Bill Brady

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Brady picking up 44% of the vote, while Quinn earns support from 37%. Eleven percent (11%) prefer a different candidate, and nine percent (9%) are undecided.

Earlier this month, Quinn pulled within three points of his challenger following an announcement that he was cutting state spending by $1 billion as he wrestles with one of the worst state budget deficits in the country.

But in June, Brady was ahead 47% to 36%. The Republican has maintained the lead since early March when he was declared the winner of the state GOP Primary. However, his support prior to this month has ranged slightly higher, from 45% to 47%. Support for the incumbent has remained in the narrow range of 36% to 40% since March.

The survey of 750 Likely Voters in Illinois was conducted on July 26, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Quinn, the elected lieutenant governor, rose to the top post following Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment by the State Senate last year on corruption charges.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Illinois voters approve of the job Brady is doing as governor, down seven points from earlier this month, while 61% disapprove.

The Republican holds a 13-point lead among men, but women are evenly divided between the candidates. Brady picks up support from 88% of Republicans, while Quinn is supported by only 61% of those in his party. Brady has a modest lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party.

The Illinois race for U.S. Senate between Democrat Alexi Giannoulias and Republican Mark Kirk remains very close.

Quinn is viewed Very Favorably by seven percent (7%) and Very Unfavorably by 32%.

Democratic spin doctors have set out how their side is going to hold onto a majority in the House. They’ll capture four at-risk Republican seats, hold half of the next 30 or so Democratic at-risk seats, and avoid significant losses on target seats lower on the list.

That’s one plausible scenario. The shift of opinion away from Democrats so evident in the polls could turn out to be illusory. The widely held assumption that Republicans will turn out in greater numbers than Democrats could prove wrong.

Democratic candidates do indeed have a money advantage in many close races, and their campaign committee has more cash than its Republican counterpart.

All that said, this Democratic spin sounds a lot like the Republican spin back in the 2006 cycle. If the numbers don’t change too much from 2004, Republicans said then, we can hold on. If the numbers don’t change too much from 2008, Democrats think now, they can hold on.

But the Republicans, as George W. Bush said, took “a thumping” in 2006. And most signs suggest Democrats will take a thumping this year, too.

To see why, take a look at the generic ballot question: Which party’s candidate will you vote for in elections to the House? The current realclearpolitics.com average shows Republicans ahead by 45 percent to 41 percent. Ten of this month’s 15 opinion polls asking the question had Republicans ahead; Democrats led in four (twice by 1 percent), and one poll showed a tie.

Keep in mind that the generic ballot question historically has tended to under-predict Republican performance in off-year elections. Gallup has been asking the question since 1950 and has shown Republicans leading only in two cycles, 1994 and 2002, and then by less than the 7 and 5 points by which they won the popular vote for the House in those years.

So the Republicans’ current lead in the generic ballot question suggests they may be on the brink of doing better than in any election since 1946, when they won a 245-188 margin in the House — larger than any they’ve held ever since.

Another metric is daunting for Democrats. Polls in House races almost always show incumbents ahead of challengers, because incumbent members of Congress are usually much better known than their opponents. An incumbent running below 50 percent is considered potentially in trouble; an incumbent running behind a challenger is considered in deep doo-doo.

In 1994, I wrote an article in U.S. News & World Report arguing that there was a serious chance that Republicans could capture the 40 seats that they needed then, as now, for a majority in the House. It was the first mainstream media piece suggesting that, and it appeared on the newsstands on July 11.

I cited as evidence five polls showing incumbent Democratic congressmen trailing Republican challengers. None of those Democrats had scandal problems; all five lost in November.

Today, a lot more Democratic incumbents seem to be trailing Republican challengers in polls. Jim Geraghty of National Review Online has compiled a list of 13 Democratic incumbents trailing in polls released over the last seven weeks.

They’re from all over the country: one each from Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota; two from Virginia; three from Pennsylvania. Most if not all of these incumbents are personally attractive, hardworking and ethically unsullied.

Some of these poll numbers are mind-boggling. Tom Perriello, a 727-vote winner in Virginia 5 in 2008, has been running two weeks of humorous ads showing what a hard worker he is. A poll shows him trailing Republican state Sen. Robert Hurt 58 percent to 35 percent.

In industrial Ohio 13, which Barack Obama carried 57 to 42, a poll shows incumbent Betty Sutton trailing free-spending Republican Tom Ganley 44 percent to 31 percent.

As Geraghty notes, we haven’t seen polls released by many other Democrats on Republican target lists. Most are conducting polls; many have reason to release favorable results if they’re available. This looks like a case where the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Two years ago, Barack Obama was elected president with a historic 53 percent of the vote — more than any other Democrat in history except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

These metrics — the generic ballot results and polls in individual districts — suggest that House Democrats are headed toward historic losses. Quite a swing in 18 months.

The bill would have subjected donors of grassroots organizations to public scrutiny and regulatory harassment whether their contribution was used for the broadcast of an ad advocating the election or defeat of a candidate or not. So, for example, if someone wrote a large contribution to an organization opposing higher taxes, even if other funds were used to broadcast an express advocacy communication, the donor would be reported to the Federal Election Commission. It is an attempt by the Democrats in the Senate to regulate and restrict speech, silence critics of their extremist policies, and intimidate opponents of the administration and the Democratic majority.

It tramples on the First Amendment and the freedom of association. Unless, that is, you are a labor union—groups funded with membership dues are largely exempt. What a surprise! As is the Sierra Club. And the National Rifle Association, which vowed to score a vote for the DISCLOSE Act as a vote against gun rights. Democrats knew that would defeat the bill so they carved out a safe harbor for the NRA. This is not equal protection under the law; it is Chicago-style thuggery.

A broad, bipartisan coalition opposes the DISCLOSE Act. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes the bill because it violates the First Amendment. So does just about every conservative organization in the country. The Faith and Freedom Coalition joined a coalition letter sent to every member of the U.S. Senate opposing the bill. We will also score the vote on millions of Congressional Scorecards being distributed after Congress recesses so citizens know how their member of Congress voted, who voted to gut the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and who stood up for freedom of speech.

This bill is a dagger aimed at the heart of our most basic and cherished rights as Americans. In some ways it is a more important issue than any single legislative vote, because if grassroots organizations fighting for faith and freedom can be silenced, our freedoms are not secure. If you think this is hyperbole, I recommend you go back and read the oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, which sparked this battle in the first place. In those oral arguments, the Solicitor General’s office (headed by Elena Kagan) argued that the federal government could outlaw books published in proximity to an election if they appeared to favor a candidate and were paid for with corporate funds.

This attempted power grab speaks to a broader culture of corruption. Yes, the Republicans lost their way in the latter years of their majority, but the Democrats have one-upped them. The DISCLOSE Act was an attempt to rig an election to favor one party over the other, silencing some philosophical advocacy organizations while exempting others. Harry Reid hijacked the bill, bypassed the committee process, drafted the Senate bill in a smoke-filled room, and held no hearings. This is a corruption of the legislative process. The fact that the leading sponsors were the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Chuck Schumer (until recently chair of the Democratic Senate campaign committee) tells one all that is needed about the motives behind the legislation. This is not campaign finance reform. It is the subversion of government to advance political or personal gain. It has been a pattern. This is the same gang that gave us Charlie Rangel, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase and the White House’s attempt to bribe candidates out of primaries with the offer of government jobs.

Fortunately, America is not Venezuela. As a result of yesterday’s vote, our rights to speak, organize and inform voters how members of Congress have voted and where they stand on the issues are safe…but only for now. However, the bill is not dead. Senator Joe Lieberman was not present, and he supports the bill. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer have vowed to bring it back again and again until they pass it. We must remain vigilant and defeat it.

When Ben Franklin was asked after the Constitutional convention what kind of government the framers had designed for the American people, he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Let’s keep it, and not let this Congress and Barack Obama take it away.

Today, by only a one vote margin, the liberals in the U.S. Senate failed to invoke cloture and end debate on the so-called “DISCLOSE” Act. If passed, the cynical DISCLOSE Act championed by liberals Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer would have suppressed the First Amendment free speech rights of conservative organizations while creating carve-outs for liberal organizations of which Schumer and Reid approve.

Faith & Freedom joined with dozens of other major conservative organizations in signing a coalition letter to every member of the U.S. Senate calling on them to vote “NO” on cloture and final passage. Additionally, FFC contacted our 400,000 members and activists and asked them to contact their U.S. Senator and urge them to oppose the bill.

The DISCLOSE Act supported by Congressional Democrats was one of the most egregious and transparent power grabs in the history of modern politics. It made public disclosure of donors to grassroots conservative organizations, whether they funded a political communication or not, subjecting contributors to potential regulatory and public harassment in a clear attempt to intimidate private citizens or corporations from supporting grassroots groups such as FFC. In a partisan power grab, it exempted labor unions, the Sierra Club, and other liberal advocacy groups. It also exempted the National Rifle Association, primarily because Harry Reid and Democrats knew if the NRA was included in the bill, it would go down to defeat.

“Faith & Freedom Coalition is proud to have joined dozens of major conservative organizations in ensuring liberal Democrats in the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the DISCLOSE Act today,” said Faith & Freedom Coalition Executive Director Gregg Keller. “We communicated with every member of the U.S. Senate prior to this vote, asking for their opposition to this cynical piece of liberal legislation. We asked our grassroots army of more than 400,000 members across the country to make their voices heard on this issue and we were glad to help make sure that their words were heeded.”

You can read more about the defeat of the DISCLOSE Act here.

Arizona school children are told they can’t pray in front of the Supreme Court building … Two University of Texas Arlington employees are fired for praying over a co-worker’s cubicle after work hours … In Cranston, R.I., a high school banner causes controversy when a parent complains it contains a prayer and demands that it be removed.

There are more legal challenges to prayer in the United States than ever before, says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist organization whose business is booming as Americans increasingly tackle church vs. state issues.

“We’ve never had more complaints about government prayer,” Gaylor says. “We have just hired a second staff attorney in July. It’s turned into a cottage industry for our attorneys.”

The foundation has had a huge volume of complaints about prayer in the public sector, including numerous issues involving civic and government meetings where sessions have traditionally begun with a prayer or moment of silence.

In Augusta, Ga., the city’s law department just issued a legal opinion defending the city’s practice of a pre-meeting prayer, saying it does not violate federal law. The statement was in response to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s letter to the mayor’s office urging him to stop the invocations at the start of meetings. The foundation sent similar letters to three cities in South Carolina.

“These are flagrant violations of the laws,” Gaylor says.

Not so, says Nate Kellum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Arizona school children and their teacher, Maureen Rigo, who say they were told they couldn’t pray on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

“Religious liberties are under attack across the country,” Kellum says. “My sense is that there’s some type of knee-jerk reaction, almost an allergic reaction, if someone sees the expression of religion,” he says.

And the bulk of the complaints are directed at Christians, he says.

“There’s an overreaching presumption that there’s something wrong,” he says.

But Gaylor says there’s no country in the world where religion flourishes as much as in the United States, and she says conflicts over public expression are going to increase.

“Fifteen percent of the people are not religious,” she says. “There’s an increasing plurality of faiths. It’s inevitable there’s going to be this clash with more people being offended.”

Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, represents the two University of Texas employees who were fired for praying over a co-worker’s desk after hours. The co-worker was not there at the time and didn’t know until months later why the employees were fired.

The university, in legal documents, said it the employee’s prayer had been deemed harassment. Judge Terry Means of the U.S. Federal District Court in Ft. Worth rejected that argument.

“One of the women just said ‘amen’ while the other prayed,” Shackelford said. “So she was fired for just saying ‘amen.’”

“It’s just so crazy!” he said. “There’s a hostility, and there are folks who want to change this country and want to engage in some kind of religious cleansing.”

Shackelford is also part of the legal team that filed a brief on Thursday defending the National Day of Prayer, which a federal judge ruled unconstitutional in April. Though the Justice Department announced one week later that it planned to appeal the judge’s ruling, and despite President Obama’s proclamation of National Prayer Day the next month, the Liberty Institute along with the Family Research Council took legal action because of what they claim is “the Obama Administration’s weak defense of the NDP.”

The council’s president, Tony Perkins, issued a statement saying, “The President’s attorneys failed to cite any of the key cases that would require immediate dismissal of this lawsuit because the plaintiffs lack standing to bring it. FRC plans to mount a robust defense of this important national event that a liberal judge has attempted to scrub from the public square.”

Shackelford says, “The thing that makes [America] unique is that we believe our freedoms don’t come from government, they come from God.”

But it’s exactly beliefs about God that form the core of the legal conflicts, and will continue to do so — because whether people believe in God is something no court can have jurisdiction over.

The idea that Mel Gibson’s misconduct somehow signals the downfall of religious conservatism is nonsense. A movement for time-honored values built over three decades and enjoying the support of one out of every four voters does not slide into the abyss because of the behavior of a Hollywood actor. Recall that when the televangelism scandals erupted in the 1980’s and the Moral Majority closed its doors, many rushed to proclaim the movement’s death-knell. Within a few years the Christian Coalition had enrolled two million members and activists and a Republican Congress reformed welfare, cut taxes, balanced the budget, and passed a ban on partial-birth abortion. Whoops.

Faith-based conservatism is actually enjoying a quiet resurgence. Consider the election of Bob McDonnell as governor of Virginia in 2009. After weathering withering attacks for a Regent University master’s thesis advocating pro-family public policy, McDonnnell won by a landslide. Self-identified evangelical voters were 34% of the electorate, the largest on record, and they voted 91% for McDonnell. Or the election of Chris Christie, the first pro-life governor in New Jersey. Previous victorious GOP nominees for governor like Tom Kean and Christie Todd Whitman ran as pro-choice candidates. But Christie’s candidacy energized Catholic and pro-life voters, and the results showed at the ballot box, where he carried self-identified “values voters.” One of his first appointments was Bret Schundler, a conservative champion, as commissioner of education.

For further evidence of the continued vibrancy of the pro-family constituency, look no further than Sarah Palin’s endorsements, which have propelled conservative women like Sharron Angle and Nikki Haley to victory. These “mama grizzlies” are rightly identified with the Tea Party movement, but they are also women of deep faith who strongly support marriage, life, and family. If they were not, they would not have won. Many were aided by the Susan B. Anthony List, the pro-life women’s group that is giving feminism a conservative twist.

(Incidentally, Haley’s victory shows the short-sightedness of proclaiming the movement’s demise because of the personal failings of some. The media trumpeted Mark Sanford’s extramarital affair and subsequent divorce. But none of that mattered at the ballot box. Haley, one of Sanford’s strongest allies in the legislature, won going away.)

The health care debate also showed the potency of values. Obamacare would not have passed in the House without a carve-out for pro-life Democrats, who then found themselves subsequently betrayed by the Senate and the White House. So strong was the backlash when they caved that Bart Stupak of Michigan retired from Congress rather than face defeat. There is no telling how many Blue Dog Democrats will lose their seats this fall because they voted against the pro-life convictions of their districts, but the number could be large.

When those we admire (or those we do not) stumble, we should hate the sin but love the sinner. When Jesus approached the adulteress, he did not condemn her, but rather rebuked those who wanted to stone her and commanded her to sin no more. We should do the same.

Rich’s timing seems odd, given the bleak prospects for Democrats in November. Something tells me when the votes are counted in 2010, pro-family conservatives will be able to say, in the words of Mark Twain, that the premature reports of their death are greatly exaggerated.

I’ve been thrilled to return to my old political stomping grounds of Iowa for most of this week to hold meetings with our dynamic Iowa FFC President, Steve Scheffler. Although we have 23 FFC affiliates organized across the country, Iowa is certainly one of our strongest thanks to Steve and our team here. Steve and I held meetings with local business and community leaders in Dubuque, Davenport, Waterloo and Des Moines, spreading the word about what Iowa FFC is doing to identify, educate and turnout conservatives in 2010 and 2012 in the Hawkeye State.

Kim Reynolds

The highlight of my visit to Iowa, however, was certainly the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition house party hosted by Jeff and Melissa Jochims in Clive Thursday night. The house party was a tremendous success, with nearly 100 attendees. We were joined by some fantastic conservative candidates who will be on the ballot in November, including: Sen. Kim Reynolds, candidate for Lieutenant Governor; Brenna Findley, who is running for Attorney General; Matt Schultz, who is an exciting young candidate for Secretary of State; Story County Treasurer Dave Jamison who hopefully will be promoted after election day; and, Sen. Brad Zaun who has the honor of taking on Washington insider liberal Leonard Boswell.

There may not be a state in the country this year that has a more impressive group of young, aggressive, smart conservatives running statewide than Iowa. It will be exciting there come Election Day!

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.

To read the full article click here.

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voter shows Kasich picking up 48% support, while the current governor earns 43% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer a different candidate, and another five percent (5%) are undecided.

To read the full article click here.

Describing the White House last week, Congressional Democrats used words like “ineptness,” “neglected” and “disconcerting,” and phrases like “isn’t aggressive enough.” President Barack Obama has only himself to blame for these protests.

Harry Reid

Well, maybe more than just himself. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs may have spoken the truth when he admitted Democrats could lose the House. He forgot that White House staffers are expected to be advocates, not prognosticators, when their party faces electoral defeat. Mr. Gibbs need not lie, but he could have been discreet.

While an angry response to Mr. Gibbs from Hill Democrats was expected, several factors produced an unusually fierce reaction. First, Democrats in Congress feel underappreciated for having cast tough votes. True, they wanted to pass health care, the stimulus, record deficits, and cap and trade. They thought these would be political winners. But now they feel exposed for supporting unpopular policies they consider poorly explained and badly defended by the administration.

Then there is the White House’s practice of outsourcing the drafting of major legislation to Democratic chairmen. This has made congressional Democrats more sensitive when Mr. Obama exerts himself, as he did with a threatened veto of a spending bill that trimmed his education priorities. One Democratic committee chairman (George Miller) affected by the veto threat complained, “there’s no strategy there,” while another (David Obey) fumed, “there’s a lot I don’t know about this administration.”

Third, Hill Democrats were upset when the president brought up immigration reform without consulting them. Vulnerable Democrats know this issue may help Mr. Obama in the long run, but it jeopardizes them in this midterm. Obama aides stoked their ire further by boneheadedly conceding this point to reporters.

Then there is the record of Mr. Obama’s short stint in the Senate. Congressional Democrats saw that he didn’t apply himself to the business of legislating, nor lead any major battle. Instead, he was singularly focused on winning the presidency. They applaud him for winning, but they neither fear nor respect his legislative skills and now ask why he gets the credit while they receive the public blame.

Mr. Obama’s arrogance, coolness and diffidence also make it difficult for him to nurture close friendships, personal trust and mutual respect with the poobahs on the Hill. And so House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the president’s press secretary “politically inept” and condemned the “friendly fire” from the White House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid snapped, “I do not work for Barack Obama, I work with him.”

This problem is exacerbated by the poor or nonexistent ties between many of Mr. Obama’s top aides and Democrats on the Hill. Some of his aides were Congressional staffers, but senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett are virtual unknowns to Congress. And while Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was the congressman who chaired the Democrats’ campaign that reclaimed the House in 2006, he is not known for his warmth, empathy and easy working relationships.

Then there’s a belief around Capitol Hill that the White House is already pointing the finger at them for the coming fall’s losses. That’s in keeping with a pattern: After all, Team Obama publicly trashed its gubernatorial candidate in Virginia last fall and its Massachusetts senatorial hopeful last winter, weeks before their elections.

Congressional Democrats also worry the president is insufficiently concerned about the November election. Maybe the White House believes Democrats have seats to give, that its agenda may be more achievable with fewer moderate Democrats, or that Mr. Obama can win re-election in 2012 more easily with a Republican Congress to blame.

Finally, congressional Democrats are frustrated the president doesn’t do more to help them. The problem here is that he can’t. His approval rating was 54% when his party was walloped in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts last fall. Now it’s 47% in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls. Mr. Obama’s presence will hurt more than help in many swing races. Even his fund raising isn’t going as well as expected. A recent presidential fund-raising event in Missouri had to discount tickets to fill otherwise empty chairs.

The White House’s appearance of institutional and personal arrogance has left congressional Democrats divided and discontent going into the midterms. It weakens Democratic efforts not only this year, but well into the future. Having once fostered the impression that it’s every Democrat for himself, the president will find it hard to undo the damage when his own name is on the ballot.

Mr. Obama is already learning from his own party the meaning of payback.

Pat Toomey

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state shows Toomey with 45% support, while Sestak earns 38% of the vote. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Last month, Toomey held a near-identical 45% to 39% lead.

In fact, except for a brief surge after his mid-May victory over incumbent Arlen Specter in the state’s Democratic Senate Primary, support for Sestak has remained in the 36% to 40% range in matchups with Toomey back to February. In those same surveys, Toomey has received 42% to 47% of the vote.

With this latest result, the race is shifting from Toss-Up to Leans Republican in the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power rankings.

Findings in Pennsylvania mirror the political mood found in much of the country, with voters pessimistic about the economy and critical of government actions like the new national health care bill and the federal legal challenge of Arizona’s immigration law.

Only eight percent (8%) of Pennsylvania voters rate the economy as good or excellent, while almost half (49%) view the state of the economy as poor. Twenty-six percent (26%) say the economy is getting better, but 46% feel it is getting worse.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters in the state say the country is in recession, and just 19% disagree.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This statewide telephone survey of 750 Likely Voters in Pennsylvania was conducted on July 14, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Pennsylvania voters favor repeal of the new national health care bill which Sestak voted for as a member of the House, while 35% oppose repeal. This is a bit higher than support for repeal nationwide. In the Keystone State, this includes 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 24% who Strongly Oppose it.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of the larger group that Strongly Favors repeal support Toomey. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of those Strongly Opposed to repeal back Sestak.

Thirty-one percent (31%) of all voters in Pennsylvania agree with the Justice Department’s decision to challenge Arizona’s law in federal court, but 56% disagree with that decision. That’s comparable to views nationally.

Nineteen percent (19%) of Pennsylvania voters have a Very Favorable opinion of Toomey, while 10% view him Very Unfavorably.

Sestak is viewed Very favorably by 19% and Very Unfavorably by 14%.

Fifteen percent (15%) don’t know enough about either candidate to venture any kind of opinion of him. At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Toomey holds modest leads among both male and female voters. He captures 78% of the GOP vote and 19% of Democrats, while Sestak gets just 62% support in his own party. Voters not affiliated with either party prefer the Republican by a two-to-one margin.

Republican State Attorney General Tom Corbett holds a 10-point lead again this month over Democrat Dan Onorato in Pennsylvania’s race for governor.

‘We don’t like this fundamental transformation, and we’re going to do something about it.” With that line, in her savvy “Mama Grizzlies” video, Sarah Palin may have captured not only the political mood of much of the country, but also why women seem to be getting ready to make tea — and political hay — this year.

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, agrees that this is only a beginning and that this “year of the conservative woman” meme is a real growth opportunity for the Republican party: “I think there is a genuine chance to change the face of the GOP and reach an entire generation of women. Palin was the booster rocket.” This may not quite be Elizabeth Dole’s cup of tea. Palin signals, as Reed puts it, “a generational change” in the GOP “to a younger, feistier, post-feminist, Tea Party–style woman.” He adds that many of them “are Christian, conservative feminists . . . if that is not an oxymoron. At a minimum, the message of empowering women is a powerful subtext in their candidacies and their politics.”

Good advertising is not everything in politics. But it sure doesn’t hurt. Kellyanne Conway, president of the polling company, says the former governor of Alaska, with her bearish message, “is calling for a Moms’ Mobilization to encourage millions of women like her to tell Washington to tighten its belt the way they’ve done. Women make up a majority of the workforce and account for 83 percent of household purchases. Palin is encouraging them to become more active and demanding as political consumers. Some are enraged, others engaged, but most are coming to a ballot box near you. Palin is a good messenger for this mobilization because she is one of them. They may like her — or not — but they are like her: a working mom with no Ivy League degree who thinks Washington’s ‘new math’ does not add up.”

Many political observers thought the video was the opening salvo of — or at least the trailer for — the Sarah Palin 2012 presidential campaign. When, days later, her PAC issued impressive second-quarter fundraising results, that speculation only increased. But to focus on Palin is to underestimate what’s going on in American politics.

It’s not just Palin or even the cast of other attractive women who are running for office as Republicans. The “year of the conservative woman” is manifesting itself in a big way in the tea-party movement. The Sam Adams Alliance, which has done a series of surveys on people who identify themselves as tea partiers, reports that at least 45 percent of tea-party leaders are women, including some who have never had a career outside the home but feel the need to organize their communities. Quinnipiac similarly has found 44 percent of self-identified tea-party supporters to be women.

The Sam Adams Alliance’s Anne Sorock says she has seen women “empowered through the tea parties.” It’s the kind of movement the women’s movement would be if it weren’t really more about liberal politics than about representing women in America.

There’s a tumult in our society today. We see it in Washington and we see it in our churches and our schools and even, not infrequently, our own families. And Americans are increasingly not comfortable with it and, in my experience, are increasingly determined to take action.

Women do worry and may naturally be the arms to reach first to pull us back from this brink, to encourage a back-to-basics approach. “Attitudes about risk may partially account for their prominence in the movement,” John J. Pitney Jr., politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, offers. “Many studies suggest that women tend to be more risk-averse than men. In the past, this risk aversion helped liberals by making women more receptive to their arguments on issues such as environmental protection and nuclear proliferation. But now, a liberal administration is restructuring health care and running the federal debt up to the stratosphere — which a lot of people regard as scary and risky.”

Conway agrees:

Women generally favor modest change but fear and abhor overhaul, revolution, and transformation. It is easy to show how the past 18 months have been a radical departure from common sense and the solutions women tell pollsters they favor. Plus, Obama’s priority list does not match their own. They rejected the health-care bill; he signed it into law. They say jobs and the economy should be the top focus; his actions have made things worse.

Conway believes the message of that Palin video has a powerful potential. No longer are women in politics cheered on only by a pink-T-shirted army of Planned Parenthood interns:

Women’s savvy stewardship of kitchen-table economics is spilling over into conversancy with and concern about macroeconomic issues like bailouts, the cost and implications of overhauling health care, the federal budget deficit. It amazes me to hear women recite facts and figures about specific policy issues. With women looking at politics through green eye shadow, Palin is subtly challenging the tired “women’s right to choose” message of yesteryear as the best way to attract women to participate.

And, while conservative women or women in Republican politics more generally are not a new phenomenon, what’s especially remarkable right now is that outside observers are noticing this new feminine pull in center-right politics. Conservative women are on the covers of magazines and the subject of prime-time debates. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, wonders if “an unintended consequence of the Tea Party” might just be a change in the look of the Republican party nationally.

Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, agrees that this is only a beginning and that this “year of the conservative woman” meme is a real growth opportunity for the Republican party: “I think there is a genuine chance to change the face of the GOP and reach an entire generation of women. Palin was the booster rocket.” This may not quite be Elizabeth Dole’s cup of tea. Palin signals, as Reed puts it, “a generational change” in the GOP “to a younger, feistier, post-feminist, Tea Party–style woman.” He adds that many of them “are Christian, conservative feminists . . . if that is not an oxymoron. At a minimum, the message of empowering women is a powerful subtext in their candidacies and their politics.”

It’s not an oxymoron at all. It’s a factor that has been at the heart of so much of American family and church life. And now that the cultural upheaval that has been creeping into our lives since the Sixties is fundamentally threatening our national identity, the natural protective instincts of women are kicking in even on a political level, in an undeniable way.

And here, it may be best to let the men have the last word.

John Paul II called it the “feminine genius.” Alexis de Tocqueville chivalrously observed it in us: “If anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.”

The rise of the mama grizzlies hardly spells “the end of men,” John Pitney emphasizes, knowing that one prominent magazine recently declared just that. It’s simply confirmation, once again, of the complementarity of the sexes and the gifts each one brings to the table, essential even for politics.

Maybe it is all about sex, after all. Just not in the way the sexual revolution told us.

Patty Murray

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Washington State finds Republican hopefuls Dino Rossi and Clint Didier both earning 48% support in match-ups with Murray. She, in turn, picks up 45% of the vote against the two GOP challengers. Less than 10% of voters in both cases prefer some other candidate in the race or are undecided.

In June, Murray and Rossi were tied as they have been in virtually every survey this year. Since the beginning of the year, Murray has earned 46% to 48% of the vote, while Rossi’s support has ranged from 46% to 49%.

Incumbents that fall short of 50% at this stage of a campaign are considered potentially vulnerable, but worrisome for Murray is that this is her poorest showing of the year. She was reelected to a third term in 2004 with 55% of the vote.

Washington is one of nine states currently characterized as Toss-Ups in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings.

Last month, Murray led Didier, a former professional football player, 48% to 40%. Prior to that survey, Didier’s support had ranged from 30% to 37% since January. In the same time period, Murray earned 47% to 51% in match-ups with Didier.

A third Republican hopeful, businessman Paul Akers, continues to trail Murray. But in the latest survey, the incumbent leads Akers 46% to 41%, while a month ago she was ahead 48% to 38%.

Republicans will pick their candidate in an August 17 primary, but Rossi, a two-time unsuccessful candidate for governor, is still considered the favorite in the race.

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The survey of 750 Likely Voters in Washington was conducted on July 14, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Male voters prefer the Republican in every matchup, while female voters lean toward the Democrat.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Rossi leads by slightly better than two-to-one. Didier fares nearly as well, with Akers ahead but not as strongly in this group.

Just seven percent (7%) of Washington voters now rate the economy as good or excellent, while nearly half (49%) say it’s poor. Thirty percent (30%) think the economy is getting better, but 45% say it’s getting worse.

Seventy-two percent (72%) say the country is in recession.

Support for last year’s $787-billion economic stimulus plan which Murray supported is higher in Washington than it is nationally with voters in the state closely divided over whether it helped or hurt the economy. But even in Washington, only 30% think the increased spending in the stimulus plan created new jobs, while 52% disagree and say it did not create any new jobs.

By a 58% to 25% margin, voters in the state say cutting taxes is a better way to create jobs than increasing government spending.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of Washington voters favor repeal of the national health care bill, which Murray supported, while 44% oppose repeal. This is in line with voter sentiments nationally and includes 43% who Strongly Favor repeal and 37% who are Strongly Opposed.

Murray earns nearly 90% support in all three matchups from those who Strongly Oppose repeal. Rossi and Didier run nearly as strongly among those who Strongly Favor repeal.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of all voters in the state agree with the U.S. Justice Department decision to challenge Arizona’s new immigration law in federal court. Fifty-six percent (56%) disagree with this decision, identical to opposition nationally.

But support for a law like Arizona’s in the state is lower than support nationwide. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Washington voters favor passage of such a law in their state, but 38% are opposed.

Murray is viewed Very Favorably by 28% of voters in the state and Very Unfavorably by 36%, up five points from a month ago.

For Rossi, Very Favorables are 27% and Very Unfavorables 20%, down five points from the previous survey.

Fourteen percent (14%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Didier, while 16% view him Very Unfavorably.

Just five percent (5%) share a Very Favorable view of Akers, with 12% who regard him Very Unfavorably. But like Didier, a sizable number of voters in the state don’t know enough about him to venture any kind of opinion. Rossi and Murray are very well-known, by comparison.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Marking little change from last month, 50% of the state’s voters approve of the job President Obama is doing, while 49% disapprove. This is slightly better than Obama’s job approval ratings nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Forty-two percent (42%) approve of Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire’s job performance, but 55% disapprove. This, too, is virtually unchanged from the previous survey.

Russ Feingold

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Wisconsin finds Johnson with 47% support, while the Democrat earns 46% of the vote. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

This is the third straight month with Feingold attracting 46% of the vote and all three months have shown a close race. A month ago, Johnson had 45%. Two months ago, Johnson was at 44%.

Feingold was reelected in 2004 with 55% of the vote but like many Democratic incumbents nationwide is running into a lot of unhappiness in the electorate. The closeness of the race has prompted Feingold, a member of the Senate since 1993, to begin airing a radio ad last week portraying himself as a political outsider.

Wisconsin is one of nine Toss-Up states in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings.

Johnson still faces a primary challenge from fellow businessman Dave Westlake. State Republicans will pick their nominee in a September 14 primary, but Johnson is expected to prevail.

If Westlake is the GOP nominee, Feingold has a much easier time for now. Feingold picks up 51% support in that match-up, while Westlake earns 37%. Six percent (6%) favor another candidate, and six percent (6%) more are undecided.

In match-ups with Westlake dating back to February, Feingold has captured 47% to 51% of the vote. Westlake’s support has run from 35% to 41%.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 750 Likely Voters in Wisconsin was conducted on July 13, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Feingold captures more than 90% of the Democratic voter against either Republican. Johnson picks up 93% of the GOP vote, while Westlake earns 75% support in his own party. Voters not affiliated with either party prefer Johnson by 16 points but break even if Westlake is the Republican in the race.

Only eight percent (8%) of all Wisconsin voters rate the U.S. economy as good or excellent, while nearly half (49%) describe it as poor. Thirty-two percent (32%) say the economy is getting better, but 41% think it is getting worse.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) say the country is in a recession.

Voters in the state are evenly divided over whether the $787-billion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress has helped or hurt the economy. That’s a much more positive assessment than is offered by voters nationwide.[

Still, just 27% in Wisconsin think the stimulus plan created new jobs. Fifty-six percent (56%) disagree and say no new jobs were created by the spending.

Sixty-one percent (61%) say cutting taxes is a better way than increased government spending to create jobs. Only 18% think increased spending is a better idea.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Wisconsin voters favor repeal of the new national health care plan, while 40% oppose repeal. This is in line with voter sentiments nationally. The findings in Wisconsin include 42% who Strongly Favor repeal and 28% who Strongly Oppose it.

Despite a crowded agenda, Democratic leaders want to move the DISCLOSE Act this work period in order to blunt the effect this November of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case that cleared the way for unlimited corporate and union spending on elections.

To read the full article click here.

Scott Brown on DISCLOSE

Action item: write, call or email Senator Brown today and tell him “thank you” for defending the First Amendment right to free speech, 2400 JFK Federal Building, Boston, MA 02203, Phone: (617) 565-3170, Fax: (617) 723-7325.

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

Regard for Obama is still higher than it is for members of Congress, but the gap has narrowed. About seven in 10 registered voters say they lack confidence in Democratic lawmakers and a similar proportion say so of Republican lawmakers.

Overall, more than a third of voters polled — 36 percent — say they have no confidence or only some confidence in the president, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans. Among independents, this disillusionment is higher still. About two-thirds of all voters say they are dissatisfied with or angry about the way the federal government is working.

Such broad negative sentiments have spurred a potent anti-incumbent mood. Just 26 percent of registered voters say they are inclined to support their representative in the House this fall; 62 percent are inclined to look for someone new.

Democrats nationally remain on the defensive as they seek to retain both houses of Congress this fall. Registered voters are closely divided on the question of whether they will back Republicans or Democrats in House races. Among those who say they are sure to cast ballots in November, 49 percent side with the GOP and 45 percent with Democrats.

Overall, a slim majority of all voters say they would prefer Republican control of Congress so that the legislative branch would act as a check on the president’s policies. Those most likely to vote in the midterms prefer the GOP over continued Democratic rule by a sizable margin of 56 percent to 41 percent.

Economic worries continue to frame the congressional campaigns. Almost all Americans rate the economy negatively, although compared with the depths of the recession in early 2009, far fewer now describe economic conditions as “poor.” Only about a quarter of all Americans think the economy is improving.

Recent economic developments — a declining stock market, problems in the housing industry and an unemployment report showing only tepid job growth in the private sector — may have bruised the president’s ratings.

Just 43 percent of all Americans now say they approve of the job Obama is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove. Both are the worst, marginally, of his presidency. Even a third of Democrats give him negative marks here. And overall, intensity runs clearly against the president on the issue, with twice as many people rating him strongly negative as strongly positive.

At the same time, Democrats generally continue to hold the edge over Republicans when it comes to dealing with the nation’s fragile economy. But that Democratic lead is slimmer than it was in 2006 before the party won back control of Congress. And among those most likely to vote this year, 39 percent trust the Democrats more and 40 percent the Republicans. About 17 percent of likely voters put their confidence in neither side.

Public opinion is split down the middle on the question of whether the government should spend more money to stimulate the economy in a way that leads to job creation. Among those who support such new spending, 18 percent change their minds when asked what they think if such outlays could sharply increase the budget deficit. In that scenario, 57 percent opposed another round of spending.

About six in 10 Democrats say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favors new government spending, while 55 percent of Republicans say they would be less likely to do so. Independent voters are divided on the question, with 41 percent more apt to oppose and 35 percent to support.

On at least one issue pending in Congress there is broader agreement: A sizable majority says the government should extend unemployment benefits.

Most Democrats and independents support increasing the time limit on government payments for jobless claims, and they are joined by 43 percent of Republicans. The notion clearly divides the GOP: Sixty percent of conservative Republicans oppose the idea, while 57 percent of moderate or liberal Republicans support it.

Low marks on deficit

On the question of Obama’s leadership, 42 percent of registered voters now say they have confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country, with 58 saying they do not. At the start of his presidency, about six in 10 expressed confidence in his decision-making.

Obama’s overall job-approval rating stands at 50 percent, equaling his low point in Post-ABC polling; 47 percent disapprove of the job he is doing. For the first time in his presidency, those who strongly disapprove now significantly outnumber those who strongly approve.

Among those who say they definitely will vote in November, 53 percent disapprove of the way he is handling his responsibilities.

The president’s approval ratings reached a new low among whites, at 40 percent, with his positive marks dipping under 50 percent for the first time among white college-educated women.

On the issues tested in the poll, Obama’s worst ratings come on his handling of the federal budget deficit, where 56 percent disapprove and 40 percent approve. He scores somewhat better on health-care reform (45 percent approve) and regulation of the financial industry (44 percent). His best marks come on his duties as commander in chief, with 55 percent approving.

Obama’s overall standing puts him at about the same place President Bill Clinton was in the summer of 1994, a few months before Republicans captured the House and Senate in an electoral landslide.

President Ronald Reagan, who also contended with a serious recession at the outset of his first term, was a little lower at this point in 1982, with a 46 percent to 45 percent split on his approval ratings. Republicans went on to lose about two dozen seats in the House that fall.

Of course, Reagan and Clinton subsequently rebounded and went on to win reelection easily. Obama advisers find some hope from that history, even as the historical record foreshadows Democratic losses this November.

The latest poll was conducted by conventional and cellular telephone Wednesday through Sunday among a random national sample of 1,288 adults including interviews with 1,151 registered voters. The results for the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Elena Kagan

The National Rifle Association entered the fray against liberal Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court today with an ad saying she can’t be trusted to safeguard our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Kagan is Barack Obama’s liberal extremist nominee for the Supreme Court who famously banned military recruiters from Harvard College and who believes the Constitution is a “living document”, subject to revision. See the NRA’s ad here.

Brad Ellsworth

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Coats with 51% support, while Ellsworth earns 30% of the vote, his poorest showing to date. Six percent (6%) favor some other candidate in the race, while 12% remain undecided.

Last month, Coats dropped below 50% but still led Ellsworth 47% to 33%.

In five previous surveys back to February, support for Coats has ranged from 46% to 54%. In that same period, Ellsworth has picked up 32% to 36% of the vote.

Indicative of voter unhappiness in Indiana is that Ellsworth’s first statewide TV ad which just began airing in the last few days mentions his background as a sheriff and criticizes Washington lawmakers. But the ad never says that Ellsworth is currently a member of Congress.

The two candidates are contending for the seat held by Senator Evan Bayh who surprised his fellow Democrats with his announcement in January that he would not seek reelection. Bayh, who faced a tough GOP challenge, was still the favorite in the race at the time, but now the seat is rated Solid GOP in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power ratings.

Just nine percent (9%) of Indiana voters rate the economy as good or excellent, while nearly half (49%) say it’s poor. Twenty-four percent (24%) say it’s getting better, but twice as many (48%) think it’s getting worse.

Coats, who previously served as a senator from Indiana from 1989 to 1999, holds double-digit leads among both male and female voters. He holds a better than three-to-one lead among voters not affiliated with either major party.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Indiana was conducted on June July 7-8, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Opposition to the national health care bill remains high in Indiana, traditionally a conservative, Republican leaning state. Fifty-nine percent (59%) favor repeal of the bill that Ellsworth supported as a member of the House, while 35% oppose repeal. This is a higher level of support than is found nationally. This includes 49% who Strongly Favor repeal and 21% who are Strongly Opposed.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of those who Strongly Favor repeal support Coats, while Ellsworth earns 78% of the vote from those who Strongly Oppose it.

Support in Indiana for Arizona’s new immigration law parallel findings nationally. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Indiana voters favor passage of a law like Arizona’s in their state, and just 25% oppose such a bill.

Coats gets 64% support from those who favor an Arizona-like law in Indiana. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of those who oppose a law like that favor Ellsworth.

Twenty-eight percent (28%) of all voters in the state agree with the Justice Department’s decision to challenge the Arizona law in court, but 57% disagree with that decision.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of those who agree with the challenge back Ellsworth. Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters who disagree with the Justice Department action favor Coats.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of Indiana voters, however, favor a welcoming immigration policy that only excludes national security threats, criminals and those who come here to live off the U.S. welfare system. Twenty-four percent (24%) disagree with a policy like that.

Coats is viewed Very Favorably by 13% and Very Unfavorably by eight percent (8%). Eighteen percent (18%) have no opinion of the former senator.

Ten percent (10%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Ellsworth, while nine percent (9%) view him Very Unfavorably. Twenty-eight percent (28%) don’t know enough about him to voice any kind of opinion.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of Indiana voters think the country is in a recession.

Twenty-eight percent (28%) believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan helped the U.S. economy, but 38% say it hurt. This is close to voter sentiments nationally.

Twenty-six percent (26%) say the government spending in the stimulus plan created new jobs. Fifty-six percent (56%) disagree and say it did not create any new jobs.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) believe cutting taxes is a better way to create new jobs than increased government spending. Just 14% say increased spending is the way to go.

Forty-three percent (43%) of Indiana voters approve of President Obama’s job performance, while 56% disapprove. That’s in line with findings last month and a higher level of criticism than Obama earns nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Sixty-six percent (66%) now approve of how GOP Governor Mitch Daniels is performing, up eight points from the previous survey. Thirty-one percent (31%) disapprove.

Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio raised $4.5 million in the second quarter of 2010, his Senate campaign announced Monday, bringing the onetime insurgent candidate’s receipts for the cycle to more than $11 million.

Marco Rubio

The haul surpasses Rubio’s huge first-quarter take of $3.6 million and sets a new national record for this cycle, blowing past the $4.3 million mark previously set by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

A spokesman for Rubio said the candidate’s cash-on-hand figure was not yet available, but the campaign boasted that more than 75,000 people have donated nearly $11 million over the course of Rubio’s entire bid. The former state legislator has taken in $1.3 million online, in a sign of grassroots support for his candidacy.

Crist, who left the GOP to run for Senate as an independent after Rubio mounted an unexpectedly strong primary challenge, has not released his total receipts for the period between April and the end of June. On the Democratic side, Rep. Kendrick Meek brought in $1.1 million for his campaign and billionaire real estate investor Jeff Greene has pumped millions of his own cash into a campaign for the Democratic nomination.

“A year ago, many were convinced that a principled campaign against the big spending Obama-Pelosi-Crist-Meek agenda stood no chance in the face of better-funded and more popular opponents,” Rubio said in a statement. “A year later, I’m thankful that our supporters have always understood what the stakes are in this election and have rallied behind us to create this movement.”

Crist’s second-quarter report will be the first test of his ability to tap donors outside the fold of the Republican Party, after his defection from the GOP on April 29. Last quarter he took in $1.1 million – a far diminished figure from his quarterly numbers in the early days of the Senate race.

Still, recent polls of a three-way race have shown Crist and Rubio neck-and-neck with Meek and Greene trailing by significant margins.

Home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in history, but house sales are plunging. Banks can make money easily because of the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates, but they’re not making many loans. Major corporations are sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash, but they’re not investing.

Unemployment is running at 10 percent, rounded off, for the 11th straight month, but few employers are hiring and a million people have stopped looking for work in the last year. Small-business hiring is at a nine-month low, and retail sales are tailing off.

Government policies designed to stimulate the economy seem to be having the opposite effect. Consumers aren’t buying, businesses aren’t hiring, and those fortunate enough to have some cash on hand don’t seem to be investing.

I call it the mattress economy.

People seem to be following this investment strategy. Step one: Go to Mattress Discounters and buy the biggest mattress you can find. Step two: Take it home, and stuff all your money in it. Step three: Lie down, and get some rest.

This hurts the economy, but it’s a rational response to the Obama Democrats’ public policies. And that’s not just the view of their political opponents.

Consider the complaint of Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, head of the Business Roundtable, which has been playing footsie with the Obama administration for most of the last 18 months. “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life,” Seidenberg recently wrote, “government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise new capital and create new businesses.”

Or take a look at Obama backer Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com website. “Why aren’t businesses hiring?” asks tax lawyer Hale “Bonddad” Stewart. “Uncertainty: There has been a tremendous amount of change over the last 12 months. Businesses are still trying to figure out what this means for their bottom line. Until there are firm answers, they will freeze hiring.”

In other words, the Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the size and scope of government — and the threat that they may pass even more such legislation in a lame duck session of Congress after the November election — has chilled the animal spirits that John Maynard Keynes said were the driving force for economic growth.

Instead of stimulating the economy, the Obama Democrats’ policies have shocked it into immobility. People are lying on their mattresses, waiting for the next shock. At least one is definitely coming: The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year, which means that high earners can be sure they will very soon keep less of what they make.

Politicians up for re-election are taking notice. Congressional Democratic leaders can’t round up the votes for another stimulus package and have not dared to ask their members to vote for a budget resolution.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman keeps beating the drum for even more increases in federal spending. But congressional Democrats are refusing to dance.

Democrats can plausibly claim that their 2009 stimulus package, passed less than a month after Barack Obama was sworn in, prevented a 1932-style downward spiral. But it didn’t hold unemployment below 8 percent, as they promised it would.

They can argue that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s stress tests prevented a meltdown of the big banks. The problem is that it didn’t get them back into the lending business.

And Democrats can claim that the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts are working out better than some of us doomsayers predicted. Unfortunately, the transfer of assets from secured creditors to the United Auto Workers — which I dubbed “gangster government” last year — has undoubtedly deterred investment in similar enterprises.

But the brute fact remains that even enormous government spending can’t revive an economy when government threatens to take away anything you earn.

America has seen this kind of thing before. In the late 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt raised taxes on high earners, encouraged lawless sit-in strikes by labor unions and took over utility businesses, the response was a “capital strike.”

Instead of creating jobs, businesses and investors put their money in mattresses. The result was a stagnant economy and double-digit unemployment-and a 75-seat Republican gain in the 1938 off-year elections.

Back then, the economy eventually perked up thanks to mobilization for World War II. No such mobilization appears on the horizon today. You may need to get a bigger mattress.

The new governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is distinguishing himself in two ways as a Catholic politician. Not only he is pro-life, but he is also aggressively pursuing a set of policies grounded in the principle of subsidiarity.

At a time when most prominent Catholic politicians — Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and John Kerry — have advocated federal government solutions to problems like health care, Gov. Christie is pushing in the opposite direction by releasing a New Jersey Privatization Task Force Report.

To read the full article click here.

(Henderson, Nevada) – Faith & Freedom Coalition Founder and Chairman Ralph Reed was invited by the Nevada Republican Party to headline Saturday’s lunch at the Party’s 2010 Convention. Ralph also met with U.S. Senate candidate and political phenomena Sharron Angle, who has the honor of taking on Harry Reid in November. Joining Ralph for the visit was our Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition Board of Directors, including our Nevada Chair, Monterey Brookman.

Ralph Reed and Sharron Angle

According to event organizers, the luncheon sold out once Ralph was announced as keynote speaker and extra seating had to be set up in an adjoining room to accommodate increased attendance. Ralph addressed more than 400 conservatives.

“Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition is going to turn out hundreds of thousands of conservatives to vote in 2010,” said Reed. “Together with our Nevada members we are going to deal Barack Obama’s socialistic agenda a major setback in November in the Silver State.”

Pres. Obama is the best fundraiser the Dem Party has, but his drawing power is way down from its peak during the ‘08 campaign.

Robin Carnahan

Obama is heading to MO and NV today to raise money for Sec/State Robin Carnahan (D), running for an open Senate seat, and Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid.

But Carnahan’s campaign wasn’t able to completely sell out the Folly Theater, where Obama will appear for a grassroots event on Carnahan’s behalf, at the prices they wanted. Tickets once priced at $250 are now going for $99, while $35 tickets are half off.

The grassroots event at the 1,078-seat theater is expected to net $250K for Carnahan’s campaign, the Kansas City Star reported today.

It’s just one of Obama’s 2 stops for Carnahan; he will appear at a higher-dollar affair at a Marriott hotel in downtown Kansas City — ironically, the same location where the RNC will host its summer meeting in Aug. But it’s telling Obama couldn’t fill a theater at the higher price; in ‘08, just 2 weeks before Election Day, Obama drew 100K to an event in St. Louis and another 75K to a rally in Kansas City, according to a contemporary account from McClatchy.

Obama has 4 total fundraising events scheduled today, 2 in MO and 2 in NV. VP Joe Biden is also hitting the trail, raising money for Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), a freshman Dem facing a tough re-election bid, in a luncheon event in Portland. Later, Biden travels to the Bay Area for a fundraiser with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

Barack Obama faces about the same problem that confronted Bill Clinton in 1994 when he lost control of Congress. In both cases, the Democratic presidents had alienated moderate and conservative voters and found themselves increasingly isolated with a political base of liberals and minorities. In each instance, the president worried that off-year election turnout among their base would be attenuated both because it always is in non-presidential years and because their policy failings had reduced the enthusiasm they found among their base voters. And both men found themselves forced to escalate their rhetoric and move their ideological positions to the left in order to try to drum up the kind of turnout they needed to keep power in Congress.

Clinton failed and Obama will too.

When President Clinton asked me to help him to move to the center to win re-election in 1996, he said “I’ve moved so far to the left that I don’t even recognize myself.” At heart a moderate while Obama is, at core, a leftist, Clinton was alluding to the positions he had to take to keep the support of his liberal House majority. Obama — for whom the further left he drifts the better — has no such qualms but the political impact of his move to the left will be just as fatal for his Congressional majority as it was for Clintons’.

When a president moves leftward, a vicious cycle begins to set in. Driven to raise the intensity of his rhetoric and to take positions further to the extreme, he alienates more and more centrists and moderates, forcing himself to rely more and more on left wing voters. This reliance, in turn, fuels an ever more pronounced leftward drift until he ends up with a vastly diminished political base.

In Obama’s case, his reliance on minority voters adds to the difficulty as he drives racially fair whites to see him as governing primarily in the interests of minority voters.

Obama’s decision to have his Justice Department sue Arizona over its immigration law — despite the fact that American voters back the statute by 2:1 — is the latest illustration of that leftward drift. So is Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute the Black Panthers who posted themselves at a mixed-race polling place in military uniform with clubs to deter white voters.

The further Obama moves to the left, the more he has to move to the left. And the worse it is for his ability to control Congress.

We’re very pleased here at the Faith & Freedom Coalition to announce that Monterey Brookman has been named the Chairman of the Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Monterey Brookman

Nevada hosts some of the country’s most pivotal races this year, including Harry Reid’s reelection campaign to continue to be Barack Obama’s liberal enabler in the U.S. Senate. Reid faces a very tough challenge from Sharron Angle, who leads him in all the current polling and has galvanized support from social conservatives and Tea Party activists.

Monterey is a tremendous fit for our Nevada organization. She was a delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention, is on the board of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly (RNHA) and has been active in organizing and raising funds for charitable efforts like the American Red Cross and the American Lung Association. Monterey has also served as Committee Chair with the conservative think tank Nevada Policy Research Institute and as an Area Coordinator for the Prison Fellowship Ministry.

“I can’t think of anyone better to lead our Nevada effort than Monterey Brookman,” said FFC National Executive Director Gregg Keller. “With Monterey’s leadership, Nevada Faith & Freedom Coalition is going to lead the way in turning out conservative voters in that state come November.”

Richard Burr

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Burr picking up 52% of the vote while Marshall attracts 37%. Four percent (4%) of voters would choose some other candidate and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

With the exception of last month’s post-primary poll, Burr’s support has remained in the narrow range from 48% to 52% all year. For Marshall, that range of support has been from a low to 32% to a high of 40%.

The new survey results move the North Carolina race to the Solid Republican category in the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power ratings. Nine states remain as Toss-Ups at this time.

Voters in North Carolina are anxious about the economy. Just 11% rate it as good or excellent while 50% believe it is in poor shape. Twenty-four percent (24%) say it’s getting better while twice as many (49%) say it’s getting worse. These are broadly comparable to national numbers reported daily in the Rasmussen Consumer Index data. Also similar is the fact that 69% of North Carolina voters believe the United States is still in a recession.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in North Carolina was conducted on July 6, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Thirty-two percent (32%) of North Carolina voters believe last year’s economic stimulus package helped the economy while 38% say it hurt. That assessment is more positive than the national average. Sixty-eight percent (68%) believe cutting taxes is a more effective job creation tool than additional government spending. Just 15% hold the opposite view.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of North Carolina voters favor repeal of the recently passed health care law. That’s a big higher than support for repeal nationwide.

Sixty-two percent (62%) would like to see a law like Arizona’s immigration law passed in their state. That, too, is a bit above the national figures.

On a related topic, only 30% favor the Justice Department lawsuit to overturn the Arizona law.

As is found across the country, most North Carolina voters (62%) favor a welcoming legal immigration policy that excludes only national security threats, criminals, and those who would live off the U.S. welfare system.

Burr is viewed Very Favorably by 20% of the state’s voters while 13% have a Very Unfavorable opinion of their Senator. For Marshall, the numbers are 14% and 18% respectively.

We’re thrilled to announce that Sen. Gilbert Baker will lead Arkansas Faith & Freedom Coalition. Sen. Baker will assemble our Arkansas team and ensure that we identify, educate and turn out a record-smashing number of conservative voters in Arkansas in 2010.

Gilbert Baker

Sen. Baker represents Arkansas’ 30th senatorial district; he is third in seniority in the Senate and is Chair of the Budget Committee. A committed evangelical Christian, Gilbert recently ran a strong campaign for U.S. Senate, raising substantial funds for his campaign and crisscrossing the state aggressively.

“I’m very excited to be taking this leadership position with Arkansas Faith & Freedom Coalition,” said Senator Baker. “We have important local and Congressional elections here this year and a critical race for U.S. Senate. Arkansas FFC is going to make sure that conservatives do their part to impact all those races and make their voices heard.”

In just six short months, Faith & Freedom Coalition has state affiliates in more than 20 states and has over 400,000 members in all 50 states. Without the support of our generous supporters, it wouldn’t be possible for us to educate and turnout a record number of conservative voters in 2010. Thanks for all you do!

U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., will make a second trip to Iowa later this year, speaking at a Des Moines event organized by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition and the Iowa Christian Alliance in October. The Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition was founded and headed by Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition and a veteran Republican strategist.

Mike Pence

Pence is considered by many to be mulling a run for president in 2012, and the attention he’s given the Hawkeye State has only fueled that speculation. Last July, he took part in a Linn County fundraiser for the Republican Party of Iowa and a Sioux City fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Steve King. Then in March, he participated via video in an Iowa City rally held on the eve of a visit by President Barack Obama.

Pence’s chief of staff told the Indianapolis Star that the trip was not due to presidential aspirations but rather as part of his duties as the third ranking Republican in the U.S. House.

While the Iowa Christian Alliance is well-known in Iowa, Reed’s group only began last year nationally. In a March speech in Des Moines, Reed told the crowd that for just $500,000, he could help take the control of state government back for Republicans. He called Iowa a “critical, all-important state for changing the direction of the country in 2010.”

John Kasich

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the governor’s race in Ohio finds Republican John Kasich with a 47% to 40% lead over incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland – for the second month in a row. Three percent (3%) of Likely Voters in the state prefer some other candidate, and 10% are undecided.

But both major party candidates show a continuing inability to move their vote totals out of the range they’ve been in for months. Kasich earned 47% support to Strickland’s 42% last month.

In April and May, the candidates were basically tied. Prior to that time, Kasich had held modest leads over Strickland. Since December, Kasich’s support has remained in the narrow range of 46% to 49%, while Strickland’s in that same period have fallen in the 38% to 45% range.

Strickland was elected governor in 2006 with 60% of the vote.

Kasich, a former congressman, holds a double-digit lead among male voters, while female voters break essentially even between the two candidates. Voters not affiliated with either party favor the Republican by a 45% to 28% margin.

The economy and jobs continue to be the central issues in a state that has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. While Republicans focus on job losses while Strickland has been governor., Democrats have countered by citing Kasich’s ties to Wall Street. The Republican has worked as an investment banker since leaving Congress in 2000.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Ohio was conducted on June 29, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Former Republican Congressman Rob Portman holds a narrow 43% to 39% lead over Democratic Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters in Ohio favor a tough immigration law like Arizona’s in their state, which is a bit higher than support nationally. Twenty-seven percent (27%) oppose such a law, but 12% more are undecided.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of the larger group that favor an Arizona-like law support Kasich. Strickland earns 74% support from those who oppose a law like that in Ohio.

Twenty-two percent (22%) of Ohio voters consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement, compared to 16% nationwide. Sixty-three percent (63%) are not members, but 15% aren’t sure.

Kasich wins 87% of the vote among Tea Party members and the plurality (47%) of those who are not sure. Fifty-four percent (54%) of non-members back Strickland.

Forty-six percent (46%) of Buckeye State voters view the Tea Party movement as good for the country, while 29% say it’s bad for America. This is comparable to views nationally.

Forty-three percent (43%) approve of the job Strickland is doing as governor, but 55% disapprove. This includes 13% who Strongly Approve and 30% who Strongly Disapprove. These findings are unchanged from the previous survey.

Strickland, also a former congressman, is viewed Very Favorably by 14% of voters in the state and Very Unfavorably by 31%. Just seven percent (7%) have no opinion of the current governor.

Twenty-two percent (22%) have a Very Favorable view of Kasich, while 16% regard him Very Unfavorably. But one-in-four voters (25%) don’t know enough about Kasich to express any kind of opinion.

A trip to the presidential proving ground of Iowa is in Rep. Mike Pence’s future.

Mike Pence

The Indiana Republican will be the keynote speaker at an Oct. 2 banquet in Des Moines for conservative activists.

Pence is addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s 10th annual “Friends of the Family” banquet for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Iowa Christian Alliance Education Fund. The Faith and Freedom Coalition is a conservative grass-roots organization headed by Ralph Reed.

Pence has not ruled out a future presidential bid. But chief of staff Bill Smith said Pence’s trip is part of his duties as the No. 3 Republican in House leadership. Pence has been doing what he can to help Republicans win in November, and that includes raising money for candidates and party organizations and firing up grass-roots groups, Smith said.

Smith said he expects Pence to talk about “the importance of winning a conservative majority in the U.S. House,” as he’s been doing in other speeches.

Pence traveled to Iowa last year to raise money for Rep. Steve King and for the Iowa GOP. The Iowa caucuses are the first step in the presidential nomination process.

For years, the Collier County School district allowed a local Christian organization, World Changers of Florida, to distribute free Bibles to interested students during off-school hours on January 16 for Religious Freedom Day.

Now the group is filing suit after being told by the school board that it can no longer distribute the Bibles on campus because they do not provide any educational benefit to the students.

The school board and superintendent “have denied World Changers access for no other reason than the religious content and viewpoint of the literature it wishes to distribute, specifically Bibles,” the lawsuit contends. “This unequal treatment, based upon the religious nature of the literature World Changers wishes to distribute, is unconstitutional content-based discrimination,
because World Changers’ materials otherwise fit within the parameters Defendants set for the forum.”

The group goes on to say that the school allowed other secular organizations to distribute literature but prevented World Changers from doing so even though it complied with all of the school’s guidelines.

“We are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools,” Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing World Changers said in a statement. “Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible.

If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate. The distribution of religious literature in a forum opened for secular literature is constitutionally protected.”

The lawsuit seeks to have the school district’s actions declared unconstitutional and requests legal fees and unspecified nominal damages.

Collier County School District did not respond to requests from FoxNews.com for comment.

Read the full Playbook here.

Rob Portman

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the state’s Likely Voters shows Portman picking up 43% of the vote while Fisher earns 39%. Four percent (4%) would vote for some other candidate and 13% more are undecided.

Portman’s support has stayed within a very narrow 42% to 44% range since February. During the same period, Fisher’s support has stayed within a 39% to 43% range. The two men were in a virtual tie earlier this month and early May.

While Portman holds a double-digit lead among men in Ohio, Fisher holds an edge among women. Among voters in the state not affiliated with either major political party, Portman holds a double-digit edge but a large number of unaffiliated voters are committed to either candidate.

In Ohio, 57% favor repeal of the health care reform law, which is slightly higher than results found on the national level. Thirty-eight percent (38%) oppose repeal of the law. Those numbers include 43% who Strongly Favor repeal and 27% who Strongly Oppose it.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The statewide survey of 500 Ohio Likely Voters was conducted on June 29, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Portman picks up 77% support among those in the much larger group who Strongly Favor repeal of the law, while 68% of those Strongly Opposed to repeal back Fisher.

Portman is viewed Very Favorably by 19% of Ohio voters and Very Unfavorably by nine percent (9%).

Fisher earns Very Favorable reviews from 19% and Very Unfavorable opinions from 14%.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Despite the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, 62% in Ohio still support offshore drilling, which is consistent with results found on the national level. Fifty-one percent (51%) in Ohio also favor deepwater drilling.

On another topic, 37% of Ohio voters give President Obama good or excellent ratings on his handling of the situation in Afghanistan, but nearly the same number (35%) give him a poor rating.

Forty percent (40%) of Ohio voters say it is not possible for the U.S. to win the War in Afghanistan, while 34% disagree. Another 26% are undecided.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Ohio voters now approve of how Obama is handling the role of president, while 52% disapprove, showing little change from earlier this month. These results are comparable to Obama’s ratings nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Elena Kagan’s testimony is now over and we know not much more about her than we did before her appearance. This, of course, is deliberate. Kagan took obfuscation and dissembling to a new low. She declined to answer many questions and said little or nothing when she did. This is ironic coming from someone who once called the confirmation process a “vapid and hollow charade.” In a 1995 University of Chicago Law Review article on Stephen L. Carter’s outstanding book, “The Confirmation Mess,” Kagan posited that judicial nomination hearings lacked both “seriousness and substance,” so that “the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce….” Farce, you say? We couldn’t have called it better ourselves.

Kagan was not forthright about the assistance she provided, as a Clinton White House aide, to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1995 when the group came out against the partial-birth abortion ban. Her defense of her banning military recruiters, as dean of Harvard Law School, was downright embarrassing. She claimed to be attempting to balance her obligation to uphold the law school’s nondiscrimination policy with the legal obligation of the Solomon Amendment, which forbade institutions who receive federal funds from kicking military recruiters off campus. As Senator Jeff Sessions correctly pointed out, she could not do both, and in the end did not. Her testimony was disingenuous at best and misleading at worst. Little wonder that Arlen Specter threatened to vote against her nomination in protest. (Now he decides to do the right thing.)

More is on the line than the fate of the Kagan nomination. As I point out in my forthcoming novel, The Confirmation, which details the brutal confirmation of a conservative Supreme Court nominee, the advise and consent process is irretrievably broken. No nominee since Robert Bork’s inhumane mistreatment in 1987 (and certainly not since Clarence Thomas was similarly subjected to outrageous charges in 1991) has dared to be forthcoming to the Judiciary committee. For conservatives nominees, the confirmation process is a search and destroy mission. For liberals, it’s an exercise in dissembling followed by relatively smooth sailing.

The Wall Street Journal said Kagan’s testimony amounted to “variations on ‘what part of maybe do you not understand?’” The New York Times added: “The frustrating lack of enlightenment [by Kagan] was hardly surprising given how this process has deteriorated since the Robert Bork hearings in 1987. Not only are nominees reduced to platitudes about upholding precedents, but even the platitudes are porous.” That is called consensus.

So what to do? The Senate needs a new dynamic of confirmation in which Senators ask real questions, nominees provide genuine answers, and prospective judges are confirmed unless they lack strong legal qualifications, an even judicial temperament and mainstream jurisprudential views. This is how the confirmation process worked until judicial activism made federal judges legislators-for-life. The radical left corrupted the process with the vow to “bork” nominees who didn’t share their extreme views. Decades of this has resulted in a thoroughly broken and dispiriting confirmation process. It is badly in need of repair, and we need a new President and a new Senate to take up the challenge and reform it.

Pat Toomey

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania shows Toomey attracting 45% of the vote, while Sestak earns 39%. Six percent (6%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 11% are undecided. The June 29 survey shows the race has changed little since the beginning of the month.

This is the seventh Rasmussen Reports survey of the race in 2010, and a review of prior results highlights just how stable it’s been to date. Toomey’s support has stayed in a very narrow range of 42% to 47%.

Sestak’s support has showed more movement, ranging from a low of 36% to a high of 46%. However, most of that movement came as he surged to victory over Specter in the Democratic primary. Other than polling conducted just before and just after the primary election, the Democratic nominee’s support has remained between 36% and 38%.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Republicans support Toomey, while 70% of Democrats say they’re voting for Sestak. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Republican has a nine-point advantage.

Toomey is now viewed Very Favorably by 17% of the state’s voters and Very Unfavorably by 13%. For Sestak, those numbers are 16% on the positive side and 16% on the negative side. For both men, the numbers are down a bit from earlier in the month.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This statewide telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters in Pennsylvania was conducted on June 29, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The national political issues environment remains challenging for Democrats with the economy as the most important issue.

If the Obama administration files a lawsuit against the state of Arizona over its new immigration law, that could add to the challenges for Democratic candidates like Sestak. Just 31% of Pennsylvania voters favor such a legal challenge, while 55% are opposed. Nationally, only 26% favor a legal challenge to that law.

Most Pennsylvania voters (54%) also favor repeal of the recently passed health care law. That is close to the national average. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. These numbers include 40% who Strongly Favor repeal and 32% who are Strongly Opposed.

Toomey earns 82% support from those who Strongly Favor repeal. Seventy-four percent (74%) of those who are Strongly Opposed back Sestak.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of all voters in Pennsylvania now approve of the job President Obama is doing, while 53% disapprove. That is little changed from the beginning of June and is consistent with national averages reported in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

At last week’s G-20 meeting, President Barack Obama achieved a two-fer. He suffered a significant international defeat, and he increased the chances his party will suffer a major domestic one this fall.

Karl Rove

Mr. Obama’s international defeat was self-inflicted. He went to Toronto to press other major nations to do as he has done: Expand government spending, or suffer, in the president’s words, “renewed economic hardship and recession.”

Canada, Germany, Great Britain and most other countries declined Mr. Obama’s invitation. The German economic minister “urgently” prodded America to cut spending at a press conference on June 21, prior to the G-20 meeting. The president of the European central bank took direct aim at Mr. Obama’s argument, telling the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on June 16 that “the idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect.”

The European Union president, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, tore into Mr. Obama’s stimulus and other spending policies in a stunning address to the European Parliament in March 2009, calling them “the road to hell” and saying “the United States did not take the right path.”

If it sounds strange to have European leaders lecturing the U.S. about fiscal restraint, it should. But that is where America finds itself after Mr. Obama’s 17-month fiscal orgy.

The other flaw in his G-20 appearance is domestic. The president’s statements that more deficit spending was “necessary to keep economic growth strong” and his cautioning against “the consequential mistakes of the past” when stimulus spending “was too quickly withdrawn” puts his administration and party squarely in favor of policies unpopular with most Americans.

Since 2000, the Gallup organization has asked voters what they believe will be the most important problem for the U.S. in 25 years. This year Americans are saying the challenge will be the deficit. And last month, almost eight in 10 voters surveyed by the Associated Press called the federal budget deficit an “extremely” or “very important” issue.

There was more bad news Tuesday for Democrats from recent focus groups conducted in battleground congressional districts in Iowa, Ohio, New Jersey, Arkansas and Florida.

A report on these focus groups issued this week by Resurgent Republic (a group I helped found) showed that both political independents and tea party participants passionately denounced federal spending and deficits, using words like “reckless,” “out of control,” “unnecessary” and “unhelpful.” The evidence suggests that both groups remain deeply skeptical of Mr. Obama’s stimulus package and are unpersuaded by the administration’s arguments in its favor.

The authors of the Resurgent Republic study concluded that both independents and tea party voters believe “nearly unanimously” that reckless government spending, not lack of tax revenues, is responsible for the deficits. This goes to the very heart of the modern Democratic agenda with its guiding philosophy of bigger government and higher taxes.

All of this negative news is wearing on the president. At the G-20’s concluding news conference, Mr. Obama—brittle and petulant—attacked GOP critics “who are hollering about deficits,” saying he would be “calling their bluff” next year by “presenting some very difficult choices.” Then “we’ll see how much of . . . the political arguments they’re making right now are real, and how much of it was just politics.”

The president’s problem is largely a mess of his own making. Deficit spending did not begin when Mr. Obama took office. But he and his Democratic allies have supported, proposed, passed or signed and then spent every dime that’s gone out the door since Jan. 20, 2009.

Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in “temporary” stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline.

It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats’ profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year.

This is indeed the road to fiscal hell, and it’s been paved by the president and his party. Voters will have their chance this November to render their verdict on the Obama years. No wonder Republicans feel confident these days.

Robin Carnahan

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Missouri shows Blunt with 48% support, while Carnahan earns 43% of the vote. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

A month ago, the race appeared to tighten slightly. But Blunt’s support since September has remained in the range of 44% to 50%, while Carnahan’s in the same period has run from 41% to 46%. The Democrat has never led in the race.

Blunt and Carnahan, both members of prominent Missouri political families, are expected to win their respective party primaries on August 3.

The Republican posts a better than two-to-one lead among voters not affiliated with either of the major parties.

Sixty-one percent (61%) in the Show Me State favor repeal of the recently passed health care law which Blunt voted against as a member of Congress. Thirty-five percent (35%) oppose repeal. These figures include 48% who Strongly Favor repeal of the measure and 28% who are Strongly Opposed.

Missouri voters now oppose the new national health care bill more strongly than voters nationwide.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of voters who Strongly Favor repeal support Blunt, while 81% of the smaller group Strongly Opposed to repeal support Carnahan.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This survey of 500 Likely Voters in Missouri was conducted on June 28, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters in the state favor a tough immigration law like Arizona’s in Missouri, down six points from the previous survey but comparable to findings nationally. Twenty-nine percent (29%) oppose such a law. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Blunt earns 70% support from those who favor an Arizona-like law. Eighty-two percent (82%) of those who oppose a law like that support Carnahan.

The Obama administration is expected to file a legal challenge of the Arizona law in federal court as early as this week, but just 22% of Missouri voters think that’s a good idea. Fifty-nine percent (59%) oppose such a challenge, slightly higher than voter sentiments nationally, and another 19% are undecided about it.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of those who support a legal challenge of the Arizona law support Carnahan. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters who oppose the challenge favor Blunt.

Twenty-two percent (22%) of Missouri voters consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement, compared to 16% nationwide. Fifty-four percent (54%) say they are not members, but 24% aren’t sure.

Blunt has the support of 85% of Tea Party members and 50% of those who are not sure. Carnahan gets 61% of the vote from those who are not members.

Overall, 43% of Missouri voters say the Tea Party movement is good for the country, while 27% view it as a bad thing.

Carnahan has criticized Blunt for his political contributions from the oil industry as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and sought to tie him to the unfolding oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But 60% of Missouri voters support offshore drilling, and a plurality (49%) favor deepwater drilling, too. Both findings match voter views nationwide.

Carnahan is viewed Very Favorably by 24% of the state’s voters and Very Unfavorably by 21%.

Sixteen percent (16%) have a Very favorable opinion of Blunt, while 13% view him Very Unfavorably.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Little changed from the previous survey are voter attitudes toward President Obama, Forty-seven percent (47%) approve of the job he is doing; 53% disapprove. This is in line with how voters nationally feel about the president’s job performance as measured by the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

As Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out yesterday in his outstanding opening statement, Kagan has “less legal experience of any nominee in at least fifty years”.  If confirmed, she would be the first justice in 38 years who had not previously served as a judge at any level.  But her lack of practical legal experience goes beyond that.  She has never practiced law beyond two brief years as an associate in a major law firm, where she argued no cases and never appeared before a jury.  Last year she received the most “no” votes of any nominee for Solicitor General in U.S. history.  Just nine months ago, when she presented her first case as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan argued in the Citizens United case that the federal government should be allowed to ban books, pamphlets, and even hand-held signs if they were published or distributed with corporate funds in proximity to a federal election.  This Orwellian attempt by Kagan’s office to gut the First Amendment rightly stunned the justices and led to the Court overturning the McCain-Feingold prohibition on express advocacy by corporations.  To say that Kagan’s legal record is thin and out of the mainstream is being kind.

I frankly had begun to wonder if Republicans could drive a coherent message against this nomination.  But Sessions (who has an outstanding legal background of his own), Kyl, McConnell, Hatch, et al, are doing a solid job of making Kagan’s extreme political views the focus of the confirmation.  As a Clinton White House aide, Kagan argued partial-birth abortion was a constitutionally protected procedure.  She recommended pushing campaign finance reform which, in her words, would favor Democrats over Republicans.  Her defiance of settled federal law in banning military recruiters from the campus of Harvard Law School during a time of war reveals the temperament of an ideologue and a political partisan, not the temperament of a judge.

In my forthcoming novel The Confirmation, I write about the fact that when it comes to judicial nominations, “advise and consent” has become “search and destroy,” but only for conservative nominees.  Justices nominated by Democratic presidents have generally had easy sledding.  Those days are over.  As we are already seeing, Kagan will be asked very tough questions.  Her nomination will not go unchallenged, and will likely garner a large number of “no” votes.

Given the math in the Senate, it will be difficult to stop Kagan’s nomination.  But Republicans should do their best to make the case against this nomination.  They may even defy conventional wisdom and succeed.  Supreme Court confirmations are funny things and often go in directions the administration did not plan, as Obama can already testify.

Nikki Haley

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in South Carolina shows Haley, the winner of a GOP Primary runoff last Tuesday, with 52% support. Sheheen, a state senator, earns 40% of the vote. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate in the race, and five percent (5%) are still undecided.

Earlier this month and prior to the runoff, Haley posted a 55% to 34% lead over Sheheen, running much stronger against the Democrat than her primary runoff opponent, Congressman Gresham Barrett.

Haley fell just short of 50% in the June 8 GOP Primary, which forced a June 22 runoff between her and Barrett, the next closest vote getter. Haley defeated Barrett with 65% of the vote in the runoff.

Republicans appear to have quickly recovered from the divisive primary, with Haley now earning 85% of the vote in her own party. Sheheen, who won his party’s primary on June 8, gets identical support from Democrats. Voters not affiliated with either major party prefer the GOP candidate by 19 points.

Despite current Republican Governor Mark Sanford’s well-publicized extramarital affair, Haley, who was the underdog in the GOP race prior to her endorsement by Sarah Palin, is the favorite in the race in a state that trends Republican and conservative.

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in South Carolina was conducted on June 23, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

While South Carolina Democrats fret over how an unemployed political unknown with a felony charge hanging over him won their party’s Senate nomination, the first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of that general election contest finds incumbent Republican Senator Jim DeMint leading Democrat Alvin Greene 58% to 21%.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) of South Carolina voters consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement, compared to 16% nationally. Fifty-six percent (56%) say they are not members, but another 17% aren’t sure.

Ninety percent (90%) of Tea Party voters favor Haley, as do 60% of those who are not sure. Sheheen captures 60% of the vote from those who are not members.

Forty-nine percent (49%) of the state’s voters say the Tea Party movement is good for the country, again higher than voter sentiments nationally, while 30% see it as a bad thing.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor repeal of the national health care bill, slightly above the national average, while 37% oppose repeal. This includes 48% who Strongly Favor repeal and 24% who are Strongly Opposed.

Haley earns 81% support from those who Strongly Favor repeal. Sheheen gets 70% of those who are Strongly Opposed.

Twenty-two percent (22%) of South Carolina voters have a Very Favorable opinion of Sheheen, while 13% view him Very Unfavorably. Fifteen percent (15%) don’t know enough about him to venture any kind of opinion.

Haley is viewed Very favorably by 34% and Very Unfavorably by 11%. Just five percent (5%) offer no opinion of the Republican.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Just 19% say South Carolina politicians are more corrupt than politicians in other states despite the Sanford matter, the Greene primary win and the unsubstantiated allegations of marital infidelity that have been made against Haley. Sixteen percent (16%) say politicians in the state are less corrupt than their peers, and 59% say the level of corruption is about the same.

Forty-four percent (44%) approve of the job Sanford is doing as governor. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

As for President Obama, 42% approve of his job performance, while 57% disapprove. This is higher disapproval than the president earns nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Thirty-five percent (35%) of South Carolina voters think the president has done a good or excellent job in response to the huge oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Fifty percent (50%) rate his performance as poor. This is similar to findings nationally.

Only 20% say the oil companies responsible for the leak – BP and Transocean – have done a good or excellent job in response, while 47% think they’ve done a poor job.

Seventeen percent (17%) of voters in South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, think individual states have the right to leave the United States and form an independent country. Sixty-seven percent (67%) disagree. This is comparable to views nationally.

Also in line with national voter sentiments, 33% of South Carolina voters say it is at least somewhat likely that some states will try to leave the United States in the next 25 years, but that includes only 11% who say it’s Very Likely.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR5175, also known as the Disclose Act, by a 219-206 vote. “Disclose,” you see, is an acronym for “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections.”

The measure’s author, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., also happens to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — so you know that the bill has nothing to do with helping Democrats retain their seats. (Just kidding.)

Two Republicans voted for the measure; 36 Democrats voted against it. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it deserves to molder. This bill may have passed largely unnoticed, but if the Senate passes HR5175 as is, with its provision to activate the law in 30 days — conveniently in time for November’s midterm elections but before the Federal Election Commission would have a chance to draft careful rules — voters should see this as a blatant attempt to rig the system.

Proponents want you to think that the bill fills in gaps created by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent controversial Citizens United ruling that lifted restrictions on independent political advertising by labor and corporations. They just want special interests to disclose their funding of independent political campaigns. Disclosure, after all, is one of those happy-face ideas in American politics.

But it’s not that simple. For one thing, the measure bans independent campaign expenditures by businesses that do more than $10 million in contracts with the federal government. As the Center for Competitive Politics noted, the bill’s provision against political expenditures by government contractors “abandons the government’s long-standing policy of subjecting unions and corporations to similar restrictions. (The Disclose Act) would impose no similar burden on unions that directly negotiate for salary and benefits with the government or receive government grants, or on nonprofit groups that receive grants or taxpayer funding.”

I understand that in liberal San Francisco, many readers bristle at the notion that corporations have free-speech rights. But you can’t call a bill that muzzles business — but not labor — even-handed. Left or right, you might want to think twice before supporting a measure that allows Washington to choose which groups can and cannot speak out on issues of the day.

Also, disclosure isn’t always apple pie. The ACLU opposes the bill because, according to Michael Macleod-Ball, its chief legislative and policy counsel, “the system is not strengthened by chilling free speech and invading the privacy of modest donors to controversial causes.”

Then there’s the NRA exemption. In order to win passage of the bill with Blue Dog Democrats, Van Hollen agreed to exempt the NRA from disclosure requirements. Then he agreed to expand the exemption to cover other large special interest groups, like the Sierra Club. So it’s an anti-special interest bill that exempts powerful special interests.

“We don’t really think the intent of the bill is to withstand scrutiny in the courts,” said Jeff Patch of the Center for Competitive Politics.

No lie. Here’s a more honest acronym for Disclose: Democrats Intend to Stifle Contrary Leanings with Selective Enforcement.

PRINCETON, NJ — Conservatives have maintained their leading position among U.S. ideological groups in the first half of 2010. Gallup finds 42% of Americans describing themselves as either very conservative or conservative. This is up slightly from the 40% seen for all of 2009 and contrasts with the 20% calling themselves liberal or very liberal.

The 2010 results are based on eight Gallup and USA Today/Gallup surveys conducted from January through June, encompassing interviews with more than 8,000 U.S. adults. The 42% identifying as conservative represents a continuation of the slight but statistically significant edge conservatives achieved over moderates in 2009. Should that figure hold for all of 2010, it would represent the highest annual percentage identifying as conservative in Gallup’s history of measuring ideology with this wording, dating to 1992.

The recent rise in conservatism’s fortunes follows a decline seen after 2003; liberalism has experienced the opposite pattern. From 1993 to 2002, the ideological trend had been fairly stable, with roughly 40% identifying as moderate, 38% as conservative, and 19% as liberal. Before that, the presidential bid of independent candidate Ross Perot may have contributed to a heightened proportion of Americans (43%) calling themselves moderate in 1992.

Partisans Maintain Their 2009 Ideological Leanings

There are no significant changes so far in 2010 compared with 2009 in how Republicans, Democrats, and independents characterize their respective political views. Consistent with the patterns seen last year, nearly 4 in 10 Democrats call themselves liberal and a similar proportion of Democrats say they are moderate.

Seven in 10 Republicans continue to call themselves conservative, similar to 2009, while most of the remaining Republicans identify as moderate. Since 2002, however, the percentage conservative has increased by 10 points.

Independents today are slightly more likely to say they are moderate than conservative, with fewer than 20% identifying as liberal. While this is similar to 2009, it represents an increase in conservatism among this group since 2008.

Bottom Line

The ideological orientation of Americans seen thus far in 2010 would represent a record-high level of conservatism (since at least 1992) if it is maintained for the full year. This follows an increase in the percentage of conservatives in 2009 that was fueled by heightened conservatism among independents, a pattern that continues today.

Sharron Angle

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nevada shows Angle earning 48% support, while Reid, the state’s longtime Democratic senator, picks up 41% of the vote. Eight percent (8%) like some other candidate in the race, while just two percent (2%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, coming off her primary victory, Angle posted a 50% to 39% lead over Reid, who many consider one of the most vulnerable congressional incumbents in the country.

This returns the contest to where it’s been in surveys for months where Angle, a Christian conservative, ran weakest of the three Republicans seeking their party’s Senate nomination in match-ups with Reid.

Prior to the findings two weeks ago, Angle’s support in surveys stretching back to December has ranged from 44% to 48%, while Reid has earned 38% to 43% of the vote. In April, Angle held a 48% to 40% lead over the Democrat.

Reid‘s campaign and national Democrats are already pounding away at Angle’s views as unacceptable to the state. But at this early stage, the race continues to be about Reid, who earned 61% of the vote when he was reelected in 2004 but whose support in this election cycle against any Republican candidate has never risen above the low 40s. Any incumbent at this point in a campaign who is earning less than 50% support is considered vulnerable.

Reid’s numbers fell even lower after he helped engineer passage of the national health care bill in March. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Nevada voters favor repeal of that bill, while 42% oppose repeal. This includes 45% who Strongly Favor repeal and 33% who are Strongly Opposed. These findings are comparable to voter sentiments nationally.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of those who Strongly Favor repeal support Angle. Reid draws 81% support from the smaller group that Strongly Opposes repeal.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Nevada was conducted on June 22, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Nineteen percent (19%) of voters in the state consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement, slightly higher than membership nationally. Sixty-six percent (66%) say they are not members, but 15% are not sure.

Angle, who won the state’s GOP Primary with strong Tea Party support, gets 85% of the vote from those who consider themselves members of the movement. Fifty-five percent (55%) of non-Tea Party members support Reid, while 35% of that group back the Republican.

Forty-three percent (43%) of Nevada voters believe the Tea Party movement is good for the country, but 37% say it’s bad.

Angle carries male voters by nearly 20 points. Reid edges her among female voters. Voters not affiliated with either major party prefer the GOP candidate by better than two-to-one.

Despite voter unhappiness with Reid’s legislative activity, however, it is perhaps cause for concern for Republicans that Angle is already nearly as unpopular as the incumbent.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Nevada voters have a favorable opinion of Reid, while 49% view him unfavorably. This includes 22% with a Very Favorable view and 43% with a Very unfavorable one.

Angle is regarded favorably by 48% and unfavorably 47%. These findings include Very Favorables of 17% and Very Unfavorables of 33%.

Both candidates are well-known in the state.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters in Nevada believe U.S. troops should be sent to the Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration, and 63% oppose a U.S. Justice Department challenge of Arizona’s new immigration law, several points higher than opposition to such a challenge nationally.

Angle has already strongly endorsed Arizona’s law, so Reid may be in an uncomfortable political position if the Obama administration goes through with the legal challenge as seems likely. Several Democratic members of Congress from Arizona, fearing the political repercussions, are already urging the administration to back off the challenge.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters in Nevada think offshore oil drilling should still be allowed. Just 29% are opposed.

All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects for November are looking up. Things aren’t as bad as Republicans say! Health care is becoming more popular! The country wants financial reform! People still like Barack Obama! Isn’t Joe Barton awful!

They’re fooling themselves. The basic indicators of voters’ intentions — their general mood and attitude toward the policies of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — are clear and solid. Unless those indicators change, and most experts believe that would take a huge, unforeseen event that fundamentally alters the political equation, Democrats are in for serious losses this November. The only question is whether those losses will be big enough for them to lose their huge majorities in the House and Senate. Even if they’re not, the party will be badly weakened in the next Congress.

The latest evidence is a new survey from pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for the Wall Street Journal and NBC. The number of people who say the country is headed in the wrong direction is 62 percent — the highest it has been since the final days of George W. Bush. The troubled economy, of course, is the most important issue, and 66 percent say they expect the economy to stay the same or get worse in the next year.

“There is a sense across the board that things aren’t working,” says Republican pollster David Winston.

Obama’s approval rating is at 45 percent, versus 48 percent disapproval — the first time the president has ever been underwater in the Journal poll. (By way of contrast, the president’s approval rating was 61 percent in April 2009, his high point in the Journal poll.)

People are not happy about the way Obama is handling the economy, with 50 percent disapproving compared to 46 percent approving. He’s also being hurt by the Gulf oil spill. Fifty percent in the survey disapprove of his handling of the crisis, compared to 42 percent who approve. That’s not much better than George W. Bush’s rating for handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which was 53 percent disapproval, 36 percent approval six months after the storm and the media’s subsequent battering of Bush.

A president’s personal approval rating is often higher than his job performance rating. With Obama, the two are more or less the same: 47 percent personal approval versus 45 percent job approval — neither very good.

Obama has also taken a fall when it comes to the sometimes hard-to-describe attributes that shape public opinions about leaders. The Journal asked whether people “strongly relate to [Obama] as your president,” or whether they related to him somewhat, only a little, or not really at all. The number of people who say they strongly relate to Obama as president has gone from 50 percent on Inauguration Day to 29 percent today, while the number of people who say they don’t really relate to him has gone from 8 percent then to 30 percent now. There’s clearly a growing alienation with the once enormously popular president.

Of course, Obama isn’t on the ballot this November. But his ratings contribute to what Winston calls the public’s “overall sense of the ability to govern.” From that perspective, Obama’s troubles are the Democrats’ troubles.

And Democrats in Congress have plenty of their own. When asked their preference for the outcome of this year’s elections, 45 percent of those surveyed say they want Congress to be controlled by Republicans, while 43 percent want Democrats in charge. In April 2009, people wanted a Democratic Congress by a margin of 48 to 39.

The pollsters asked whether voters would be more or less enthusiastic about a candidate if they knew he supported a particular position on the issues. The most popular positions were cutting federal spending, reforming Wall Street and repealing the national health care law — two Republican issues and one Democratic one. By a wide margin, people are more enthusiastic about a candidate who promises to repeal health care than they are about a candidate who is endorsed by Obama.

As strong as the numbers look, smart Republicans are constantly telling each other to calm down and keep working. While the public has soured on Obama and the Democratic leadership, Republicans can’t just bash the opposition. “The Democrats have really opened the door for Republicans,” Winston says, “and the challenge for Republicans is to lay out for people what they’ll get if they get a GOP majority.” If Republicans can do that, they’ll win big in November.

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Our tireless Chairman and Founder Ralph Reed has been absolutely tearing up the road of late, traveling the country tirelessly. Ralph and our staff will not stop till we have the activists and infrastructure in place to ensure record-breaking conservative turnout in the 2010 elections. Anything less than a full effort will endanger our shared goal of dealing this President and his socialistic policies a stunning rebuke come November.

Marco Rubio, Jo Anne Reed and Ralph Reed

Thanks to the efforts of our supporters, we now have Faith & Freedom state affliates up and running in 20 states after only 6 months of operations! Our membership list exceeds 350,000 committed members in all 50 states and our fundraising is going extremely well.

Ralph’s most recent state visit was to California. There, he met with grassroots leaders, donors and conservative candidates. Ralph met with Marco Rubio, conservative candidate for Senate from Florida. Ralph also met with Don Wagner, who recently won the 3-way Republican primary for California’s 70th Assembly District. FFC was proud to distribute voter guides and newsletters in that important primary race. We helped turn out the conservative vote and we are excited for Don to represent conservative values in Sacramento, where those values desperately need more conservative voices.

Rick Berg

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in North Dakota shows Berg with 51% support to Pomeroy’s 44%. Just one percent (1%) prefer some other candidate in the race, while five percent (5%) are undecided.

These findings are little changed from a month ago.

Pomeroy has represented North Dakota in the House since 1993.

Since February, Berg’s support has ranged from a low of 46% to a high of 52%. In the same period, Pomeroy, who was reelected in 2008 with 62% of the vote, has earned 40% to 45%. Any incumbent who earns less than 50% at this stage of the race is considered potentially vulnerable.

Opposition to the health care law in North Dakota remains higher than it is nationally. Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters in the state favor repeal of the measure, while 31% are opposed. This includes 49% who Strongly Favor repeal and 21% who Strongly Oppose it.

Berg gets 79% of the vote from those who Strongly Favor repeal. Eighty-three percent (83%) of those who Strongly Oppose repeal support Pomeroy, who voted for the health care bill in the House.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in North Dakota was conducted on June 15-16, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Nineteen percent (19%) of North Dakota voters say they are members of the Tea Party movement, but the majority (51%) of voters in the state think the movement is good for the country. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say they are not members of the Tea Party, but just 22% view the movement as bad for the nation.

Eighty percent (80%) of Tea Party members support Berg. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of non-members favor Pomeory.

Thirty percent (30%) of North Dakota voters have a Very Favorable opinion of Pomeroy, while 32% view him Very Unfavorably.

Berg is viewed Very Favorably by 21% and Very Unfavorably by seven percent (7%).

At this point in the campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers at this point in a campaign.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of North Dakota voters oppose a U.S. Justice Department challenge of Arizona’s new immigration law. Only 17% think the challenge is a good idea. Seventy-one percent (71%) say U.S. troops should be sent to the Mexican border to help prevent illegal immigration.

Just 30% of voters in the state believe it is possible for the United States to win the war in Afghanistan; 38% do not. Thirty percent (30%) rate President Obama’s handling of the war as good or excellent, while another 30% say he’s doing a poor job.

Sixty-two percent (62%) still support offshore oil drilling, but 77% say the companies that were drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico where the disastrous oil leak began should pay for the necessary cleanup.

Sixty-five percent (65%) say the leak will have a significant long-term impact on the environment.

Similarly little changed from a month ago are the 41% of voters in the state who approve of Obama’s performance as president versus 58% who disapprove. This is a bit lower than the national ratings in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

PRINCETON, NJ — An average of 59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have said they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with past elections, the highest average Gallup has found in a midterm election year for either party since the question was first asked in 1994.

The prior high for a party group was 50% more enthusiastic for Democrats in 2006, which is the only one of the last five midterm election years in which Democrats have had an enthusiasm advantage. In that election, Democrats won back control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.

The current average is based on four measures of this enthusiasm question since February, including the recent June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll. In that poll, 53% of Republicans said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting and 39% were less enthusiastic, while 35% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting and 56% were less enthusiastic.

Republicans’ net score of +14 more enthusiastic in the latest poll compared with the Democrats’ net score of -21 represents the largest relative party advantage Gallup has measured in a single midterm election-year poll. More generally, Republicans have shown a decided relative advantage in enthusiasm throughout 2010, averaging a net score of +28, compared with Democrats’ net score of 0.

(Gallup instituted a separate enthusiasm question in March on its Daily tracking survey, which asks voters to say how enthusiastic they are about voting this year as opposed to comparing their current enthusiasm to their enthusiasm in prior elections. This new enthusiasm question lacks a historical trend but has also shown a consistent Republican advantage throughout the year.)

The 28 percentage-point party difference in net scores on the “more enthusiastic than usual” question in 2010 is the highest Gallup has measured in a midterm election year, with 1994’s 17-point Republican advantage the only other midterm election-year gap coming close. (See the table at the end of the article for full data by party.)

The enthusiasm question has generally provided an accurate indication of which party will fare better in the midterm elections. Since 1994, the party that has had a relative advantage on the enthusiasm measure has gained congressional seats in that midterm election year. Specifically, Republicans gained seats in 1994 and 2002, while Democrats gained in 2006. In 1998, Democrats gained seats even though Republicans had an advantage on enthusiasm for most of the year. In the final poll before the 1998 midterm elections, Democrats held a slight two-point advantage in net enthusiasm.

Aside from 1998, party advantages in enthusiasm have been established early in a midterm election year and have persisted throughout the year. Thus, it would be unlikely, though not unprecedented, for political conditions to change enough between now and Election Day to wipe out the Republican advantage in enthusiasm. And if that advantage persists, the Republican Party will likely be celebrating gains in congressional seats after Election Day.

When President George W. Bush signed the bill banning partial-birth abortion in 2003, supportive legislators gathered around for a photograph. All of them were men. Nancy Pelosi, then the House minority leader, called the image “a slap in the face to women across America.”

My fellow pro-lifers winced at the picture — both because it offered Ms. Pelosi a political opportunity and because it reflected an enduring political weakness of our movement. American women are just as likely to be pro-life as American men, but few pro-life women have gone into politics.

To read the full article click here.

There’s an old joke about a Transylvanian cookbook. The recipe for an omelet starts off with this: “First, steal two eggs.” If that note really appeared in some country’s cookbook, don’t look for constitutional government or a free market system to arise there anytime soon. That’s because democracy is not something you can just plant, like shaking seeds out of an envelope.

Americans were blessed to have extensive experience of self-government when we made our bid for independence in the 1770s. And Americans at that time — all the most thoughtful ones at least — recognized the profound contradiction that human bondage represented. It was difficult to assert on the one hand that all government “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” while holding millions of human beings as slaves. Amid many blessings, slavery was held to be a curse. It took another eighty years and fratricidal Civil War before those contradictions were resolved.

To read the full article click here.

New Jersey voters are now evenly divided over whether Senator Robert Menendez should be recalled from office, with support for recall unchanged from two months ago. But most voters aren’t paying much attention to the story, and the recall effort has a long and difficult way to go before it ever makes it to the ballot.

Bob Menendez

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds that 39% say they would vote to recall the Democratic incumbent from office if a recall election were held today, while another 39% would vote to let him continue serving the rest of his term through 2012. Twenty-two percent (22%) are undecided.

That’s a slightly improved picture for Menendez from mid-April when 39% said they would vote to recall him, while 34% would vote to keep him in office.

Menendez’s support of the national health care bill is one of the chief reasons for the recall effort. Fifty-five percent (55%) of New Jersey voters favor repeal of the health care bill, slightly lower than voter sentiments nationally, while 39% oppose repeal. This includes 44% who Strongly Favor repeal and 30% who are Strongly Opposed.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of those who Strongly Favor repeal would vote to recall Menendez. Seventy percent (70%) of those who Strongly Oppose repeal would vote to keep him in office.

But just 40% of all voters in the Garden State say they have been following news reports about the recall effort at least somewhat closely, with 14% who are following Very Closely. This shows no increased interest in the story since the previous survey.

Fifty percent (50%) now approve of Menendez’s performance as senator, up five points from April, while 43% disapprove. This includes 16% who Strongly Approve of the job he is doing and 26% who Strongly Disapprove.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in New Jersey was conducted on June 14, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Most New Jersey voters still approve of the job that new Republican Governor Chris Christie is doing, and he earns solid support for his handling of the state’s contentious budget situation.

The recall effort, which requires gathering 1.3 million signatures from voters in the state to hold a recall election, is being spearhead by Tea Party activists unhappy with Menendez’s support of the health care bill, last year’s $1.3 billion economic stimulus plan and immigration reform. Menendez has challenged the constitutionality of the effort all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which is expected to rule soon whether the recall petition drive can go ahead.

A plurality (47%) of male voters would vote to recall the senator, compared to just 31% of female voters. Opposition to Menendez’s recall is highest among voters 50 and older.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of conservatives think recall is a good idea, but 65% of liberals and a plurality (45%) of moderates think Menendez should remain in office.

Sixty percent (60%) of Republicans and nearly half (48%) of voters not affiliated with either party would vote to recall, while 61% of Democrats would vote to keep the senator from their own party in office.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Democrats approve of Menendez’s performance. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Republicans and 52% of unaffiliated voters disapprove.

One problem with President Obama’s Oval Office speech was his declaration that 90 percent of the oil spill would be captured in “coming days and weeks.” Ah, if only government were that strong and powerful. Trouble is, the spill rate late yesterday afternoon was again revised upward toward 60,000 barrels per day from the prior estimate of 25,000.

Larry Kudlow

To most Americans, and especially those in the Gulf, it’s the spill rate of capture that matters most. Perhaps there’s a magic wand to cure this problem — maybe a spill-rate de-stimulus package — but so far the magic cure remains elusive.

In addition, the president did not announce a Jones Act waiver to bring foreign-flag tankers into the Gulf area. Nor did he announce a new task force of hands-on experienced oilmen from the likes of ExxonMobil and other big oil sisters who actually know what they are doing.

Another problem was Obama’s arrogant announcement that he will be informing BP’s chairman “that he is to set aside” some undisclosed asset amount ($20 billion) for the government-run escrow fund to pay for the spill damages. Trouble is, there are no laws to permit our government to force such financial retribution. Not even a new TARP, at least not yet. Did someone say nationalization? But stock-option and credit-default-insurance markets are already pricing in a BP bankruptcy.

And while the media waited breathlessly for a clear Obama push for cap-and-trade, there was only a passing mention of the House bill, rather than a full-throated call to arms. So it was an indecisive Obama, a rather meek and defensive Obama, in terms of reducing carbon dependence. Of course, Obama knows that cap-and-trade politics will drive up Republican numbers even more in the fall.

But folks would rather see a full-throated and comprehensive energy plan conducted on all fronts — carbon and non-carbon — that would unleash energy entrepreneurs and existing businesses to create more power and more jobs and more economic growth. Besides stopping the spill, this is the key point.

But Obama’s weak speech really missed the point.

Nikki Haley

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Haley picking up 55% of the vote over Democratic State Senator Vincent Sheheen, who earns 34% support. Five percent (5%) would choose some other candidate and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Congressman Gresham Barrett earns 46% support over Sheheen’s 38%. However, 10% of voters would vote for some other candidate in this match-up and six percent (6%) are not sure.

Haley fell just short of 50% support in last Tuesday’s primary race. She and Barrett will face off in a runoff election on June 22.

Despite facing unsubstantiated allegations of multiple marital affairs during the primary race Haley picked up plurality support in a mid-May poll. However, just two months before, Haley came in last against the same three Republican opponents. She moved solidly in the lead following an endorsement from Sarah Palin.

In the last general election survey conducted in December, Barrett held a 45% to 23% edge over Sheheen. Haley was not included in the survey at that time.

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in South Carolina was conducted on June 10, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Both Republicans hold strong leads among men, but Haley performs better among women. Women are evenly divided on the Barrett-Sheheen match-up.

Haley picks up more support than her Republican opponent among voters not affiliated with either major political party.

Haley is viewed Very Favorably by 34% of South Carolina voters and Very Unfavorably by only 13%.

Barrett’s ratings are 17% Very Favorable and 10% Very Unfavorable.

Twenty-four percent (24%) view Sheheen Very Favorably, while 17% view him Very Unfavorably.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Three out of four (75%) South Carolina voters believe the U.S. military should be used along the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants. Most (61%) also oppose the justice department challenging the legality of Arizona’s recently passed immigration law. These results are similar to those found on the national level.

All this summer, Faith & Freedom state affiliates from every region of the country will be training grassroots activists to become Faith & Freedom leaders as part of our Local Chair Drive. We’re bringing together Tea Partiers, home schoolers and other conservatives to give them the tools they need to identify, educate and turn out conservative voters in their area.

Colorado Faith & Freedom Coalition (COFFC), under the leadership of Jim Pfaff, is off to a tremendous start. COFFC has held well-attended trainings thus far in Denver, Grand Junction and Littleton and future trainings are scheduled for late June in Longmont and Fort Collins. Already, COFFC has trained more than 200 grassroots activists towards their goal of having 300 Colorado local chairs this election cycle.

“I am amazed by the positive energy at these trainings,” Pfaff said. “It is clear to me that as we continue to build the grassroots network across Colorado that conservatives and Tea Party activists are ready to take our state back from failed policies in Washington and Denver.”

FFC is spending much of this summer and fall training activists in every targeted congressional district in the country. Each of these FFC leaders will have the tools and know-how to turn out the conservative vote in their area and will help us deliver a resounding conservative victory this year.

June 15, 2010 A new public opinion survey for NPR shows just how difficult it will be for Democrats to avoid big losses in the House this November.

Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger conducted the first public battleground poll of this election cycle. They chose the 70 House districts experts regard as most likely to oust incumbents this fall. What they found was grim news for Democrats.

For this poll, Bolger and Greenberg chose the districts where incumbents are considered the most vulnerable, and, in the case of open seats, the ones most likely to switch party control in November. Sixty are currently held by Democrats — many of whom won these seats even when voters in the same district preferred Republican John McCain for president in 2008. The other 10 districts are the flip side — held by Republicans in the House, even though their voters went for Barack Obama in 2008.

These are this year’s swing seats — the political terrain where the battle for control of the House of Representatives will be won or lost. In this battleground, voters are choosing Republicans over Democrats 49 percent to 41 percent.

Poll Results ‘A Snooze Alarm’

“In a year where voters want change and in which Democrats are seen to be in power, this is a tough poll — about as tough as you get,” Greenberg said.

Bolger said the poll results will be a wake-up call for Democrats, who were stunned at the beginning of the year when Republican Scott Brown won the U.S. Senate seat held for years by the late Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

“If Massachusetts was the first wake-up call, this is was the snooze alarm going off,” Bolger said.

He pointed out that President Obama’s approval ratings are much lower in these competitive districts than they are nationally: 54 percent of the likely battleground voters disapproved of Obama’s performance; 40 percent approved.

“It’s very problematic for the president to have a 40 percent approval rating in these 60 Democratic districts,” Bolger said. “When you look at history, when the president is below 50 percent nationally, his party tends to lose more than 40 seats.”

Energized GOP Voters

Bolger says the NPR poll has more evidence of a trend that’s been apparent all year: Republican-leaning voters are energized, while the intensity seems to have leached out of the Democratic ranks.

“When you look at the generic ballot for Congress in the Democrat-held seats, the Republican is up by 5 [points]. But among those who rate their interest as 8 to 10, you know, the high-interest voters, the Republican leads in those Democratic seats 53 to 39.

“And what that means is that is in a close election, the Republican enthusiasm will put Republicans over the top, just like in ‘06 and ‘08, the Democratic enthusiasm put the Democrats over the top.”

That lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats worried one NPR poll respondent, Donna Blanchette, a science teacher and Democrat from Minnesota who would like to see her Republican incumbent voted out of office.

“Michele Bachmann is in my area, and as I watched the Republicans ramp up behind her, I don’t see a lot of Democrats being as forthcoming as we probably need to unseat Michele Bachmann,” Blanchette said.

What would fire up Democrats?

Frank Damico Jr., a lawyer from Louisiana, says he wishes the health care bill had been stronger. He wants to see his party fight harder against special interests and against Republicans.

“The Democrats have been afraid, and I wish they would realize who put them in office,” Damico said. “I think they are more concerned with placating the right when I don’t think they are going to get the right supporting them no matter what they do.”

But Brian Woolems, a union painter from southern Indiana, an independent who leans Republican, is typical of the likely voters in the NPR poll: His beef with the Democratic Congress is a long list of particulars.

“I’m not in favor of the health care bill,” he said. “And they are working on cap and trade, and I’m not in favor of that. And I’m not in favor of all the stimulus spending they have done — pretty much everything.”

An Uphill Struggle

Democratic candidates have had success in some of the recent special elections. But despite those wins, the outlook for the midterms is still toxic for Democrats, Bolger said.

“Democrats will have some good plays by individual campaigns, but it’s getting close. … The concrete is drying — it’s not yet solidly locked in, but it’s getting very difficult for this to change where there’s a picture of Republicans picking up at least 30 seats,” he said.

And as Greenberg knows all too well, Republicans only need 40 pickups to take control of the House.

“What I’m hoping that this poll brings about is that the Democrats are running with a much more effective economic message, which talks about who they fought for, and what they are engaged in now,” Greenberg said. “And that may also come out of the president’s speech this week, where I think as well he will be talking about not so much a grade for past performance but what he intends to do on energy and the Gulf.”

Obama will speak from the Oval Office at 8 p.m. Tuesday about the devastating oil spill and his plans to repair the damage. Greenberg hopes the message lifts Democrats’ fortunes across the board.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to follow President Obama’s lead in claiming that God directs her lawmaking, invoking the Bible as her legislative roadmap. If a conservative Republican did this, it would be the top of the news.

Ken Blackwell

Last week, Pelosi made a rambling, redundant, somewhat incoherent monologue in which she claimed that “The Word” directed her. She clarified that meant “The Word Made Flesh”—the incarnate Deity—Jesus Christ. She doesn’t leave us to surmise, elaborating that she makes policy decisions, “in keeping with the values of Jesus.”

However, the only place to learn about “The Word” Jesus is to read “The Word,” the Bible. As two Christians who read the Bible, we’re not sure where in its pages Nancy Pelosi found the inspiration for her top legislative priorities. Since the Bible is the sacred text of the Christian faith, and the exclusive record of the teachings and values of Jesus, where else could she be enlightened to the values of Jesus?

We don’t recall ever reading, “Thou shalt require every person to buy health insurance” or “Thou shalt oppose charter schools and home-schooling” in the Bible. We’d have to rename the Ten Commandments the Twelve Commandments instead. How do those Pelosi priorities embody the “values of Jesus?”

Nor do we remember being taught, “And Peter spoke unto them, saying, ‘The Lord commands that you shall pass a cap-and-trade tax which shall tax all the people, that they may inherit a cooler planet.” (Given that the science doesn’t support man-made global warming, at least this last possibility would explain where Speaker Pelosi gets her evidence for cap-and-trade. She’s claiming divine revelation.)

We can’t imagine what Bible Speaker Pelosi is reading. The Bible does not sanction gay marriage or abortion. It does not command heavy taxes on employers and professionals to pay for government handouts.

Instead, the Bible speaks of God and man, the relationship between the two and how that relationship can be restored. It reveals the moral character of God, the divine plan for the ages, and explains the purpose and duties of man.

From everything we see from her, we are firmly convinced that none of those biblical instructions or admonitions has any impact on Pelosi’s official activities.

This reminds us of the 2008 election season, where then-Senator Barack Obama claimed that Christian Right leaders had “hijacked” Christianity. Hijacked? How dare any politician claim that a group of clergymen upholding the traditional beliefs of the Christian faith is “hijacking.”

Yet after winning the White House, President Obama showed the audacity to claim a biblical mandate for his agenda. On August 19, 2009, the president held a conference call with Christian clergy, urging them to endorse his healthcare legislation as a moral issue, and claiming that their Christian duty to care for their brother obligated them to support him. Now that is what hijacking Christianity looks like.

In the end, perhaps President Obama and Speaker Pelosi read the Bible the same way they read the Constitution. They believe in rights to abortion and government-run healthcare, despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions such rights, but they oppose the idea that the Second Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment make gun bans like the D.C. gun ban or the Chicago gun unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Constitution plainly declares it.

Obama and Pelosi likewise do not take at face value the Bible’s words on countless moral issues or divine truths. They claim biblical imperatives that are not found in the text, and ignore words that are spelled out in black and white.

If a Republican politician did this, there would be an outrage. How dare he! Doesn’t he know the Constitution declares the separation of church and state? (Words, by the way, which never appear in the Constitution.)

But this is the hypocrisy of the modern liberal culture. Countless Christians who go about their 2 Timothy 3:16 duty of regarding the Bible as God-breathed, and useful for teaching and correcting are mocked and ridiculed. These leftist elites recoil in horror if you cite to a specific passage of Scripture as guiding your decisions, while claiming that the Bible endorses a far-left political agenda is not considered worth mentioning on the air.

In our #1-bestselling book, The Blueprint, we explain how this is part of President Obama’s design to fundamentally transform this country. Christians need to rise up and contend for their faith. In the words of Titus 1:9, we must, “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught,” so that we may, “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”

These are challenging times in which we live, but Providence has placed us in a country where we have the right and ability to speak out. We must not stand silently by as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama claim that we have hijacked Christianity, while in fact that is exactly what they are doing right before our eyes.

We must stop President Obama’s blueprint to turn America into a radical secular nation.

Ken Blackwell is Chairman of the Ohio Faith & Freedom Coalition. Ken Klukowski works as special counsel at the Family Research Council. They are the authors of the national bestseller The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.

Sharron Angle

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nevada, taken Wednesday night, shows Angle earning 50% support while Reid picks up 39% of the vote. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

A month ago, Angle led Reid 48% to 40% but ran poorest against the incumbent of the three GOP primary hopefuls as she has for months.

Reid will try to portray Angle, a Christian conservative who drew heavily on Tea Party support for her win, as unacceptable to the state. Still, the race for now continues to be about the incumbent, who earned 61% of the vote when he was reelected in 2004 but whose support in this election cycle against any Republican candidate has never risen above the low 40s.

Despite their hotly-contested primary, Republicans already appear to be solidifying behind Angle who now earns 88% support among voters in her party. Reid draws 68% support from Democrats. Voters not affiliated with either party prefer Angle by 10 points.

During intense primary battles, supporters of one candidate often say they won’t vote for the party nominee in November. That was the case in 2008 as a large number of Hillary Clinton’s supporters said they were not likely to support Barack Obama in the general election campaign. However, by Election Day, most Clinton supporters came home and voted for their party’s nominee.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Nevada was conducted on June 9, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

In line with voter sentiments nationally, 58% of Nevada voters favor repeal of the recently-passed national health care bill, championed by Reid, while 41% oppose repeal. This includes 47% who Strongly Favor repeal and 29% who Strongly Oppose it.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of those who Strongly Favor repeal support Angle. Eighty-five percent (85%) of the smaller group who Strongly Oppose repeal support Reid.

Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters in Nevada favor passage of a tough immigration law like Arizona’s in their state, nine points higher than support nationwide. Twenty-five percent (25%) oppose such a law in Nevada.

Angle gets 73% of the vote from those who favor a law like Arizona’s. Reid draws 84% support from those who oppose a law like that in their state.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of all voters in Nevada also support the chief requirement of the Arizona law that local police check the immigration status of anyone stopped for a traffic violation or some other violation if they suspect the person is an illegal immigrant. Just 21% oppose that requirement.

Twenty-six percent (26%) of voters in Nevada have a Very Favorable opinion of Reid, who has represented the state in the U.S. Senate since 1987. Forty-five percent (45%) view him Very Unfavorably.

Angle, a teacher by profession who now serves in the state legislature, is viewed Very Favorably by 20% and Very Unfavorably by 23%.

Both candidates are well-known in the state, but at this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Nevada voters are closely divided over their views of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and over whether she should be confirmed to the high court by the Senate.

Fifty-four percent (54%) believe the Gulf oil spill will have a devastating long-term impact on the environment, while another 30% predict that the impact will be major. Eighty-one percent (81%) say the companies involved in the oil drilling should pay for the cleanup, but 17% say the government should help with the cost as well.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Nevada voters approve of the job President Obama is doing, but 51% disapprove. This is roughly in line with voter opinions nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Yesterday we informed you of Faith & Freedom Coalition’s efforts to identify, educate and turn out conservative voters in New Jersey’s 6th congressional district Republican primary. That primary ended in a close, David-versus-Goliath win for social conservative candidate Anna Little. Today we have more good news for you regarding FFC’s work in the field: a conservative primary win in southern California.

The contested Republican primary for California’s 70th Assembly district featured Don Wagner, the President of the Board of Trustees of the South Orange County Community College District and a committed social and fiscal conservative.

FFC spent weeks blanketing conservative voters in the 70th district with targeted voter guides on issues ranging from balancing the state budget to life and protecting marriage. The outcome was recently decided in another nip-and-tuck race. Don won the race against his less conservative opponents by a mere 860 votes.

Faith & Freedom is proud to have played a role in turning out conservative voters in these critical races. Whether its Congressional races in New Jersey, Assembly races in southern California or a gubernatorial race in Virginia, in a few short months Faith & Freedom has proven to be a hugely effective force at turning out the conservative vote.

But, we’re just getting warmed up. With the help of our more than 300,000 members nationwide, together we’ll help deliver a huge conservative victory in November.

From the “I’m shocked beyond disbelief category”: (sarcasm is dripping)

Charlie Crist

Florida Governor and U.S. Senate Candidate Charlie Crist (Independent NOT Republican) has removed all pro-life references from his website.

Nice move Charlie. Oy.

Crist has always maintained he was pro-life but I guess it turns out he’s a PLINO. (Pro-Life In Name Only)

I’m sure Marco Rubio will have a thing or two to say about this when I fly down to Florida tomorrow to interview him one on one.

Read below from National Journal:

FL Gov. Charlie Crist (I) has removed pro-life language from his campaign website, the latest move in an effort to distance himself from the GOPers who forced him out of the party.

A Crist spokesperson did not return a call and an email seeking clarification on Crist’s position on abortion.

If one wants to know what is going to happen in November, the surest sign of which way the winds are blowing is primaries in the spring and summer. Obama’s startling defeat of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary in 2008, overcoming her money and endorsements and seeming inevitability, presaged the Democratic landslide in November. In 1994, it was the victories of Senate candidates like Oliver North in Virginia, pro-life Mike DeWine in Ohio and Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania in GOP contests that foreshadowed a conservative wave at the polls, leading to the first Republican House majority in 40 years and only the second GOP majority in the Senate since Dwight Eisenhower.

Ralph Reed

The same phenomenon is unfolding now. What began as a Tea Party surge now has an interesting wrinkle: 2010 just might be the year of the conservative woman. Nikki Haley won nearly 50 percent of the vote in a crowded field in South Carolina in spite of an eleventh-hour flurry of personal attacks. She had been endorsed by Jenny Sanford and Sarah Palin, among others. While that race may go to a run-off, Haley is the likely GOP nominee and the next Governor of the Palmetto State. Ditto for Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada. The lamestream media parrots the Democratic spin that these results bode well for Harry Reid. Don’t believe it. Reid’s re-elect is in the low 40’s and polling has shown him losing to Angle. And how pathetic is it that the Senate Majority Leader has to pray for an allegedly weak GOP nominee, hoping to “win dirty” in his own home state?! It speaks to how truly weak and desperate the Democrats are heading into the fall.

Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman’s victories in California also show the appeal of a conservative woman at the polls. Though Whitman is far more socially liberal than Fiorina, she won on the conservative themes of reining in government spending and creating jobs by lowering taxes. Fiorina waxed liberal former Congressman Tom Campbell, whose only message at the end could be summed up, “I can win.” He didn’t. Fiorina also had the support of Sarah Palin and the Susan B. Anthony List and won going away.

Nor are these high profile victories the only signs of a conservative woman’s moment. Earlier, Susanna Martinez overcame a spending disadvantage to win the Republican nomination for Governor in New Mexico. If victorious in November she will join Marco Rubio as a rising Hispanic star on the national stage. Anna Little, mayor of Highlands in Monmouth county, leads for the GOP nomination in New Jersey’s Sixth Congressional district. Little had the backing of Tea Party activists, Faith and Freedom Coalition (which I founded last year), and Building a New Majority, a New Jersey group focused on ground game and turnout. Little’s margin stands at only 65 votes, so there may be a recount. Assuming she holds on, she will face Frank Pallone, Jr., one of the most liberal members of Congress, in the fall.

There are many women candidates in later primaries that will join these victors on the general election ballot. But women were not the only winners. Tea Party-endorsed Tom Graves won a hotly contested special election in the strongly Republican Ninth District of Georgia to replace former Congressman Nathan Deal in a race that pitted many party establishment figures against grassroots activists. Scott Rigell, a Regent University alumnus and successful businessman, won in Virginia’s Second congressional district, backed by Pat Robertson and Governor Bob McDonnell, among others. He faces Glenn Nye in one of the most high profile House races in the nation, a must win if the Republicans hope to win control of the House.

One of the clear winners yesterday was Sarah Palin. The liberal media wrote her obituary after the 2008 elections, but she has emerged as one of the most influential political figures in the country. Not every candidate she has endorsed this year has won, but her support played a critical role in validating the candidacies of Nikki Haley and Carly Fiorina.

Politics is a little like physics. Every action causes a reaction. The election of a multi-ethnic, liberal president in 2008 has now sparked a conservative, limited government, pro-family counter-reaction, clad in lipstick and pumps.

Eleven states voted yesterday in primaries and runoffs—the largest number of the year—and one way to look at the results is that no incumbent member of Congress lost his or her bid for reelection. So does this make 2010 less of an anti-incumbent (and anti-Democratic) year? Not really. I am put in mind of the story of the Teamsters Union business agent who was confined to the hospital. A bouquet was sent, with a note reading: “The Executive Board wishes you a speedy recovery, by a vote of nine to six.” Such was the voters’ verdict on incumbents on June 8.

Michael Barone

Consider Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, renominated in 2004 by an 83%-17% margin and reelected that November by 56%-44%. One big headline of last night’s news coverage was that she won her Democratic primary runoff over Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter. But her margin was only 52%-48%. And in recent polling she trails 3rd district Republican Congressman John Boozman by a 59%-34% margin. Her runoff victory and her “I’ll keep fighting” election night speech may close the gap a bit in Jacksonian Arkansas. But not by much.

Or consider South Carolina 4th district Republican Congressman Bob Inglis. Elected in 1992, 1994 and 1996, he lost a Senate race to Democrat Ernest Hollings in 1998, then came back to win when his 4th district successor Jim DeMint ran successfully for Hollings’s seat in 2004 and won reelection in 2006 and 2008. So he’s represented the 4th district—Greenville and Spartanburg, basically, for 12 of the last 18 years. And on Tuesday he trailed Spartanburg County Solicitor (i.e., prosecutor) Trey Gowdy by a 39%-28% margin. That’s a devastating result for an incumbent in his own party’s primary: 100% know him and 72% voted for someone else. Inglis managed to carry his home base of Greenville County but by only 29%-24%. He lost Spartanburg County 60%-19%. Maybe he has a chance in the runoff since there are a lot more voters in Greenville County than Spartanburg County; but I doubt it. Gowdy’s winning tactic: he pointed out that Inglis has the most liberal voting record of any South Carolina Republican member of Congress (although only marginally more so than Senator Lindsey Graham’s), including voting for the $700 billion TARP bill in fall 2008.

Note also that 3rd district Republican Congressman Gresham Barrett, who also voted for TARP, did not fare well in his race for governor. He did in fact make it into the runoff, winning 22% of the votes to 49% for state Representative Nikki Haley. But he carried only 4 counties in his congressional district and lost the other 42 counties in the state to Haley. I am told that almost all South Carolina Republican politicians detest Haley as a cheap shot artist who takes demagogic stands against all other incumbents (in the mode of outgoing Governor Mark Sanford, last seen on the Appalachian Trail heading to Argentina; Sanford’s estranged wife Jenny Sanford as well as Sarah Palin endorsed Haley). But I suspect that Barrett may decide that extending this contest into a June 22 runoff is a waste of his time and psychic energy. The insiders-don’t-like-her theme doesn’t have the timbre of a winner.

Interestingly, Haley is the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India. If elected governor she would be the second Republican governor of a Southern state, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, to be the child of immigrants from South Asia. Who’d a thunk it? And when you’re putting your mind around that, consider that the leader in the Republican primary for the open South Carolina 1 seat relinquished by retiree Henry Brown is Tim Scott, who may be the most conservative and assuredly is the only black Republican in the South Carolina legislature. He led Paul Thurmond, son of the late Governor and Senator Strom Thurmond, by a 31%-16% margin; in third place with 14% was Carroll Campbell, son of the late Congressman and Governor Carroll Campbell.

What would Strom Thurmond (born in 1902, allowed to parachute into Normandy in 1944 after getting leave for being too old, State’s Right Democratic candidate for president in 1948 as Trent Lott reminded us in December 2002) have thought of this? Or what would his father’s good friend and his own friendly acquaintance Pitchfork Ben Tillman (born 1847, governor 1890-94, U.S. senator 1895-1918, “censured by the Senate in 1902 for assaulting another Senator on the Senate floor,” as the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1789-1989 informs us) have thought? The mind reels. This is a great country and South Carolina, for all the trouble it has caused the rest of us, is a great state.

Let me conclude, at a late hour and with the hope of addressing other results of the June 8 primaries some time soon, with some observations on the Arkansas Senate runoff. At the beginning of March, Senator Blanche Lincoln had no primary opposition. Then, suddenly, Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter entered the race. An Arkansas-born Democrat who like Bill Clinton won a Rhode Scholarship and who held an appointive job in the Clinton administration in the 1990s, Halter had started off running for governor in 2006, when Republican incumbent Mike Huckabee was not running for reelection; noting the formidability of incumbent Democratic candidate Mike Beebe and the ultimately fatal illness of incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Winthrop Paul Rockefeller (whose father Winthrop Rockefeller was elected governor in 1996 and 1969), Halter in March 2006 he decided to run for lieutenant governor instead. He was elected, but no path to higher office seemed open. Beebe, elected in 2006, seemed highly popular and unlikely to retire any time soon (Arkansas governors can last a long time: Bill Clinton held the office for 12 of 14 years from 1978 to 1992, and Huckabee held the office for 11 years from 1995 to 2006). Democratic Senator Mark Pryor, son of former Democratic Senator David Pryor, was strong enough that he was reelected in 2008 without serious primary or general election opposition. Senator Blanche Lincoln had been reelected to a second term in 2004 without difficulty.

But Lincoln feel afoul of the barons of organized labor when she, after co-sponsoring the unions’ card check bill effectively abolishing the secret ballot in unionization elections in 2007 as every other Democratic senator did when the bill had no chance of passage, turned tail and opposed it in 2009. It was obvious to anyone in, say, the Wal-Mart or Tysons Food headquarters in Arkansas, that this bill had the potential to do to their companies what the United Auto Workers contracts did to General Motors and Chrysler. Blanche Lincoln, scion of a rice farm family in receipt of huge annual crop subsidies, understood this and acted accordingly. She wanted to win reelection and knew that card check was political poison in almost entirely non-unionized Arkansas.

Big labor decided to teach her—and all Democratic members of Congress who were quailing at the prospect of voting for card check—a lesson. The lesson would be that, however much a vote for card check would reduce your chances of winning a general election, opposition to card check would result in your defeat in a Democratic primary. Their ready and willing instrument was Bill Halter, whose path to higher office seemed otherwise occluded. At the beginning of March he announced his candidacy and proclaimed himself the champion of the working man. Blanche Lincoln, in agonized response, proclaimed herself the target of outside interests. In a matter of weeks labor unions and moveon.org—originally formed to defend Bill Clinton against impeachment—sent millions to Bill Halter’s campaign. Lincoln, recently elevated to the Chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, sponsored a bill to shut off all derivative trading. The Obama White House carefully protected this bill from defeat while the primary and runoff contests were pending, while Bill Clinton campaign gallantly for Lincoln and against his appointee Halter.

The Clinton intervention may have proved decisive. Although the Clintons have left Arkansas, Arkansas voters still have warm feelings toward them, as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s 70%-26% defeat of Barack Obama in the 2008 Arkansas Democratic presidential primary—the biggest percentage win in her campaign. Lincoln won the runoff by a 52%-48% margin—hardly inspiring but a whole lot better than a defeat.

It’s a huge defeat for the unions. White House political operatives are already complaining, as Ben Smith notes in Politico, that “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” [a senior White House] official said. “If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.” But the unions are not just interested in maintaining Democratic majorities. They’re interested in making sure that all Democratic incumbents will vote when bidden for card check. The message they wanted to send to Blanche Lincoln, and to all other Democrats, was: the minute you announce against card check, your career is over. Even in a state like Arkansas, with few union members and with all the major employers solid opponents of unionization, we can defeat you in the Democratic primary. You may very well fear likely defeat in the general election if your support card check. But we can promise you certain defeat in the primary if you oppose it. And to national Democratic strategists they could say this: Lincoln was going to lose the general election in any case. We just made her path to defeat more unpleasant.

Bill Halter, who remained coy about his own position on card check, was the willing accomplice in this strategy. With not a lot to lose (the lieutenant governorship? give me a break; it was a nice office for a billionaire like Winthrop Rockefeller but doesn’t offer much to anyone else) and something to gain (maybe John Boozman would self-destruct in the general election for the Senate), this may have looked to him like a low-risk candidacy. His willingness to be the accomplice of the big labor unions might foreclose any future electoral career in Arkansas (although Bill Clinton’s rebounds after adversity might give any Arkansas Rhode Scholar hope for recovery). But there are other ways the big unions can help you advance.

Blanche Lincoln’s (narrow) victory leaves the unions’ strategy in ruins. They can’t credibly threaten any Democratic incumbent who opposes card check with political defeat. Some, in states less anti-union than Arkansas, might be vulnerable to a challenge like Halter’s; but others won’t. And in some states or districts there won’t be an opportunistic challenger like Halter willing to go along with the strategy and well enough established to be a serious primary challenger. Give the unions credit for daring, and for putting their money (or the money of their members) on the line. They’re playing for high stakes—for the ability to plunder the private sector for dues money as they have successfully plundered the public sector (i.e., taxpayers) for dues money in states with strong public employee unions like New York, New Jersey and California. They just came up a little bit short.

Obviously this is a case of a divergence of interest between the unions (which want to deter any Democrat from opposing card check) and the Obama administration political strategists (who want to maximize the number of Democrats elected no matter what their position on substantive issues). Which brings to mind the old saying about honor among thieves. When you’re trying, in different ways, to plunder a once productive private sector economy, you won’t always agree on how to do so. As you watch the videotape of Blanche Lincoln’s rather shrewd victory speech, you might want to keep that in mind.

Pro-life feminists like Carly Fiorina think that women don’t view the right to abort their child as the linchpin of their freedom or their happiness.

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Primaries in 11 states are over. In recent weeks several articles have attacked particular voices and groups unabashedly supporting the “pro-life feminism” of candidates such as California GOP Senate primary winner Carly Fiorina.

Even Ms. Magazine’s blog gets in on the action with an entry titled, “Sarah Palin is Not a Feminist.” The articles I’ve seen are packed with lots of ad feminum shots at Governor Palin and the organization I oversee as president, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, and then there’s some harrumphing over the perceived lack of gratitude shown to the feminist foremothers of the 1960s, and lists, lots of lists.

What’s on these lists? Well, there are lists of the things you apparently have to do or say or believe in order to be an honest-to-goodness feminist.

You have to support the authors’ particular wish-list of government programs or budget items for one thing.
And, according to one commentator, Jessica Valenti, you simply must spend some quality time engaging in “a structural analysis of patriarchal norms, power dynamics or systemic inequities.”

But when they really get down to brass tacks, each of the articles insists upon one thing: feminism, whatever else it might include, must include a virtually unqualified support for abortion rights.

The success of pro-life women, like Fiorina, in last night’s primaries makes it clear that this is a risky gambit in the year 2010. Those who hazard it are speaking into an American culture in which the majority of the public, including the majority of women, now self-identify as “pro-life.”

Poor women and women of color (in whose name older feminists often presume to speak) are more reluctant to turn to abortion than their wealthier sisters. In our time, opposition to abortion figures so prominently in our society that it nearly brought down the entire health care bill.

Still, abortion rights-feminists are entitled to give their argument a try. But so are pro-life feminists.

Once the idea of feminism escaped the universities and books and reigning newspapers which gave it life, it became the public property of millions of American women. These women are free to decide, over time and through their lived experiences, where their interests really lie. In other words, the business of defining feminism is not a monopoly; it is a competition of ideas.

Pro-life feminists like Carly Fiorina think that women don’t view the right to abort their child as the linchpin of their freedom or their happiness. Rather, they wish to bear the children they conceive, while maintaining the realistic possibility of getting an education and working to help support their families.

Tuesday’s wins in California and Nevada reveal that this message resonates with a majority of women.

It’s surprising, really, that abortion-rights feminists are so unequivocal in their insistence that “pro-life feminism” is an oxymoron. After all, the pro-life feminist argument relies upon feminism’s better angels. It is a communitarian argument for one thing.

The pro-life feminist looks out for the interests of other people affected by her decisions. She refuses to take terrible advantage of another vulnerable group – the unborn – in order to advance her own case. She makes the “both/and” argument: both the woman and the unborn child deserve respect.

Secondly, the pro-life feminist relies upon empirical and scientific datum. She makes a rational argument about when life begins or about the psychological or physical harm some women suffer after abortion; she is not shouting down or pressuring her opponents, or belittling them personally.

Finally, she insists that what women alone are capable of doing – bearing and mothering children–– merits more respect than it presently receives. Abortion rights have unburdened men from the fathering role. His freedom from sexual responsibility is premised on the woman’s choice to abort or not.

It is no coincidence, suggests the pro-life feminist, that 37 years after women were granted the “right to abortion,” the number of women and children living without the presence or the support of the father is at an all-time high. She thinks it’s no accident that elite jobs are regularly populated by women who, often with regret, felt pressured, with no support available to them, to avoid parenting in order to advance in their career.

Pro-life feminists should not demonstrate a lack of gratitude for the feminists who went before us with their just demands for equal opportunity, and their analyses of the ways in which public and private institutions and customs devalued women.

But neither should abortion rights feminists be deaf to pro-life feminists’ logic, nor to their observations about women’s lived experience of freedom over these last several decades.

Abortion rights feminists should stop the name-calling and recognize their pro-life sisters’ efforts to move feminism in a more inclusive, responsive, and rational direction.

“Feminism.” Claim the term or don’t. But if you do, don’t assume you’ve got proprietary rights to define its meaning. You will be hugely disappointed this November.

Marjorie Dannenfelser is President of the Susan B. Anthony List, a nationwide network of over 280,000 pro-life Americans dedicated to advancing, mobilizing and representing pro-life women in the political process

To visit the site go to http://www.georgiafaithandfreedom.org/

Just ahead of the President’s trip to Florida to check out the oil spill, Quinnipiac is out with a poll today showing Obama’s job approval taking a dramatic turn for the worse in the Sunshine State.

Six weeks ago, 50% of Floridians approved of the job Obama was doing as President, while 45% disapproved. Today, however, Quinnipiac finds a 54% majority disapproves of how Obama is handling his job as President while just 40% approve – a net swing of 19 points against the President in the last month and a half.

Not surprisingly, those numbers are nearly identical to Floridians’ view of Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill. Just 37% approve of the job he’s done on the oil spill, while 54% disapprove of the way he’s handled the disaster.

In mid-February 2008, fresh from winning a bunch of Super Tuesday primaries, Barack Obama granted an interview to “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Croft. “When you sit down and you look at [your] resume,” Croft said to Obama, “there’s no executive experience, and in fact, correct if I’m wrong, the only thing that you’ve actually run was the Harvard Law Review.”

“Well, I’ve run my Senate office, and I’ve run this campaign,” Obama said.

Seven months later, after receiving the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama talked with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. At the time, the news was dominated by Hurricane Gustav, which was headed toward New Orleans and threatening to become a Katrina-like disaster. “Some of your Republican critics have said you don’t have the experience to handle a situation like this,” Cooper said to Obama. “They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience. …”

“Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees,” Obama answered. “We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years.”

Obama ignored Palin’s experience as governor of Alaska, which was considerably bigger than the Obama campaign. But his point was clear: If you’re worried about my lack of my executive experience, look at my campaign. Running a first-rate campaign, Obama and his supporters argued, showed that Obama could run the federal government, even at its most testing moments. He could set goals, demand accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, bend the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.

Fast forward to 2010. The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing out of control. The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the problem. “At least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response,” the New York Times reports, “making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.”

For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere. “For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore,” the Times reports, “officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach.”

The bureaucracy wasn’t bending to anyone’s will. The direction from the top was not clear. And accountability? So far, the only head that has rolled during the Gulf crisis has been that of Minerals Management Service chief Elizabeth Birnbaum. But during a May 27 news conference, Obama admitted he didn’t even know whether she had resigned or been fired. “I found out about it this morning, so I don’t yet know the circumstances,” the president said. “And [Interior Secretary] Ken Salazar’s been in testimony on the Hill.” Obama’s answer revealed that he hadn’t fired Birnbaum, and he couldn’t reach a member of his Cabinet who was a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Given all that, perhaps candidates in future presidential races will think twice before arguing that running their campaign counts as executive experience.

A few days before Obama won the White House, Bill Clinton joined him for a late-night rally in Kissimmee, Fla. Clinton, who became president after 12 years as a governor, told the crowd not to worry about Obama’s lack of executive background. Given the brilliance of Obama’s campaign, Clinton said — and here the former president uncharacteristically mangled his words a bit — a President Obama would be “the chief executor of good intentions as president.”

Chief executor of good intentions? Perhaps that’s what Obama is now. But with oil gushing into the Gulf, that’s just not good enough.

Dan Coats

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Indiana shows Coats with 47% support, down from 51% just after his GOP state Primary win last month. Ellsworth picks up 33% of the vote, while seven percent (7%) prefer another candidate and 14% are undecided.

In the previous survey, just eight percent (8%) were undecided.

Coats’ support in match-ups with Ellsworth grew from 46% in February to a peak of 54% in April. This is the second straight monthly decline in support for the GOP nominee.

Ellsworth’s support since the beginning of the year has remained in the narrow range of 32% to 36%.

Coats attracts 83% support from Republicans while Ellsworth earns 70% of the vote from Democrats. Voters not affiliated with either party break roughly even between the two candidates.

Ellsworth voted in favor of the national health care bill, but opposition to the bill remains high in Indiana. Sixty percent (60%) of voters in the state favor repeal of the bill, while just 33% oppose repeal. This is in line with voter sentiments nationwide. In Indiana, the findings include 48% who Strongly Favor repeal and 25% who Strongly Oppose it.

Among those who Strongly Favor repeal, Coats earns 71% of the vote. Ellsworth gets 63% support from the smaller group that Strongly Opposes repeal.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Indiana was conducted on June 2-3, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

By a 59% to 26% margin, Indiana voters favor passage of an immigration law like Arizona’s in their own state. That figure is close to the national average.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of those who favor such a law support Coats. Sixty-six percent (66%) of those who oppose such a law back Ellsworth.

Support in the state is even higher for the central provision of the Arizona law that requires local policeman to check the immigration status of those stopped for traffic or other violations whom they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Seventy-two percent (72%) in Indiana support that requirement.

Coats, who previously represented Indiana in the Senate from 1989 to 1999, is viewed Very Favorably by 15% and Very Unfavorably by 10%.

For Ellsworth, Very Favorables are 12% and Very Unfavorables 10%.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Nearly 80% of Indiana voters believe the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico will have either a devastating or major long-term impact on the environment. Seventy-four percent (74%) say the oil companies involved should pay for the clean-up, but 20% say the government and the oil companies should finance clean-up efforts together.

Twenty-four percent (24%) have a favorable opinion of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, while 33% view her unfavorably. Twenty-six percent (26%) favor her confirmation by the Senate, but 36% are opposed. Thirty-eight percent (38%) are undecided.

Forty-one percent (41%) of voters in Indiana approve of how President Obama is handling his job, while 58% disapprove. Indiana voters are more critical of Obama’s job performance than voters nationwide in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) approve of Republican Governor Mitch Daniels’ performance. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disapprove.

In 2008, Rasmussen Reports projected nationally that Obama would defeat John McCain by a 52% to 46% margin. Obama won 53% to 46%. Four years earlier, Rasmussen Reports projected the national vote totals for both George W. Bush and John Kerry within half-a-percentage-point.

In Indiana during the 2008 campaign, Rasmussen Reports polling showed a close race with McCain edging Obama 49% to 46%. Obama won 50% to 49%. In the Democratic Primary, Rasmussen Polling showed Hillary Clinton defeating Obama 46% to 41%. Clinton won 51% to 49%.

Pat Toomey

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Pennsylvania shows Toomey with 45% support, while Sestak earns 38%. Five percent (5%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 12% are undecided.

Two weeks ago, just after his widely covered primary victory over longtime Senator Arlen Specter, Sestak posted a modest four-point lead lead over Toomey.

Prior to the primary, however, Toomey tended to enjoy modest leads over Sestak.

The current polling shows that 19% of Democratic voters are undecided or prefer some other candidate. Only 7% of Republicans fall into this category. That suggests Sestak has some work remaining to unify his party following the primary battle.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This statewide telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters in Pennsylvania was conducted on June 2, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Nearly three-out-of-four voters in the state say they have been following news stories about the secret Obama White House job offer to Sestak in hopes that he would drop his primary challenge of Specter, and 52% say that offer is at least somewhat important in terms of how they will vote. Forty-one percent (41%) view the job offer as unimportant. This includes 29% for whom it is Very Important and 20% who say it’s Not At All Important.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of those who say the offer is Very Important to their vote prefer Toomey. Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters who regard it as Not At All Important favor Sestak.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of all the state’s voters favor repeal of the national health care bill that Sestak voted for as a member of the House, while 38% oppose repeal. This is slightly lower than support for repeal nationally. In Pennsylvania, this includes 42% who Strongly Favor repeal of the bill and 28% who Strongly Oppose.

Toomey earns 81% support from those who Strongly Favor repeal. Sestak picks up 80% of the vote of the smaller group that is Strongly Opposed.

The Republican now holds similar modest leads among both male and female voters. Voters not affiliated with either party strongly prefer Toomey but 34% of the unaffiliateds remain uncommitted to either candidate.

Sestak, a former Navy admiral who is currently a first-term congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs, is viewed Very Favorably by 16% of Pennsylvania voters and Very Unfavorably by 16%.

For Toomey, a conservative activist and former congressman, Very Favorables are 21% and Very Unfavorables 13%.

Let’s be grateful that Barack Obama’s contempt for politics as usual is a matter of public record.

Barack Obama

Otherwise, we might be saddled with a White House that offers federal jobs to potential candidates it wants to keep out of Democratic primaries, and does it in such a crude fashion that it skirts the law.

We might witness the release of pertinent news about one of the cases on the Friday before a three-day weekend in one of the oldest, most predictable PR tricks in the book.

We might have to rely on a sketchy document purporting to outline the facts from a conflicted White House counsel that’s a kind of haiku of lawyerly obfuscation.

We might have to read statements from White House officials in the press denying a job was ever offered to one of the candidates, when an e-mail released by the candidate clearly demonstrates an offer of a job.

We might have to tolerate a White House press secretary who dances and spins his way through ethical questions he simply wants to outlast and make go away.

One can imagine the elegant fury that Barack Obama, chin upraised, eyes looking off into the future, once would have summoned to condemn such petty and borderline-corrupt practices. Before, of course, his administration embraced them as a matter of routine. Asked about the job offer to one of the candidates, Rep. Joe Sestak, who challenged and beat Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Obama said that “nothing improper took place.”

We’ve gone from “hope and change” to “nothing improper” and “everybody does it” and “many legal experts say it didn’t violate federal law.”

Barack Obama wasn’t like Bill Clinton pledging “the most ethical administration in history.” Anyone who had paid attention to Clinton or his campaign knew to hide the silverware, and maybe the interns. Obama made a high-minded, ethical politics absolutely central to his appeal, and yet hasn’t betrayed the slightest reflex to deliver on it.

The job offers to Sestak and Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, challenging incumbent Michael Bennet, aren’t Watergate; they may not deserve a “-gate” suffix at all. But they are remarkably ham-handed instances of the transactional, bullying politics in which Obama’s team specializes, despite working for the most sanctimonious man in America.

Romanoff had applied for a USAID job at the beginning of the administration. That went nowhere. Suddenly, when mulling a challenge against the White House’s preferred candidate, Senator Bennet, he became just what USAID needed. White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina e-mailed him information about three jobs that would be available if he dropped his bid.

This is the supposed non-offer of a job. It contrasts with the Sestak case, which involves the supposed offer of a non-job — an unpaid advisory gig for which Sestak was ineligible.

The White House is slicing it so thin because an explicit quid pro quo would run afoul of federal law. If no one should be braying for Jim Messina to be frog-marched from the White House, neither should we trust the White House to investigate itself. Its strategy is to release the minimum increment of information necessary to pronounce the matter “old news.”

It certainly has nothing to fear from the reliably house-trained attorney general, Eric Holder. He has opened a criminal inquiry into BP to abet the White House ’s shame-and-blame campaign, but would be hard-pressed to investigate White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel even if $100,000 showed up in his freezer. The White House will be forced to release more information, or refer the matter to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, only if the press holds the Obama administration to the same standard as all other administrations.

Until such time, we can ponder the lesson the affair offers to all those dear souls who bought Barack Obama’s hopemongering patter about a new kind of politics: Never, ever believe.

The White House’s self-exonerating report on the Joe Sestak affair has given spokesman Robert Gibbs a new way not to answer questions. Now, when asked about the offer of a federal position to Sestak in return for Sestak’s agreement not to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Gibbs simply refers reporters to the White House report. When reporters respond that the questions are not answered by the report, Gibbs freely acknowledges that — and then refers them to the report again. And so on.

Robert Gibbs

Tuesday’s White House briefing was Gibbs’ first since the report, prepared by White House counsel Robert Bauer, was released on Friday. One big question about the report concerns Bauer’s statement that, “Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board…” The plural “efforts” and the specific mention of June and July suggest that the White House plan involved more than one approach to Sestak. Yet Sestak says he received just one call, from former President Bill Clinton, the White House intermediary in the effort.

This apparent contradiction raises obvious questions. And so a reporter said to Gibbs Tuesday, “The counsel’s memo on Friday said that efforts were made in June and July of 2009. Were there multiple efforts and were all those made by President Clinton?”

“Whatever is in the memo is accurate,” Gibbs said.

“Okay, but, I mean, with regards to June and July, I mean, were all those President Clinton, or — ”

“I think the relationship on how that happened, yes, is explained in the memo,” Gibbs said.

But that wasn’t explained in the memo at all. The reporter continued: “Joe Sestak said he had one conversation with President Clinton.”

“Let me check,” said Gibbs.

Gibbs has promised to “check” on details on many occasions during the Sestak affair; it’s unlikely that reporters expect an answer. At that point, the reporter moved on to a particularly intriguing part of the story. After the White House report came out, it became clear that the unpaid position Clinton apparently offered Sestak, a seat on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, was a position for which Sestak was ineligible, because the Board’s rules expressly forbid employees of the U.S. government from serving and Sestak is a member of Congress. So another question came up.

“The Intelligence Advisory Board, which most reports said this offer was for, that would be a position a member of the House could not serve on,” a reporter said.

“That’s how I understand the way the PIAB is written,” Gibbs said.

“But the memo, it said that this would be a position to serve in the House and serve on a presidential advisory board.”

“Correct,” Gibbs said.

“Well, how could he sit on the board?”

“He couldn’t,” Gibbs said.

“So that wasn’t the offer, then?”

“I’d refer you to — ”

“What position, what board, was it then? Do you know?”

“I’d refer you to the memo.”

“But the memo didn’t specify.”

“Right,” Gibbs said. “Thank you.”

And that was the end of that. The Bauer memo didn’t answer the questions, but when reporters asked the questions, Gibbs referred them to the Bauer memo. Doing so also just happened to deflect any blame from Gibbs himself. But Gibbs does bear some responsibility for all this. He is a member of the president’s inner circle, and he played a role in the White House handling of the Sestak revelations. But when asked about that, he responded with what could charitably called a non sequitur.

“I’m just wondering, if it’s not a big deal, as you guys are saying,” a reporter asked Gibbs, “then why did we wait for three months to answer that question?”

“I’d have to ask counsel for a better answer on that,” Gibbs said. “I don’t know the answer.”

“Don’t you have something to do with that as the chief spokesman for the White House?” the reporter continued. “You were asked on a number of occasions and don’t you think that that kind of created — ”

“If I bear some responsibility for that, I can understand that,” Gibbs said.

What did that mean? If Gibbs bears some responsibility — and he certainly does — then he can understand that? But wasn’t the question why the White House waited for months to address the Sestak issue? It’s all well and good that Gibbs can understand the question. It would be even better if he would answer it.

The percentage of Democrats increased to 36.0% in April, while the number of Republicans fell to 31.6%, the lowest level since July 2008. But May finds 35.1% identifying as Democrats, matching the previous low recorded in February, and 32.0% describing themselves as Republicans. Unaffiliated adults rose to 32.8% from 32.5% the previous month.

After declining for four straight months to the lowest levels on record, the number of Democrats increased a full percentage point to 36.2 in March, while Republicans inched up to 32.9%. This was consistent with other data showing that the health care debate heightened passions on both sides of the aisle.

Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based on telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002. The margin of error for the full sample is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence.

As has been the case in every month over the past seven years of tracking, there are more Democrats than Republicans in the nation. The gap is currently 3.1 percentage points, roughly the size of the gap for the first three months of the year. The 1.5% gap in December 2009, however, marked the closest the two parties have been since August 2005.

(Want a free daily e-mail update ? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Between November 2004 and 2006, the Democratic advantage in partisan identification grew by 4.5 percentage points. That foreshadowed the Democrats’ big gains in the 2006 midterm elections. The gap grew by another 1.5 percentage points between November 2006 and November 2008 leading up to the election of President Obama.

Heading into 2010, the gap has closed a bit. The number of Democrats is down 6.3 percentage points since November 2008, while the number of Republicans is down nearly two points. Unaffiliateds have increased 8.1 points in that same period.

Keep in mind that figures reported in this article are for all adults, not likely voters. Republicans are a bit more likely to participate in elections than Democrats.

Obama’s Approval Index rating in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll fell three points overall in May to -14. On May 26, the president’s approval rating dropped to the lowest level measured (-22) since he assumed office in early January 2009. A month-by-month review of the president’s ratings give a big picture sense of how he’s been faring in recent months.

My good friend Newt Gingrich has launched his new book today entitled “To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine.” Already the book has rocketed to Amazon’s Top 25 list. Don’t miss your opportunity to be one of the first to purchase this provocative and insightful book from one of our movement’s top thinkers. You can learn more about the book below; we’ve also provided links to buy it. This is a book that every conservative should own.

Sincerely,
Ralph Reed

Newt Gingrich

Amazon is now taking orders; purchase yours today by simply clicking HERE.

Obama’s secular-socialist machine is destroying the American values that have made our country great. Help spread the word about To Save America so we can dismantle the machine and replace it with real solutions for America.

How interested is Barack Obama in discussing Rep. Joe Sestak’s allegation that the White House offered him a big government job if he would not challenge Sen. Arlen Specter, the White House’s favored candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate primary?

Barack Obama

Well, when the president was asked about it at his news conference Thursday — the question didn’t come up until the very last reporter was called on — the normally long-winded Obama spoke for a total of 32 seconds.

“I can assure the public that nothing improper took place,” Obama said, echoing earlier statements from White House officials who denied any wrongdoing. “There will be an official response shortly.” And that was that.

Obama’s brief answer brought a smile to Rep. Darrell Issa, who has been pursuing the Sestak issue in his role as ranking Republican on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. “That means the answer will be forthcoming after the lights go out for the weekend,” Issa said shortly after the news conference. “While the president is away and nobody’s available, a statement will come out.”

The way Issa sees it, the White House has to thread the needle when it finally responds to Sestak’s charges. A retired Navy admiral, Sestak is now the Democratic candidate for Senate from Pennsylvania, and the White House wants all the Democratic senators it can get. So they can’t come out and call Sestak a liar or a hack. On the other hand, they can’t admit that what Sestak is saying is true, because that would be, in the words of top White House adviser David Axelrod, a “serious breach of the law.”

So what can the White House do? “They can say we’re sorry, that the job offer was not intended to be a quid pro quo,” Issa says. “They can say that we offered a job to a person who was in the process of running for a Senate seat but who we felt he was better suited to be secretary of the Navy, and we never intended for it to be a quid pro quo but rather to fill our Cabinet with good people. That’s the only thread-the-needle that I see.”

It might thread the needle, but it won’t end the questions. Say it turns out, as everyone believes, that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was the official who talked to Sestak, and the job in question was secretary of the Navy. “Everybody is going to ask [Emanuel], Did you talk to the president about this?” Issa says. “What happened when [Sestak] turned you down? Did you believe he would get out of the race for this job? Did you talk to Arlen Specter about this? All those questions are inevitable.”

Inevitable that they’ll be asked, but not that they’ll be answered, or that the answers will satisfy critics. The matter at hand is a conversation that took place between Sestak and the White House. To determine whether any wrongdoing occurred, we have to learn both sides of the conversation. If the White House releases its side of the story, then we’ll have to hear from Sestak, who has so far refused to provide any details. Only then can investigators evaluate both versions of events.

Which is why on Wednesday all seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee — a group that included the moderate Sen. Orrin Hatch — wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder to ask that a special prosecutor be appointed to look into the Sestak matter. Citing Axelrod’s statements, the senators wrote, “We do not believe the Department of Justice can properly defer to White House lawyers to investigate a matter that could involve a ’serious breach of the law.’ ”

Holder has already rejected a similar request from Issa. And no Democrats in the House or Senate support a Justice Department investigation, nor does the White House. With total one-party control of the government, a formal probe is highly unlikely. But some Democrats do want the issue to be resolved and have urged both sides to get the facts out.

The next move is up to the White House. Nobody expects a holiday-weekend news release to end the matter, but it will be the start of what could be a long process. “Everyone is going to have follow-up questions,” says Issa. “And I’m a patient man.”

An assessment of President Barack Obama’s speech on Saturday to the graduating class at the United States Military Academy leads to one of only two possible conclusions:

Barack Obama

Either Obama does not live in the real world, or he wants Americans to believe that they don’t live in the real world.

Neither possibility is comforting.

The speech has been described as a repudiation of the doctrine of pre-emptive war to prevent attacks on U.S. soil, and so it is.

But it is so much more.

In what it contains, in what it ignores and in what it willfully misinterprets, it stands as a remarkably clear and forthright statement of the utopian mind.

The question of whether the president actually believes what he said is immaterial. The question that matters is how far this wistfully self-destructive longing for an internationalism that works will be allowed to drive American policy.

Compare Obama’s words with what’s really true:

“America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities and face consequences when they don’t.”

Granted, there’s no doubt who’s steering domestic policy. Obama’s hands are firmly on the wheel as the federal government takes over vast tracts of the American economy and busily redistributes the wealth of producers to nonproducers.

Internationally, though, we’re nowhere near the wheel. In fact, we’ll happily take a back seat to just about any one.

When the president of Mexico can come to Washington, criticize a law of the sovereign state of Arizona — which, not coincidentally, mirrors a 70-year-old law of the federal government — and get not only the active support of our president but a standing ovation from congressional Democrats, we’re being swept away on a wave of cooperation in our own demise.

And as for consequences, how many South Korean ships can North Korea sink? How many centrifuges can Iran buy? How many missiles can rain down on Israel? How much deeper can Obama’s bows to foreign dignitaries get?

“So we have to shape an international order that can meet the challenges of our generation.”

Let’s not kid ourselves. Under this administration, we’re not doing any shaping that matters. China is. Russia is. Iran is. Even North Korea is. The next U.S. administration will be left with a diminished capacity to react to a more dangerous world.

“We will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well, including those who will serve by your side in Afghanistan and around the globe.”

That’s just the news our most steadfast allies, Great Britain and Israel, have been waiting to hear. That’s music to the ears of the Poles and the Czechs, too. But why, after repeatedly suffering insult and injury at the hands of this administration, should they believe it? And why should we?

“The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times — countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; preventing conflict and healing wounds.”

The trouble is, the world doesn’t work that way. Never has. Never will.

Violent extremism — he couldn’t bring himself to say “Islamic” — and all of those other ills come from people who see them not as ills, but as tools to help them get what they want.

Muslims who want a world under Shariah law see terrorism as a means to that end. North Korea and Iran want nuclear weapons because they believe being a bigger threat to other countries will help them. The rulers of countries whose people are sick or starving are chasing other priorities and pocketing foreign aid money. Countries rushing to develop their industrial capacity (wisely) don’t give a fig about climate change.

There is no international order, nor is there going to be one. Nations simply don’t have that many common interests, and flights of rhetoric that insist otherwise are misleading and counterproductive.

That’s why America’s interests have to come first. They are unique. No other nation can fully share them and no other nation will look after them.

Americans have elected a president who either does not understand or refuses to admit those hard facts. It’s a mistake we dare not repeat in these dangerous times.

Barack Obama

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern

Overall, 42% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president’s performance. That is the lowest level of approval yet measured for this president. Fifty-six percent (56%) now disapprove of his performance.

Forty-four percent (44%) say the president is doing a good or excellent job on national security issues while 39% give him such positive marks on the economy. See other measures of the president’s performance at Obama By the Numbers. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the president is doing a good job handling the Gulf oil spill while 33% give him poor grades on that topic.

Most Americans have “come to believe that the political system is broken, that most politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party has the answers,” observes Scott Rasmussen. Just 27% believe Congress knows what it’s doing when it comes to the economy and 41% say that a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. In his new book, Scott adds, “Some of us are ready to give up and some of us are ready to scream a little louder. But all of us believe we can do better.”

The Obama administration has pursued a foreign policy that ranges from feckless to reckless, from pursuing fantasies like a global nuclear summit to acts of genuine irresponsibility, like diminishing longstanding relationships with allies like Poland, Israel and Britain.

But of all the national security imperatives facing the administration, none is more critical than preventing Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, from developing nuclear weapons. Now President Barack Obama’s actions have actually made the situation more dangerous, not less so.

To read the full article click here.

John Boozman

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Arkansas, taken Wednesday night, shows Boozman, the winner of Tuesday’s state GOP Primary, with 66% support in a match-up with Senator Blanche Lincoln. The Democratic incumbent picks up just 28% of the vote. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

If Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter is his opponent, Boozman, currently the state’s only GOP congressman, earns 60% of the vote to the Democrat’s 33%. Four percent (4%) like someone else in the race, and three percent (3%) remain undecided.

In previous surveys, all the Republican Primary hopefuls outpolled both Lincoln and Halter, generally by double-digit margins.

In short, the race at this juncture is an uphill struggle for the Democratic candidate in a state where the national health care bill continues to rankle voters who register much higher opposition than voters nationwide.

While 56% of voters nationally favor repeal of the health care bill, 72% of Arkansas voters feel that way, including 60% who Strongly Favor repeal. Only 24% oppose repeal, including 18% who Strongly Oppose it.

Boozman earns more than 80% support from the much larger group that Strongly Favors repeal against either Democrat. Lincoln draws 60% of the vote of those who Strongly Oppose repeal, while Halter gets 74% of those votes.

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The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Arkansas was conducted on May 19, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Lincoln edged Halter 44% to 43% in Tuesday’s Democratic Primary, but because neither candidate crossed the 50% mark a runoff is set for June 8. Boozman avoided a similar runoff by capturing 53% of the vote out of a field of eight Republican candidates.

Voters not affiliated with either major party favor Boozman by a five-to-one margin regardless of his opponent.

Boozman is viewed Very Favorably by 22% of Arkansas voters and Very Unfavorably by just seven percent (7%).

For Halter, Very Favorables are 11% and Very Unfavorables 29%.

Eleven percent (11%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Lincoln, while 44% regard her Very Unfavorably.

At this point in the campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers at this point in a campaign.

Only 19% of Arkansas voters are even somewhat confident that Congress knows what it is doing with regards to the nation’s current economic problems. Seventy-seven percent (77%) don’t share that confidence, with 49% who are Not At All Confident.

Seventy-six percent (76%) are also not very or not at all confident that their representatives in Congress are representing voters’ best interests.

Forty-four percent (44%) of voters in the state oppose the confirmation of President Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan. Twenty-three percent (23%) favor her confirmation by the Senate, while 32% are undecided.

Obama lost Arkansas to John McCain in the 2008 election by a 59% to 39% margin, and just 32% of the state’s voters now approve of the job he is doing as president. Sixty-seven percent (67%) disapprove. This is a much higher level of disapproval than Obama earns nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

But 72% approve of the performance of Democratic Governor Mike Beebe. Only 28% disapprove of how he’s doing his job.

The hordes are not massing at the gates of Washington—not yet. They won’t arrive until after the midterm congressional election in November. Most are likely to be Republicans, a good number of them old Washington hands. Yesterday’s primary elections, including the impressive victories of Republican Rand Paul in Kentucky and Democrat Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania, didn’t change that.

Fred Barnes

The idea that anti-incumbent fever, striking equally at Democrats and Republicans, is the defining feature of the 2010 election is as misguided as last year’s notion that President Obama’s oratory would tilt the nation in favor of his ambitious agenda. Yet the media, echoing the Obama White House, has adopted anti-incumbency as the all-purpose explanation of this year’s political developments.

Their latest (supposed) evidence: Mr. Sestak’s ouster of incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter. But incumbency, though it played a part, wasn’t the main reason Mr. Specter (who switched parties from Republican to Democrat last year) lost. After voting against the 80-year-old Mr. Specter in five elections dating back to 1980, a majority of Democratic voters in Pennsylvania couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him yesterday. They didn’t trust him.

Mr. Sestak, a House member since 2006, played on this sentiment. He was the “real” Democrat, Mr. Sestak insisted, while Mr. Specter was an imposter. Recognizing that Mr. Specter might be vulnerable, the White House leaned on Mr. Sestak to stay out of the primary. Mr. Sestak stubbornly refused.

Nor was Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas forced into a runoff with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter yesterday because she’s an incumbent. A bigger problem for her was a reputation as an unreliable vote for Democratic initiatives—Mr. Halter attacked her from the left—and polls consistently showed her badly trailing any Republican opponent.

It’s true that anti-incumbency was marginally responsible for the defeats recently of three-term Republican Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah and 14-term Democratic Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia. Voters do at times get tired of elected officials. But Mr. Bennett lost chiefly because he was seen as having “gone Washington” and too eager to compromise with Democrats. Mr. Mollohan was defeated by a conservative opponent more in tune with the state’s drift to the right over the past decade.

What demolishes the notion of anti-incumbency as a scourge on both parties are the calculations of credible political analysts—Democrats and Republicans from Charles Cook to Jay Cost to Nathan Silver to James Carville—about the outcome of November’s general election. They believe dozens of congressional Democrats either trail Republican challengers or face toss-up races, while fewer than a handful of Republicans are in serious re-election trouble.

Even Gallup, hardly known for its bold analysis of polling data, doesn’t appear to regard anti-incumbency as a problem for Republicans. Its current surveys indicate Republicans are likely to trounce Democrats in November.

“Republicans have had a significant turnout advantage in midterm elections,” Gallup said. “This means . . . Republican candidates would most likely receive a higher percentage of the actual votes cast [and] would also be virtually guaranteed major seat gains, possibly putting them in range of recapturing majority control of the U.S. House.”

In Dr. Paul’s defeat of Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Senate primary, he benefited from anti-Washington and anti-establishment feelings rampant across the country. Mr. Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, was the favorite of Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, and suffered for that. Like Mr. McConnell, he defended earmarks. Dr. Paul, who’d never before run for office, is an eye doctor in rural Bowling Green and the son of Ron Paul, the renegade Republican congressman and presidential candidate from Texas. He denounced earmarks.

But there was more to his 59% to 35% victory than simply exploiting popular trends. Dr. Paul was by far the better candidate. He kept his most controversial views—opposition to the Iraq war, doubts about sending American troops to Afghanistan—largely under wraps. Instead, he sounded like a vintage 1994, Contract-with-America Republican, calling for term limits and a balanced budget amendment.

And Dr. Paul wasn’t shy about his support from tea party activists. They turned out to be anything but a stigma on his campaign, contrary to their characterization in the media. Without their fervent backing, he might have lost. That should be a lesson to other Republican candidates.

Republicans suffered one significant setback on Tuesday. Their polling suggested they might win the special election to fill the House seat of the late Democratic Representative John Murtha. The heavily Democratic district wraps around Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. A victory there, Republicans figured, could foreshadow a Republican landslide in the fall.

But their candidate, businessman Tim Burns, lost badly to Mark Critz, a former Murtha aide. Mr. Burns failed to stir Republican turnout with his anti-Obama message. In contrast, Democratic turnout was buoyed by the furious Senate race between Mr. Specter and Mr. Sestak. Republicans insist the mix of voters will be different in the fall. We’ll see.

If there’s a Republican wave in November, Republicans will capture the Senate seats in Kentucky and Arkansas and probably in Pennsylvania as well. The most important political event of the week may have been the revelation that the Democratic Senate candidate in Connecticut, the state’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, had falsely claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. That gives a Republican a chance to win in Connecticut, too—and maybe even a Senate majority.

Marco Rubio

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Florida finds Republican Marco Rubio with 39% support, while Crist earns 31% of the vote and Democrat Kendrick Meek trails at 18%. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, just after Crist announced that he was running as an independent, he held a 38% to 34% advantage over Rubio.

The latest numbers parallel the findings in April two weeks before Crist announced he was quitting the Republican Primary race.

Crist, whose numbers had been in freefall in his primary match-up with Rubio, has been actively courting Democrats. But Meek now edges Crist among Democratic voters after trailing him two weeks ago.

Among Republicans, Crist’s support has dropped from 30% two weeks ago to 23% now. Rubio, the Cuban-American former speaker of the state House, earns 68% of Republicans, up 10 points from the previous survey.

Crist’s lead over Rubio among voters not affiliated with either party has narrowed as well, from 12 points early in the month to three points now.

Rubio has a two-to-one lead among male voters over both Crist and Meek. Crist has a small lead over Rubio among female voters.

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This statewide telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters in Florida was conducted on May 16, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of all voters in the state favor a law for Florida like the one just adopted in Arizona that involves local police in immigration enforcement. Thirty percent (30%) oppose such a law, and 13% more are not sure about it.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters who favor a law like this for Florida support Rubio. Forty-two percent (42%) of those who oppose this kind of law like Meek, while 38% back Crist.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) currently approve of how Crist is performing as governor, down five points from earlier this month. Forty-two percent (42%) disapprove.

Crist is viewed Very Favorably by 20% of Florida voters and Very Unfavorably by 16%.

For Rubio, Very Favorables are 22% and Very Unfavorables 22%.

Twelve percent (12%) regard Meek Very Favorably, while 15% see him Very Unfavorably.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with a strong opinion more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Fifty percent (50%) of voters in Florida approve of how President Obama is doing his job, while 49% disapprove. This is in line with feelings among voters nationwide in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Rick Perry

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Texas shows the Republican incumbent with 51% support, while White earns 38%, his poorest showing to date. A month ago, Perry held a modest 48% to 44% advantage.

Perry, who is seeking an unprecedented third term as governor, has been sharply critical of the federal government in recent months and more specifically of the national health care bill passed by Democrats in Congress. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Texas voters favor repeal of the health care law while only 33% oppose repeal. Opposition to the health care law is even higher in Texas than it is nationally.

The Texas figures include 53% who Strongly Favor Repeal and 24% who are Strongly Opposed.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of those who Strongly Favor repeal support Perry. Eighty-four percent (84%) of the smaller group who Strongly Oppose repeal back White.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

This statewide telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters in Texas was conducted on May 13, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters in the state currently approve of the job Perry is doing as governor, roughly the level of support he’s maintained over the previous two months. Forty-two percent (42%) disapprove.

Seventeen percent (17%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Perry, while 24% view him Very Unfavorably.

White, the former mayor of Houston, is viewed Very Favorably by 15% and Very Unfavorably by 15%.

Both candidates are well-known in the state, but at this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of Texas voters say it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November. However, 42% believe their own local representative deserves to be reelected; 35% don’t agree.

Just 42% of Texas voters now approve of how President Obama is handling his job, while 57% disapprove. This is unchanged from a month ago and continues to reflect lower approval for Obama than he earns nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

In 2008, Rasmussen Reports projected nationally that Obama would defeat McCain by a 52% to 46% margin. Obama won 53% to 46%. Four years earlier, Rasmussen Reports projected the national vote totals for both George W. Bush and John Kerry within half-a-percentage-point.

In Texas, Rasmussen Reports polled on two races during the 2008 campaign. In the race for president, Rasmussen polling showed McCain leading Obama 54% to 44%. McCain won the state 55% to 44%. In the 2008 Senate race, Rasmussen polling showed John Cornyn leading Richard Noriega 55% to 40%. Cornyn won 55% to 43%.

In the 2006 race for U.S. Senate, Rasmussen polling showed Hutchison winning 60% to 34% over Barbara Radnofsky. Hutchison won 62% to 36%. In that year’s race for governor, the final Rasmussen Reports poll showed Perry leading a four-way race by 11 points with Perry at 36% and Chris Bell at 25%. Perry won by nine, 39% to 30%.

Some things never change, and voter opposition to the recently passed national health care law appears to be one of them.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% favor repeal of the law, while 39% are opposed. Support for repeal is unchanged from a week ago. That support is also proving to be just as consistent as opposition to the health care plan before it was passed into law.

In polls conducted every week since the law was passed in March, support for repeal has stayed in a very narrow range from a low of 54% to a high of 58%.

The current results include 45% who Strongly Favor repeals and 33% who are Strongly Opposed. Among senior citizens, the generation most likely to use the health care system, 63% favor repeal.

The health care bill produces an enormous perception gap between the Political Class and the rest of the country. While most voters nationwide favor repeal, the Political Class is opposed to repeal by an 88% to eight percent (8%) margin.

Overall, 39% of voters believe the law will be good for the country, and 50% say it will be bad. Among the Political Class, 97% see the law as good, while 64% of Mainstream voters say it will be bad.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 14-15, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

As has been the case for months, most voters (56%) believe the new health care law will increase the federal budget deficit. Most (54%) also believe it will increase the cost of care, and 50% expect the quality of care to suffer.

Just 13% believe the law will reduce the deficit; 18% say it will lower the cost of care, and 21% think it will improve the quality of care.

Eighty-four percent (84%) of Republicans favor repeal of the health care law. So do 61% of voters not affiliated with either major political party. However, 68% of Democrats take the opposite view and oppose repeal.

A majority of both men and women favor repeal.

The American public feels it is drowning in red ink. It is dismayed and even outraged at the burgeoning national deficits, unbalanced state and local budgets, and accounting that often masks the extent of indebtedness. There is a mounting sense that taxpayers are being taken for an expensive ride by public sector unions. The extraordinary benefits the unions have secured for their members are going to be harder and harder to pay.

Mort Zuckerman

The political backlash has energized the Tea Party activists, put incumbents at risk in both parties, and already elected fiscal conservatives such as Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Over the next fiscal year, the states are looking at deficits approaching hundreds of billions of dollars. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimates that this coming year alone states will face an aggregate shortfall of $180 billion. In some states the budget gap is more than 30 percent. The result is a crowding out of the state role as the supporter of adequate infrastructure, education, and healthcare.

How did we get into such a mess? States have always had to cope with volatility in the size and composition of their populations. Now we have shrinking tax bases caused by recession and extra costs imposed on states to pay for Medicaid in the federal healthcare program. The straw (well, more like an iron beam) that breaks the camel’s back is the unfunded portions of state pension plans, healthcare, and other retirement benefits promised to public sector employees at a time when federal government assistance to states is falling—down by roughly half in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

It is galling for private sector workers to see so many public sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga point out in the City Journal that California’s schoolteachers are the nation’s highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives. All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation’s. It will get worse. There’s an exodus of firms that want to escape California’s high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises. When Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, says he will not build any more facilities in California, you know the state is in trouble.

The business community and a growing portion of the public now understand the dynamics that discriminate against the private sector. The public sector unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. And what is happening with California is happening in slower motion in the rest of the country. It must be one of the reasons the Pew Research Center this year reported that support for labor unions generally has plummeted “amid growing public skepticism about unions’ power and purpose.”

There has been a transformation in the nature of our employment. Labor is no longer dominated by private sector industrial workers who were in large part culturally conservative and economically pro-growth. Over recent decades public sector employment has exploded and public workers have come to dominate the labor movement. These public sector employees have a unique and powerful advantage in contract negotiations. Quite simply it is their capacity to deliver political endorsements and votes for the very people who are theoretically on the other side of the negotiating table. Candidates who want to appear tough on crime will look to cops, sheriffs’ deputies, prison guards, and highway patrol officers for their endorsement.

These unions will naturally back a candidate willing to support better pay and benefits for their members, and this means as much as, or more than, the candidate’s views on law enforcement. The result has been soaring pay and the ability of state police and other safety officers to retire with pensions that place an increasingly unbearable financial burden on the states. In California, such retirees at age 50 often receive pensions at 90 percent of their pay; comparable retirees in most other states get about half their final working salary.

In New York, public service employees have received gold-plated perks for much of the 20th century, especially generous health insurance benefits. Indeed, where once salaries were lower in the public sector, the salary gaps in the public and private sectors have disappeared in the last two decades, or even reversed for most job categories. A Citizens Budget Commission report in 2005 showed that for most job categories in the greater New York City region, public sector workers received higher hourly wages than private sector workers. And according to a 2009 survey by the same group, this doesn’t even count the money that New York City pays in full premiums for comprehensive health insurance policies for workers and their families. Only 8 percent of workers in private firms enjoy that subsidy. Moreover, in virtually all cases, the city also pays the full healthcare premium costs for retirees and their spouses. And the city pensions are “defined benefit” plans, which are more expensive since they guarantee specific benefits on retirement.

On the other hand, private sector workers in the survey were mostly in “defined contribution” plans, which means that, unlike their cushioned brethren in the public sector, they do not have a pre-determined benefit at retirement. If New York City were to require its current workers to pay contributions toward health insurance equal to the amounts paid by the employees of local private sector firms, the taxpayer savings would approximate $628 million a year. In New Jersey, Christie says government employee health benefits are 41 percent more expensive than those of the average Fortune 500 company.

What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money. “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” No wonder the Service Employees International Union has become the nation’s fastest-growing union: It represents government and healthcare workers. Half of its 700,000 California members are government employees. More and more, it wins not on the picket line but at the negotiating table, where it backs up traditional strong-arming with political power. It spends vast amounts of money on initiatives that keep the government growing—and the gravy flowing. Similarly, for the teachers unions—with the result that California and its various municipalities, especially Los Angeles, face budget shortfalls in the hundred of millions of dollars. California can no longer rely on a strong economy to support this munificence. Its unemployment rate runs about several points higher than the national rate and its high-tech companies are choosing to expand elsewhere. Why stay in a state with such higher taxes and a cumbersome regulatory environment?

California is a horrible warning for the nation of how dreams can turn to dust. In most states, politicians face a contracting local economy and shortfalls in tax receipts. Naturally, they look to cut expenses but run into obstruction from politically powerful unions that represent state and local government employees, teachers, and healthcare workers who have themselves caused pension and healthcare insurance costs to soar. It is not an accident that in framing the national stimulus program, Congress directed a stunning percentage of the $787 billion to support public service employees.

The lopsided subsidies for pension and health costs are a large part of the fiscal crises at the state and local levels. The subsequent squeeze on education and infrastructure investment is undermining the very programs that have made it possible for our economy to grow—thousands upon thousands of teachers let go, schools closed, mass transit slashed.

Between New York and California, the projected deficits run about $40 billion—and that doesn’t account for projected billions of dollars in the operating deficits in the states’ mass transit systems or the multibillion-dollar unfunded liability in many of the state pension plans. New York is badly hit because it is being deprived of tax revenues by the government’s indiscriminate attack on the securities industry, which has been so critical to the economy of New York State and to the United States.

City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government. It is always hard to shrink government spending. It is particularly difficult when public sector unions have such a unique lever of pressure.

We have to escape this cycle or it will crush us. One way is to take labor negotiations out of the hands of vulnerable legislators and assign them to independent commissions. They would have a better shot at achieving a fair balance between appropriate salary increases and the revenues and services of local municipalities. The electorate won’t swallow any more red ink.

While the two-percentage-point gap in current abortion views is not significant, it represents the third consecutive time Gallup has found more Americans taking the pro-life than pro-choice position on this measure since May 2009, suggesting a real change in public opinion. By contrast, in nearly all readings on this question since 1995, and each survey from 2003 to 2008, more Americans called themselves pro-choice than pro-life.

Shift Limited to Republicans and Independents

According to two-year averages of these results since 2001, Republicans have become more likely to call themselves pro-life since polling conducted in 2003/2004, as have Republican-leaning independents since 2005/2006. Independents who lean to neither party also became more likely to call themselves “pro-life” between 2003/2004 and 2005/2006, but have since held steady.

Democrats’ self-identification with the pro-life position has moved in the other direction, declining from 37% in 2003/2004 to 31% in 2009/2010. Among independents who lean Democratic, there has been no movement in either direction.

Age and Gender Trends Mirror Overall Pattern

All age groups have become more attached to the pro-life label since 2005, with particularly large increases among young adults and those aged 50 to 64 years in the latest period between 2007/2008 and 2009/2010.

Both genders have also become more likely to identify as pro-life, with the increase among women coming mainly since 2008, whereas the increase in men started after 2006.

Underlying Moral Reaction to Abortion is Unchanged

It is not entirely clear why Americans have grown more likely to embrace the pro-life label when defining their own views on the issue, especially because there has not been an attendant increase in opposition to abortion on moral grounds.

Half of Americans currently say abortion is morally wrong — in line with most of Gallup’s readings on this question since 2001, although higher than the initial 45% recorded in 2001 and a one-time 44% reading in 2006.

By A.B. Stoddard

In a movie version of this important story of our time, the bold, undaunted officeholder would look much like the boyish, handsome David Cameron — Great Britain’s new Conservative prime minister — who called on his countrymen Tuesday to embrace an “age of austerity.”

Chris Christie

But this is America. So the fearless leader willing to be honest with voters, to part with what cannot be paid for, is actually not dashing, nor is he eloquent. He is an overweight Bruce Springsteen devotee, a former prosecutor with a remaining trace of a Turnpike accent who is intent on rescuing New Jersey. If he succeeds, Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) could become a major political force in the years to come, whether he likes it or not.

As the United States watches a debt crisis in Greece like a fiscal oil spill, waiting to see where it will spread first and when it will make landfall on our shores, Christie is tackling the nation’s worst state deficit — $10.7 billion of a $29.3 billion budget. In doing so, Christie has become the politician so many Americans crave, one willing to lose his job. Indeed, Christie is doing something unheard of: governing as a Republican in a blue state, just as he campaigned, making good on promises, acting like his last election is behind him.

Upon taking office Christie declared a state of emergency, signing an executive order that froze spending, and then, in eight weeks, cutting $13 billion in spending. In March he presented to the Legislature his first budget, which cuts 9 percent of spending, including more than $800 million in education funding; seeks to privatize numerous government functions; projects 1,300 layoffs; and caps tax increases.

Teachers unions are incensed, fighting Christie’s proposal that — in order to avoid cuts to education — teachers accept a one-year wage freeze and contribute 1.5 percent to the generous-by-every-standard healthcare plans they now enjoy for free. New Jersey, which has the highest unemployment in the region and highest taxes in the country, lost 121,000 jobs in the private sector in 2009 while adding 11,300 new education jobs. During the last eight years, K-12 enrollment rose just 3 percent while education jobs increased more than 16 percent. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, during the recession that has cost many residents their homes and jobs and scaled back hours and pay for the employed, teachers’ salaries rose by nearly 5 percent, double the rate of inflation.

Christie is adamant about lowering taxes. After taxes were raised 115 times in the last eight years, he said the wealthy are tapped out. Property taxes rose nearly 70 percent in the last decade, and studies show top earners — the 1 percent of taxpayers paying 40 percent of income tax — are fleeing the Garden State.

The goal is not just to crawl out of crisis but ultimately to lead, said Christie in his budget address. “If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind … by going first, we can become first.”

Can Christie succeed? We will find out on June 30, when the Legislature must pass a budget . But no matter the political price, Christie is determined. “You just have to stand and grit your teeth and know your poll numbers are going to go down — and mine have — but you gotta grit through it because the alternative is unacceptable,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

The alternative is unacceptable — words a growing majority of Americans desperately want to hear from their elected officials.

This country is divided into three parts concerning national politics. About a third think President Obama is moving in the right direction, with many of them impatient for the president to be bolder with his leftist agenda. Somewhere in the vicinity of 40 percent to 50 percent of Americans are shocked and appalled at the nation’s rush toward bankruptcy, socialism, fundamental transformation of our way of life and the permanent weakening and impoverishing of America. And some 15 percent to 30 percent are quite concerned about the current state of the country but see no imminent crisis and think that with some substantial adjustments, Mr. Obama’s efforts may end up being useful. (The foregoing numbers are merely my subjective judgment, not based on any particular poll.)

Tony Blankley

If the percentages of the shocked and appalled are close to 50 percent while the concerned but not panicked are closer to 15 percent, November probably will see a transforming election, with the Republicans taking over both the House and Senate. I’m obviously in the shocked and appalled group.

But it is that third category — concerned but not panicked — that will decide the election. No one better represents the third group than the gentlemanly, moderately conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. During the election, he was enamored of Barack Obama. He was impressed with Mr. Obama’s mind, his temperament, his sense of American history and culture and his style. As things have gone rocky, Mr. Brooks has been quite tough on the president one week and renewed in his admiration the next.

Sunday on “Meet the Press,” he reacted to Utah’s Republican Sen. Robert F. Bennett’s third-place finish in the Republican primary with the uncharacteristic statement: “This is a damn outrage.” He went on to say that Mr. Bennett was “a good conservative who was trying to get things done;” that he was “bravely” working with Democrats to help pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program and health care bill. “Now, he’s losing his career over that. And it’s just a damn outrage.”

By contrast, I and others, as members of the shocked and appalled group, know the senator to be a fine, intelligent and honorable man, usually conservative, but not doctrinaire. In normal times, his commitment to working the interstices of the two parties on behalf of getting something done would be both admirable and useful. But, while sorry for him as a person (he deserves a better career end than this) I was delighted to see him lose because the next Congress is going to need a lot of a certain type of politician — and Mr. Bennett is not that type.

We need determined men and women who share the view of us shocked and appalled Americans that we are in crisis — and that we cannot wait until 2013 to stop the madness and start the rollback. Winning a majority of Republicans in November without electing a majority for radical, immediate rollback will be essentially as good as losing. As a Republican Party man for 46 years, I have, until now, always thought it was better to win a majority any way we can.

But not this year. This year it really doesn’t matter that good men such as Mr. Bennett get thrown out on their ear. I became radicalized on the matter of the national deficit and debt upon the administration’s release of its 10-year budget — the most irresponsible federal document ever released — which plans for unsustainable debt and does not even propose a path out.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in the summary of its document, “The Long-Term Budget Outlook”: “The federal budget is on an unsustainable path — meaning that federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. … Rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly. …

“… Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress income growth. … The accumulation of debt would seriously harm the economy. Alternatively, if spending grew as projected and taxes were raised in tandem, tax rates would have to reach levels never seen in the United States (the highest marginal income tax rate so far: 94 percent, in 1944-45). High tax rates would slow the growth of the economy, making the spending burden harder to bear.”

In the face of financial ruin of the nation, it was unconscionable to pass a new health entitlement that almost all Americans know will add trillions to the debt. Next year, as Mr. Obama almost certainly will call for a new value-added tax to do the “responsible thing” to reduce the deficits he and Congress have created, it will be equally unconscionable to support such a tax. The only solution to the debt and deficit that will not kill economic growth is to cut spending, not raise taxes. We cannot afford to elect Republicans or Democrats who would be “responsible,” and raise taxes.

The difference between us shocked and appalled folks and the David Brookses of the country is that they simply cannot imagine that things can get as bad as quickly as we know they can. Neither did the Greeks.

Our job is to describe as vividly and credibly as we can just how bad “bad” will be if we don’t drop almost everything and start cutting entitlements and everything else next January.

If we can induce a sense of urgency in just a few of those not yet shocked and appalled — we can win in November with politicians ready to cut today to save tomorrow.

On October 30, 2008, Barack Obama proclaimed, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” On November 4, he won the presidency. Ever since that day, he’s been pursuing his vision of fundamentally transforming our country.

He must be stopped. We show you how to do it in The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, our new #1 bestselling book.

President Obama desperately wants to transform America. Every day, we see yet another way he’s succeeding in changing our beloved nation into one that the Founders wouldn’t recognize.

To read more click here.

Obama selected a Supreme Court nominee with zero judicial experience and virtually no background as a litigator. Realizing her liabilities, he and his allies substitute biography for experience, pushing the myth of the unctuous girl from Manhattan who challenged her rabbi as a teen-ager and blazed a trail for women in a man’s world, all the while displaying a “nurturing Jewish mother” side. The New York Times assures us Kagan is a “pragmatist” and a “consensus-builder.” Harboring any doubts? Well, as dean she renovated the gym, opened a skating rink, and improved women’s restrooms at Harvard Law School. So there!

One wonders if Obama thinks anyone actually believes this nonsense. He claims he chose Kagan because she understands how the law affects “ordinary people.” You know, like the folks on the Upper West Side, at blue-chip law firms, and in Harvard Yard. No, there is nothing ordinary about Elena Kagan.

The real reason behind the Kagan pick is to provide an aggressively liberal and self-consciously intellectual counter-weight to Chief Justice John Roberts. Obama the former law school lecturer clearly loathes Roberts. In an astonishing breach of etiquette, he denounced the Roberts court’s decision in the Citizens United case legalizing express advocacy by corporations at his State of the Union address, the justices seated before him like school children being scolded. By selecting the solicitor general who argued the government’s brief (her first-ever appearance before the Court) and lost, Obama has set the stage for a rematch of intellects that will likely last for decades and affect every facet of American life.

For all the attempts by the liberal fog machine to obfuscate her extremist views, Kagan is a committed liberal. Her attempt to defy federal law—reversed by the Supreme Court— by banning military recruiters from Harvard Law school during a time of war is only the most well-known example of her radical views. Her belief that political speech is selectively protected by the First Amendment based on the form of media used to express it is more frightening. (One of her few scholarly articles in a thin academic resume defends the right of the government to regulate “hate speech.”) Nor is her belief in strictly constraining constitutional liberty confined to the First Amendment. In response to questions during her confirmation as Solicitor General, Kagan argued the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, like freedom of speech, enjoys “strong but not unlimited protection.” This is a dangerous view of the law when it leads to the creeping erosion of the Bill of Rights.

The pundits are united in stating that Kagan’s confirmation is virtually assured. Given the math in the Senate, that is the conventional wisdom. But Supreme Court nominations are funny things, as previous presidents have painfully discovered. Conservatives should unite in strong and principled opposition to Kagan’s nomination, making clear their contrasting judicial philosophy, and let the chips fall where they may—not only on this vote, but when the voters go to the polls in November.

In the last 10 days alone, FFC has held organizational roundtables in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and North Carolina. FFC has state affiliates operating in 17 states. The next FFC roundtable of conservative leaders will be held in late May in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Sharply escalating the war of words over the National Day of Prayer, the Rev. Franklin Graham predicted Thursday that “millions of evangelical Christians” who voted for President Obama in 2008 would reject him because of the administration’s controversial policies.

That followed Graham’s remarks this week in an exclusive Newsmax interview that revoking his invitation to speak at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer event represented a “slap at all evangelical Christians.”

To read the full article click here.

Ralph

May 15th at 12pm: Borders, 4475 Roswell Road, Marietta, GA 30096

May 15th at 4pm: Books-A-Million at Discover Mills Mall, 5900 Sugarloaf Parkway, Lawrenceville, GA 30043

May 16th at 12pm: Books-A-Million at The Avenue at Peachtree City, 258 City Circle, Peachtree City, GA 30269

Graham wants the President to step in so Graham can pray inside the Pentagon at a National Day of Prayer event tomorrow. Will he? Graham was disinvited from speaking at this event because of his comments that Islam is “evil.”

To read the full article click here.

“We’re very excited that Ralph was able to come to Greensboro today to discuss what the Faith & Freedom Coalition will be doing in North Carolina in 2010 and beyond,” said conservative activist Joyce Krawiek. “We have critical elections here this cycle and FFC will be working to identify, educate and turn out North Carolina’s conservative voters.”

Roy Blunt

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the state’s Likely Voters shows Carnahan, Missouri’s secretary of state, with 42% of the vote. Only four percent (4%) would opt for some other candidate, while another four percent (4%) are undecided at this point.

Still, support for both candidates has changed little over the past several months. Since January, Blunt has earned between 47% and 50% support. His support was slightly lower in September and December of last year.

Carnahan’s support has ranged between 41% to 43% in surveys conducted in 2010. She earned a high of 46% last September and December.

Missouri voters are even more strongly in favor of repeal of the new national health care plan than voters nationally. Sixty-two percent (62%) of Missouri voters favor repeal of the plan, up three points from 59% a month ago, while 35% are opposed to repeal. This includes 51% who Strongly Favor repeal and 27% who Strongly Oppose it.

Eighty-six percent (86%) of voters who Strongly Oppose repeal support Carnahan, while 82% of the larger group that Strongly Favors repeal back Blunt.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Missouri was conducted on May 3, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Blunt leads among both male and female voters in the state. Voters in Missouri not affiliated with either major party favor Blunt over Carnahan by a two-to-one margin.

Both candidates are members of well-known political families in the state. Blunt, a member of Congress since 1997, has held the number two GOP position in the House, serving as minority whip. His son was governor of Missouri from 2005 to 2009. Carnahan is the daughter of an ex-senator and a former governor. The seat they are contesting for is being vacated by retiring Republican Senator Kit Bond.

Blunt is viewed very favorably by 16% of Missouri voters and very unfavorably by 15%.

Carnahan earns very favorable reviews from 23% and very unfavorable ratings from 27%.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Carnahan edges Blunt in media coverage over the past week as measured by the Rasmussen Reports Media Meter. The Media Meter is updated on a daily basis.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Missouri voters favor a law like the one just passed in Arizona which allows local police stop stop and check the immigration status of anyone that suspect of being an illegal immigrant. That’s 12 points higher than support nationally.

Fifty-two percent (52%), however, are at least somewhat concerned that the effort to identify and deport illegal immigrants may violate the civil rights of some U.S. citizens, but 47% don’t share that concern. Like voters nationwide, most Missouri voters (65%) favor a policy that would welcome all immigrants except “national security threats, criminals and those who would come here to live off our welfare system.”

Voters in the state are evenly divided on the importance of passing energy legislation this year to reduce global warming. Forty-four percent (44%) oppose such legislation anyway, while 32% favor it.

Democrats have labelled Republicans in Congress the Party of No for their unified opposition to President Obama’s agenda. Missouri voters are closely divided over whether it’s a good thing these days to be labeled the Party of No: 35% say it is a good thing, 38% say it is bad, and 27% are not sure.

Still, 65% think America is overtaxed, which are similar to results found nationwide.

John McCain squeaked by Obama 50% to 49% to win Missouri in the 2008 presidential election. Forty-two percent (42%) of voters in the state now approve of the job Obama is doing as president, while 56% disapprove of his performance. This gives Obama a job approval rating in the state that is slightly lower than findings nationally in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Most Missouri voters (56%) approve of Democratic Governor Jay Nixon’s job performance, while 39% disapprove.

In 2008, Rasmussen Reports projected nationally that Obama would defeat John McCain by a 52% to 46% margin. Obama won 53% to 46%. Four years earlier, Rasmussen Reports projected the national vote totals for both George W. Bush and John Kerry within half-a-percentage-point.

In Missouri, Rasmussen Reports polled on two races during the 2008 campaign. In the race for president, Rasmussen polling showed McCain and Obama tied at 49% each. McCain ended up edging out Obama 50% to 49%. In the 2008 Missouri governor’s race, Rasmussen polling showed Nixon defeating Kenny Hulshof 57% to 38% and Nixon won 58% to 40%.

In the 2006 race for U.S. Senate, Rasmussen polling showed a toss-up with Jim Talent at 49% and Claire McCaskill at 48%. McCaskill won 49% to 47%. In the 2004 Presidential race, Rasmussen polling in Missouri showed George W. Bush defeating John Kerry 50% to 45%. Bush won the state 53% to 46%.

The White House wants to pass as much legislation as possible before losing its big majorities, no matter how unpopular its proposals are.

By Fred Barnes

Fred Barnes

President Reagan had a sign on his desk that said, “It’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” If President Obama had a sign, it would say, “It’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care what the public thinks.”

Washington has never been held in lower esteem by Americans than it is today. Yet those in control of Washington—President Obama and congressional Democrats—are bent on enacting a series of sweeping domestic policy changes this year that have one thing in common: They are unpopular, in whole or in part.

This is unprecedented and a bit weird too. A revival of civility and an end to the ugly political polarization in Washington—goals stressed by Mr. Obama in his presidential campaign and again last Saturday in a speech at the University of Michigan—won’t be furthered by passage of an unpopular agenda. A more likely result is years of partisan resentment and bitter fighting over efforts by Republicans to repeal the unwanted policies.

It’s true that presidents have imposed foreign and national-security policies despite popular objections. President George W. Bush did so in 2007 when he ordered a “surge” of troops into Iraq along with a new counterinsurgency strategy. President Jimmy Carter and the U.S. Senate defied public opinion in 1978 when they gave up American control of the Panama Canal. There are countless more examples.

But I can’t think of a single major domestic initiative that became law in recent decades without public approval. Even the much-maligned Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which was repealed in 1989, was reasonably popular when it passed Congress the year before.

Energy and climate legislation dubbed “cap and trade,” immigration reform, a value-added tax (VAT) to narrow the budget deficit, and Sen. Chris Dodd’s financial reform bill (now on the Senate floor)—all are unpopular in one way or another. Mr. Obama and Democrats are determined to pass them anyway.

The model for such a strategy is the health-care legislation—ObamaCare—enacted in March. For months nearly every opinion poll found either a solid majority or a plurality of Americans opposed to the bill. And it was assumed to be dead after Republican Scott Brown campaigned against it and won a special election in January for the Massachusetts Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress refused to give up. Instead, they relied on their one irreducible source of power in Washington: overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Democrats control the Senate 59 to 41, the House by 254 to 177 (with four vacancies). They passed the health-care bill in March with zero Republican support.

Now they’re trying to win approval of Sen. Dodd’s financial-reform legislation with as little Republican help as possible, and thus as little compromising as they can get away with. Rather than encourage negotiations on a bipartisan bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting to crack Republican unity. But three successful filibusters, supported by all Republican senators, prevented Democrats from moving forward, and now Sen. Dodd is negotiating with Republican Sen. Richard Shelby on changes to the bill. Republicans haven’t ruled out another filibuster if Sen. Dodd refuses to make significant concessions.

The presence of big majorities now and the likelihood they’ll vanish in the midterm election in November have spurred Mr. Obama and Democrats to pursue their entire agenda in 2010. Republicans are expected to cut deeply into the Democratic majorities, possibly capturing one or both houses. This, to put it mildly, would make it extremely difficult to gain approval of their very liberal agenda in the next Congress.

Democrats, I suspect, have made a quite rational calculation about the election. It’s baked in the cake that they’ll lose seats, but how many more might they lose if they pass a series of unpopular bills? Maybe only a few. Given this, there’s a case for going all out this year, which is exactly what they’re doing.

It won’t be easy. While stiffer regulation of Wall Street is popular, the Dodd bill lacks the two things the public wants most of all in financial reform—elimination of the phenomenon of banks “too big to fail” and the prospect of more government bailouts. Their absence has given Republicans an appealing talking point.

Though virtually nothing about cap and trade has public support, Sen. Reid is undeterred. But the Democratic bill has suffered two recent setbacks. Sen. Lindsey Graham has withdrawn his sponsorship, and the plan to attract skeptical senators by authorizing more offshore oil drilling has been jeopardized by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Obama administration has a fallback plan. Since CO2 has been declared a dangerous pollutant, the Environmental Protection Agency could, on its own, set a cap on emissions, a step bound to prompt angry Republican protests.

The president has vacillated on his desire for immigration reform this year, nor are top administration officials active in pushing for a bill. Nonetheless, Democrats last week drafted a “white paper” outlining an immigration bill that would be vulnerable to attacks for adopting an “amnesty” to allow illegal immigrants already in the country to stay. That alone would make the bill unpopular. And the administration is also bucking public opinion by threatening to file suit against Arizona’s new immigration law.

Recently, the president and his allies have been talking up a VAT without quite endorsing it. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged adoption of a VAT.) It has the political advantage of being an indirect tax, imposing a levy at every level of production. It’s a hidden sales tax with the potential of raising an enormous amount of revenue.

It’s unpopular, but one can imagine Democrats might seek to enact it. The president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which began its work last week, is required to submit a plan for serious deficit reduction by Dec. 1, four weeks after the November election.

Its recommendations are non-binding, but a lame duck Congress would be in position to take them up, including a possible VAT. Should Democrats suffer a landslide defeat, their large majorities would still be in place for the lame-duck session. What would Democrats who’d been defeated for re-election have to lose by voting for a VAT? Not much.

This scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think. In a speech at a Democratic reception in Boston on April 1, Mr. Obama boasted of his willingness to do the unpopular: “If you govern by pundit and polls, then you lose sight of why you got into public service in the first place,” he said. His “job,” he said, isn’t to “husband my popularity [and] make sure that I’m not making waves. . . . So I resolved to do not necessarily what was popular, but what I thought was right.”

Does Mr. Obama think a VAT would be “right”? Take a guess.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.

Nonsense. Jeb Bush, who hangs over this race like a character in a Samuel Becket play who never appears on stage but dominates the action, dismissed Crist’s move as devoid of principle. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “This was a concession speech,” said Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Florida Republican party. “Crist conceded the primary four months before the votes are cast.” A sitting governor with all the power, all the money, and all the endorsements is toast, the victim of a 65-point swing in the polls in the space of nine months.

The media predictably used the episode for yet another predictable installment in its cookie-cutter analysis of an alleged “civil war” roiling the GOP. In the media’s narrative, Tea Partiers, gun-toting religious nuts and ideolgical purists are driving politicians like Arlen Specter and Crist away, shrinking the party of Lincoln and Reagan until it fits in a phone booth. (Funny, isn’t it, that we don’t hear about a “holy war” in the Democratic Party when Lt. Governor Bill Halter opposes Senator Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic Senate primary in Arkansas, bankrolled by union bosses and Moveon.org?) The notion that the GOP is a moderate-free zone is hogwash. As Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post points out, moderate candidates like Mark Kirk, Scott Brown, Mike Castle, and Meg Whitman are making a strong appeal for Republican grassroots support.

So if Crist’s public divorce from the Republican party does not signal a GOP crack-up, what exactly does it signify? First,it shows what a dead weight Obama is for politicians of both parties. The famous shot of Crist hugging Obama hurt him as much as Obama’s low job approval numbers weighed down Creigh Deeds in Virginia and Martha Coakley in Massachussets, and now threatens Democratic candidates from coast to coast. When Obama campaigned for them (and former Governor Jon Corzine in New Jersey), no surge in support materialized. “Yes, we can!” became “wake me up when it’s over.”

Second, voters across the board, from tea-party activists to party rank-and-file to anxious independents, are hungering for authenticity. Crist’s political calculation combined and chameleon-like shifts on the issues (and now party affiliation) repel far more voter than they attract. They would rather support a conviction politician like Marco Rubio, even as they may disagree with him on some issues, because they know where he stands and they trust him to tell them what he really believes, This is the essence of leadership, especially in a moment of crisis.

Finally, Crist still does not grasp that the country wants a check on Obama, not an enabler in Republican or independent skin. The backlash over spending, soaring debt, government take-over of major industries, and Obamacare calls for a new breed of GOP leaders who are unafraid to stand in the gap and stop the Obama agenda. Crist’s failure to understand that is what sunk his candidacy in the GOP and will likely do so in the general election. It also explains why John McCain is moving to the right so swiftly in his primary with J.D. Haworth in Arizona that it is causing whip-lash for his former base, the media.

The truth is that Crist, who has won three statewide elections in Florida, did so without ever being tested within his own party. When he ran the GOP nomination for Attorney General in 2002, his two primary opponents were underfunded state legislators with no statewide name ID who never bought a single television ad. When he ran for governor in 2006, his primary opponent, state insurance commissioner Tom Gallagher, was hobbled by skyrocketing insurance rates and insurers abandoning the state after a rash of hurricanes. Crist’s luck held out until Rubio gave him the first genuinely daunting primary challenge of a previously charmed elective career.

Crist may turn out to be right, but not in the way he intended. Giving voters a choice in November may be a healthy and clarifying exercise in the messy but altogether exhilarating (and transfixing) enterprise we call democracy. Not because Crist is triangulating between the two parties, but because Marco Rubio will provide a clear conservative alternative, one that promises to help stop the Obama agenda in its tracks.

Pastors, heads of conservative organizations in the state, elected officials and donors were part of the meeting. There are a number of key races in Texas in the future and FFC will be ensuring conservatives have a voice.

The group discussed plans for launching the Missouri Faith & Freedom Coalition, which will identify, educate and turn out to vote Missouri conservatives

Ralph’s schedule is PACKED in the coming weeks as he launches FFC local chapters and holds key meetings with conservative leaders. This week Ralph is traveling to Pennsylvania, Missouri and Texas. After those trips, Ralph will be traveling to North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan to launch Faith & Freedom Coalition chapters in those key states.

John Hoeven

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state shows Hoeven earning 69% support over Potter’s 24%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. These results show little change from surveys conducted last month and early February.

Opposition to the health care plan in North Dakota remains high and, as in many states, helps the Republican. Thirty-five percent (35%) of North Dakota voters think the bill is good for the country, but 53% say it will be bad.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) favor repeal of the measure, while 36% oppose repeal. These figures include 46% in the state who strongly favor repeal versus 28% who strongly oppose it. Hoeven holds sizable leads over Potter among voters who favor repeal. Among those voters who strongly oppose repeal, Potter earns 67% of the vote to Hoeven’s 21%.

Democrat Earl Pomeroy, who has served as the state’s only congressman for 18 years and won reelection two years ago with 62% of the vote, is now in a tough battle for North Dakota’s race for the House with Republican Rick Berg. Support for both candidates continues to hover in the 40s, with the contest closer now that it has been to date.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, the governor earns 59% of support to Potter’s 33%. Hoeven carries both male and female voters by at least 40 points.

In December, just weeks before Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan announced he would not seek reelection in 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Hoeven leading Dorgan by 22 points, 58% to 36%. After the announcement, Hoeven declared himself a candidate for the open senate seat. Early last month, Hoeven received his party’s formal nomination.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of voters in North Dakota approve of the job Hoeven has been doing, including 51% who strongly approve. Only 15% disapprove of his performance as governor, with six percent (6%) who strongly disapprove.

That helps explain why just over half (51%) have a very favorable impression of the governor, while 11% have a very unfavorable view of him.

Eleven percent (11%) view his Democratic opponent very favorably and just as many (11%) view Potter very unfavorably. Twenty-six percent (26%) do not know enough about the state senator to offer a strong opinion of her.

At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.

Fourteen percent (14%) of North Dakota voters rate the U.S. economy as good or excellent. Thirty-two percent (32%) give the economy a poor rating. Still, 45% say us economic conditions in the country are getting better, while 32% feel they are getting worse.

An overwhelming majority (71%) in North Dakota believes offshore oil drilling should be allowed. Just 10% disagree, and another 19% are not sure. When asked if states have the right to ban oil drilling off their own coastline, voters are more evenly divided: 31% say yes, while 39% say no. Twenty-nine percent (29%) more are not sure.

Slightly over half (53%) say offshore oil drilling should be permitted off the coasts of New England and California. Twenty-one percent (21%) disagree with this assessment, and another 26% are undecided.

Just under half (49%) of voters in the state say that their views on the major issues of the day are closer to the views of the average Tea Party member than to those of President Obama. Thirty-eight percent (38%) say their views are more in line with the president’s.

By Jeffrey M. Jones

PRINCETON, NJ — Although U.S. registered voters are closely divided in their 2010 congressional election preferences, those who say they are “very enthusiastic about voting” this year show a strong preference for the Republican Party.

The analysis is based on interviews with more than 5,000 U.S. registered voters conducted April 1-25, 2010, as part of Gallup Daily tracking.

Gallup has consistently found Republicans expressing a higher level of enthusiasm than Democrats about voting in this year’s election campaign. Theoretically, those who are enthusiastic about voting would be more likely to turn out to vote than those who are not enthusiastic. This fall, Gallup will be better able to measure the potential impact of turnout on the vote by applying its “likely voter” model to the generic ballot results. That model takes into account a more complete set of factors related to voting, including interest in the election, intention to vote, and past voting behavior.

In addition to the enthusiasm divide, Gallup polling since the start of April reveals large gender and marital gaps in congressional voting preferences.

Specifically, men are more likely than women to say they would vote for the Republican candidate if the election were held today, while women would favor the Democratic candidate. Those who are currently married are more likely to support Republicans, and the unmarried are more likely to support Democrats.

There is a combined effect between gender and marriage, such that married men are decidedly Republican and unmarried women strongly Democratic. Marital status seems to be the more important of the two factors, since married men and married women prefer the Republican candidate, and unmarried men and unmarried women prefer the Democratic candidate.

Both Republicans and Democrats show a high degree of party loyalty in their current congressional voting choices. Independents tilt in the Republican direction, though about one in five independents do not express a preference.

The accompanying table shows how congressional voting preferences break down among other key demographic groups. Gallup discussed age differences in voting earlier this week. In addition to age, there are the usual large differences by race and ethnicity, political ideology, and frequency of church attendance.

Gullop Graph

The latest results, based on aggregated data from Gallup polls conducted from January to March of this year, show the closest party division since the first quarter of 2005, when the parties were tied at 46%. Democrats enjoyed double-digit advantages in party support in 11 of 12 quarters from the second quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2009.

By the end of last year, the Democratic advantage had shrunk to five points (47% to 42%), and it narrowed further in the most recent quarter.

The six-point rise in Republican support since the first quarter of 2009 is due entirely to a growing proportion of independents who lean to the Republican Party, rather than an increase in the percentage of Americans who identify as Republicans outright. (Gallup measures party identification by first asking Americans whether they identify as Republicans, Democrats, or independents. Those who are independent or express no party preference are then asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or the Republican Party.)

In fact, the 28% of Americans who initially identify as Republicans today is identical to the figure Gallup measured in early 2009, when the Democrats still had a double-digit advantage in support. Since then, there has been a three-point reduction in the proportion of Democratic identifiers, and a three-point decline in the percentage of Democratic-leaning independents.

Gallup Table

As the table shows, Democrats maintain an edge in initial party identification over Republicans, 32% to 28%. That advantage has also shrunk over the last year, from a 35% to 28% Democratic edge in the first quarter of 2009.

Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 4,095 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted from January to March 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Posted on Commentary magazine’s blog Contentions
04.23.2010

Barack Obama

The latest Gallup Poll shows that the party affiliation gap is at the narrowest it has been since 2005, when the GOP was at its high-water mark in terms of political power (holding the presidency, the House, and the Senate). According to Gallup:

“The advantage in public support the Democratic Party built up during the latter part of the Bush administration and the early part of the Obama administration has all but disappeared. During the first quarter of 2010, 46% of Americans identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic, while 45% identified as or leaned Republican. The latest results, based on aggregated data from Gallup polls conducted from January to March of this year, show the closest party division since the first quarter of 2005, when the parties were tied at 46%. Democrats enjoyed double-digit advantages in party support in 11 of 12 quarters from the second quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2009.

Democrats maintain an edge in initial party identification over Republicans, 32% to 28%. That advantage has also shrunk over the last year, from a 35% to 28% Democratic edge in the first quarter of 2009.”

What this shows is that the Democratic Party is in the process of a meltdown (the 13 point gap Democrats enjoyed at the beginning of last years has virtually vanished), and the GOP, while slowly making progress, still has work to do. The GOP’s “brand” still hasn’t fully recovered. But the loss of confidence in the Democratic Party is clearly the key development of the last 15 months. And in terms of practical outcomes, meaning election results, things could hardly be looking better for the Republican Party. Although many people may not identify themselves as Republicans outright, they certainly appear to be voting that way. It isn’t simply that all the intensity is with voters who call themselves Republican; it is that independents who are highly dissatisfied with government overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates and are much more likely to vote.

According to the most recent Pew poll:

“Perhaps more troubling for Democrats, the link between dissatisfaction with government and voting intentions is at least as strong among independent voters. Independents who are highly dissatisfied with government are far more committed to voting this year than are independents who are less frustrated (78% vs. 58%). Overall, independents voters slightly favor the GOP candidate in their district by a 41% to 34% margin, but those who are highly dissatisfied with government favor the Republican candidate by an overwhelming 66% to 13% margin. Independents who are less dissatisfied with government favor the Democratic candidate in their district (by 49% to 24%), but are much less likely to say they are certain to vote.”

It appears as if the more people are exposed to Obama and Obamaism, the further and faster the Democratic Party falls. But they ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The first Tuesday in November is when Democrats stop falling and really begin absorbing the damage from the fall. It will be, for them, an immensely painful experience. Comeuppances often are.

URL to article: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/283561

Where will our liberties be thirty years from now? President Obama is on the verge of nominating a new Supreme Court justice who will have a lot to say about that. From racial preferences and abortion to property rights and terrorism, retiring Justice Stevens and his three decades of liberal activism did tremendous damage to the Constitution. His replacement has the potential to either build upon or roll back Steven’s “legacy.” Remember, Supreme Court justices sit for life (Stevens stayed on until he was ninety) and new issues are coming before the Court all the time, from bailouts and buyouts to health care reform. While each justice only gets one vote, one vote is all it takes on many of the most important issues of our day.

John Paul Stevens

The judicial confirmation process includes many steps. First, the President nominates a candidate he thinks will further his agenda and is confirmable. Second, the Senate judiciary committee will ask the nominee to complete an extensive questionnaire detailing more or less everything he or she has ever said, written, or done. The committee will then hold televised hearings, questioning the nominee and hearing the testimony of witnesses on both sides. If the candidate survives the judiciary committee vote and then wins a majority of votes in the full Senate, you can say hello to your next Supreme Court justice.

The stakes can’t be any higher. Here are a few easy ways to magnify your voice and impact this nomination.

(1) Educate yourself. Read the paper, watch the news, read legal blogs. NRO’s Bench Memos, Volokh Conspiracy, and the Judicial Crisis Network website are all great resources.

(2) Write your local or school paper. Getting letters to the editor and op-eds out there will help expose liberal activist nominees or help defend conservative ones. Don’t underestimate the power of the pen.

(3) Call your senator. Bad nominees get through the nomination process because senators think no one is watching. The only way to prove them wrong is by calling their offices. (Email doesn’t count for nearly as much.)

(4) Call someone else’s senator. While the nominee is still in committee hearings, direct your ire or praise to the senators on the judiciary committee; they can make or break a nomination.

(5) Donate your time or money. There are many conservative legal organizations that need your support on the local level. Also volunteer to help elect state judges who will respect the constitution and the rule of law.

(6) Vote in November. As then-Senator Barak Obama said, “There’s one way to guarantee that the judges who are appointed to the Supreme Court are judges that reflect our values. And that’s to win elections.”

By Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal

The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused “loud and angry voices” on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they’re not in power.

Rush Limbaugh

From the halls of the Ivy League to the halls of Congress, from the antiwar protests during the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq to the anticapitalist protests during International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, we’re used to seeing leftist malcontents take to the streets. Sometimes they’re violent, breaking shop windows with bricks and throwing rocks at police. Sometimes there are arrests. Not all leftists are violent, of course. But most are angry. It’s in their DNA. They view the culture as corrupt and capitalism as unjust.

Now the liberals run the government and they’re using their power to implement their radical agenda. Mr. Obama and his party believe that the election of November 2008 entitled them to make permanent, “transformational” changes to our society. In just 16 months they’ve added more than $2 trillion to the national debt, essentially nationalized the health-care system, the student-loan industry, and have their sights set on draconian cap-and-trade regulations on carbon emissions and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Had President Obama campaigned on this agenda, he wouldn’t have garnered 30% of the popular vote.

Like the millions of citizens who’ve peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society. I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who’ve condemned this society?

I reject the notion that America is in a well-deserved decline, that she and her citizens are unexceptional. I do not believe America is the problem in the world. I believe America is the solution to the world’s problems. I reject a foreign policy that treats our allies like our enemies and our enemies like our allies. I condemn the president traveling the world apologizing for America’s great contributions to mankind. And I condemn his soft-peddling the dangers we face from terrorism. For this I am inciting violence?

Few presidents have sunk so low as Mr. Clinton did with his accusations about Oklahoma City. Last week—on the very day I was contributing to and raising more than $3 million to fight leukemia and lymphoma on my radio program—Mr. Clinton used the 15th anniversary of that horrific day to regurgitate his claims about talk radio.

At a speech delivered last Friday at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., the former president said: [T]here were a lot of people who were in the business back then of saying that the biggest threat to our liberty and the cause of our domestic economic problem was the federal government itself. And we have to realize that there were others who fueled this both because they agreed with it and because it was in their advantage to do so. . . . We didn’t have blog sites back then so the instrument of carrying this forward was basically the right-wing radio talk show hosts and they understand clearly that emotion was more powerful than reason most of the time.”

Timothy McVeigh was incensed by the Clinton administration’s 1993 siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. It’s no coincidence that the bombing took place two years to the day of the Waco siege. McVeigh was not inspired by anything I said or believe and to say otherwise is outright slander. In the aftermath of the bombing, I raised millions of dollars for the children of federal employees killed in that cowardly attack through my association with the Marine Corp Law Enforcement Foundation.

Let me just say it. The Obama/Clinton/media left are comfortable with the unrest in our society today. It allows them to blame and demonize their opponents (doctors, insurance companies, Wall Street, talk radio, Fox News) in order to portray their regime as the great healer of all our ills, thus expanding their power and control over our society.

A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.

Mr. Limbaugh is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host.

Marco Rubio

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of Florida voters finds that 37% would vote for GOP frontrunner Marco Rubio, 30% for Crist and 22% for the likely Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek. That’s much closer than a month ago when Rubio had a 17-point advantage and Crist was in third place.

In a two-way race, both Rubio and Crist hold solid leads over Meek.

Rubio now leads among Republicans and unaffiliated voters with Crist in second. Among Democrats, Meek earns 46% support, while Crist picks up 33% of the Democratic vote.

Meek leads among voters under 30, Crist leads among 30-somethings, and Rubio leads among those 40 and older.

You can check the latest Florida polling updates and other news every day on the Rasmussen Reports Florida Page.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

Crist in recent days has made it clear he’s seriously considering an independent candidacy and also vetoed an education bill that was strongly supported by Republican legislators. Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters now approve of the way Crist is handling his job, up 11 points from a month ago. It’s significant to note that the governor gets higher ratings from Democrats and unaffiliated voters than he does from Republicans.

The Rasmussen Reports Media Meter shows that, in the seven days prior to the poll, 63% of Crist’s media coverage was positive. The Media Meter for Crist is updated daily at RasmussenReports.com/Florida.

Still, voters are closely divided over what Crist should do next. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say he should launch an independent bid, 30% disagree, and 33% are not sure. Fifty-three percent (53%) of Republicans say he should not take such a step, while 50% of Democrats say he should. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 41% favor an independent run, and 28% are opposed.

Crist has been losing support steadily in the Republican Primary and trailed 57% to 28% in the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll of the race.

Thirty percent (30%) of voters see Crist as politically conservative, while 44% see him as a moderate. Eighteen percent (18%) view him as politically liberal.

Sixty-six percent (66%) see Rubio as a conservative, while 43% say Meek is politically liberal. Like most states, Florida has more conservatives than liberals. A majority consider themselves either moderate or somewhat conservative.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters have voted for an independent candidate in the past. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say that the Republican and Democratic parties are so much alike that a third party is needed.

Rubio wins 65% of the vote from