Month: January 2012

Some economic news:

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits for the first time plummeted last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008, the Labor Department said Thursday. The decline added to evidence that the job market is strengthening. Weekly applications fell by 50,000, the biggest drop in the seasonally adjusted figure in more than six years.

This could be volatility in the numbers. But we're approaching the point when the unemployment rate goes down again.

Another moment in media paranoia. I don't believe Bibi's denials. But I don't believe anything he says. As another Israel lover, Nicolas Sarkozy, noted, the man lies the way most people breathe.

Grace Wyler has an account of infighting among evangelicals scrambling to settle on an alternative to Romney. Jim Antle is puzzled: 

[T]his is the second election in a row where social conservative leaders' strategies have been baffling. Instead of throwing their weight behind Santorum when he was on the rise coming out of Iowa, they let his momentum stall and … waited until he was fighting Ron Paul for third place in South Carolina to actually endorse him. And now Newt Gingrich is surging.

Dreher zooms out: 

Note that a few days after national Evangelical leaders endorsed Rick Santorum, Santorum’s poll numbers have declined in South Carolina. More South Carolina Evangelicals support Mormon Mitt Romney and mistress-having Newt Gingrich than support Santorum. What does this tell you about the power of the Religious Right old guard to move voters?

PPP is the latest pollster to find Gingrich ahead:

It's clear that the debate Monday night did a lot to help Gingrich's prospects in the state. 56% of voters say they watched it, and with those folks Gingrich's lead over Romney is 43-27. Romney still has a 29-22 advantage on Gingrich with those who didn't tune in.

Which puts Newt in the lead in the poll of polls. Which raises the stakes for tonight. I'll be live-blogging, and the Dish will be covering all the post debate reax as well. Update from a reader:

And that poll doesn't take into account Perry dropping out and throwing support to Newt.  Also, it probably doesn't count Santorum actually winning in Iowa.  And the Newt second-wife interview.

WOW, I need more popcorn.

Joe Klein studies recent polling:

[M]ost of the polls taken since the debate show Gingrich wiping out Romney’s lead in South Carolina, and the campaign in a dead heat. Romney, meanwhile, seems in panic mode, making mistake after mistake–and all the mistakes lead back to one source: his wealth. A good friend of mine who is a political consultant says, "No one ever wins a nomination without a near-death experience." This may be Romney’s.

Josh Marshall provides the above chart:

[W]hat happens when the seemingly unstoppable force of the Gingrich surge collides head on with his second ex-wife (the one he left for his current wife Callista) finally goes public with these kinds of stories tonight just before midnight? And remember, there’s another debate tonight too.

Nate Silver, meanwhile, warns that Perry's voters won't necessarily move to Gingrich.

In the latest Pew poll, FNC is both the most trusted and the least trusted of media outlets. It's most trusted because Republicans trust it; it's the least trusted because Democrats don't trust it at all. But here's what's interesting. Republicans won't touch any other outlet at all apart from their propaganda channel. 73 percent of Republicans trust Fox, with only 17 percent not, which gives FNC a positive rating +54. The next most trusted outlet for Republicans, PBS, comes in at – 30. And that helps explain the complete disconnect between the GOP and, er, reality.

But the real danger for the GOP's propaganda channel is that Independents, the fastest growing political identity, side with Democrats more than Republicans on Fox. 73 percent of Republicans trust it, while only 36 percent of Independents do – closer to the Democratic number of 25 percent.

No other media outlet has this kind of distrust from non-Republicans. And no other media outlet has this kind of trust from Republicans. The more paranoid they get, the more closed their media cocoon.

Freddie DeBoer, who writes that he "could never vote for Ron Paul, for a thousand reasons," nevertheless values "his voice in the national debate":

When confronting establishment progressives with the reality of our conduct and how much it has cost some of the poorest and most defenseless people on earth, the conversation never stays about our victims; it inevitably changes to those attempting to talk about them, a knee-jerk defense that progressives have made an art form. That's why Ron Paul is so perfect, for establishment liberals. He is an open invitation to change the subject. The United States keeps killing innocent people, keeps propping up horrific regimes, keeps violating international law, keeps trampling on the lives of those who lack the power to defend themselves– but Ron Paul is a racist, and believes in the gold standard, and opposes abortion, and in general supports some of the most odious domestic policies imaginable. What I insist, and what people like Glenn Greenwald keep insisting, is that Ron Paul's endless failings shouldn't and can't exist as an excuse to look away from the dead bodies that we keep on piling up. What I have wanted is to grab a hold of mainstream progressivism and force it to look the dead in the face. But the effort to avoid exactly that is mighty, and what we have on our hands is an epidemic of not seeing.

Robert Farley counters:

De Boer compares Paul with Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, arguing that they’re all dismissed by mainstream liberals as being ridiculous, etc. But this comparison rests on a basic falsehood, which is that the foreign policy of Ron Paul resembles that of Sanders or Kucinich in any meaningful way. Kucinich, for example, is an avid supporter of the United Nations, as well a host of other international institutions. He also supports robust foreign aid, and a variety of other positions that suggest a commitment to using US social and economic leverage in a non-violent way to improve international outcomes. Bernie Sanders has a very similar record. Kucinich and Sanders are both firmly on the left side of the liberal internationalist consensus, while Paul rejects that consensus altogether. This means that they incidentally share a few positions, just as Kucinich and Sanders incidentally share a few positions with Jim Demint, but it doesn’t mean that they’re saying the same thing about foreign policy, or that progressives ought to think of them in the same way.