catholic Bishop R. Walker Nickles of Sioux City, who called for "violent" as in the usual meaning of violent,opposition to the so-called birth control mandate. In my world, this was an issue the Supreme Court resolved when I was a teenager. Unbelievably the U.S. Senate will vote on a law to outlaw the Obama mandate. Democrats view this as a way to demonstrate how extreme the Republicans have become.

Eugene Robinson had an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday about the conservatives rhetoric about the so-called "war against religion" by Obama. Some take the cake like Rick Santorum saying "Christians will be facing the guillotine in a second Obama administration."