Month: September 2012

Pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future is out with a think-of-the-children ad hitting Obama, which it's putting $2.2 million behind in Wisconsin and Michigan:

The only ad the Romney campaign released today was the one we covered earlier – and the DNC has already remixed it:

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is bringing out Bain again:

The campaign also has a new Spanish language that will run along with a similar radio ad across five states (ad buy size unknown):

Geneva Sands translates:

"President Romney … What would that mean? For our kids, a steeper climb to college," says a narrator in Spanish. "Up to 2 million Hispanic students could see their Pell grants cut by almost a thousand dollars. Thousands more would lose their federal work study. And under his plan, there would be less funds for community colleges," the voice-over continues. "Register today to make sure Romney doesn’t shut these doors." 

In additional outside spending news, the conservative Americans for Job Security (a 501(c)6 non-profit that doesn't have to disclose its donors) is dropping $8.1 million on a six-state ad hitting Obama on the economy:

Elsewhere, GOP dark money group American Future Fund is spending $514K to air a new ad in Minnesota (it appears AFF's intention is for the ad to overlap into areas of Iowa and Wisconsin). The spot is a retread of the then-and-now Obama speech comparisons that have already appeared in several GOP ad variations. Also the Susan B. Anthony list has put out a new ad hitting Obama on abortion, but the group hasn't announced how much it will spend on the ad or where it will air. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is putting another $3.5 million into the race behind a testimonial-styled ad aimed at women in Ohio and Virginia:

In analysis news, the Columbia Journalism Review investigated the numbers journalists often use when reporting political ad spending and found that the two major sources of those numbers, the FEC and Kantar Media, were far from being in agreement:

Not that they should match dollar for dollar; Kantar and the FEC have different missions and methodologies. But the differences in their numbers aren’t minor. They are discrepancies in the tens of millions of dollars.

For example: CJR’s breakdown of FEC data found twice as much TV ad spending by two leading super PACs, Priorities USA (pro-Obama) and Restore our Future (pro-Romney), than Kantar found—as you see in [this chart]. (This is as of September 20—we stopped before the latest FEC disclosures so both sources would cover approximately the same time period). In other cases, the divergence is in the opposite direction: Kantar showed the conservative nonprofit group Americans for Prosperity spending more than $7 million more on TV ads than the FEC showed.

On one level, this is a cautionary tale for reporters, who often treat information from the two sources as if they were hard numbers from similar places. In fact they are soft numbers from very different sources, and campaign-spending stories should reflect that reality.

On a deeper level the massive variations between the numbers expose a troubling situation: Less than two months away from electing a president, we don’t really have a handle on how much outside groups are spending on television campaign ads to influence that choice.

And on the down-ticket in Missouri, Claire McCaskill's campaign has finally used Todd Akin's legitimate rape comment in an ad, compiling it along with other far-right comments he has made:

Lastly, Copyranter passes along a new video that turns an old JFK jingle into an Obama ad:

 

Ad War archive here.

A reader writes:

Torie Bosch writes that "if that isn’t a demonstration that a wedding is for everyone else but the couple, I don’t know what is." Maybe I'm way out of the mainstream on this, but why is this such a surprise? Of course your wedding isn't about you. By getting married, you're bringing together two families who barely know each other, and your wedding is the big event when they all (not just the parents) get to meet, and when the realisation that they're now all collectively invested in your marriage really hits home. The big frilly dress is a distraction.

Another agrees:

Of course weddings are for the guests, and not the couple.  They're like funerals, which we don't hold for the benefit of the deceased.  We hold both weddings and funerals to make statements about what we value before the community we value – communion, in short.

Another:

A wedding is to avow in public that you've made your choice and you plan to stick with it.  Eloping, while convenient, doesn't carry that same public commitment.  And yes, I know that families have unpleasant members.  I have a few in mine.  But still, to stand before G-d and everyone and say, "This one, and no other" is the point of the wedding – and more importantly, the point of the marriage.

Another:

By making our wedding a larger event than just the two of us, all of our guests had a vested interest in our success as a married couple.  That may be deeper than what many who were there enjoying themselves with drinks and dancing thought about, but I certainly reflect on it, and any time in my marriage when things have been rocky, I think about all of those people who were and are here to support this marriage.  Because they shared in that day and witnessed it, I feel obligated to them to make this marriage work, and know that I can reach out to so many of them when we need support.  It is surely true that those who elope have great support systems too, but for me, having it made obvious and official that day gave my wedding day an even deeper meaning.

MoveOn.org is encouraging its supporters to create and submit their own political ads based on Romney's 47% comments with a special focus on the message that they were "voters not victims." The group selected the following ad, submitted by Virginia residents, and say they are now airing it in the Roanoke market:

 

Daniel McCathy asks whether the GOP is still a national party:

Republicans have enjoyed a state-level resurgence even as they have lost — and lost big — their once commanding national majority. The GOP was once the landslide party, the party of Eisenhower ’52 and ’56, Nixon ’72, and Reagan ’84. Even Bush I’s 53.4 percent in 1988 was very respectable. Reagan’s 50.7 percent in 1980 wasn’t a landslide but still demonstrated that an outright popular majority supported the Republican. In the five elections before ’92, the GOP won popular majorities in four.

The parties have almost switched places since then. The popular-vote success of the Democrats in the last five elections is less impressive: they won an outright majority only once, in 2008. Far from balancing the scales, though, this highlights all the more the magnitude of the GOP’s electoral erosion: from being a party that won with majorities, the Republicans have declined to one that loses to pluralities.

Noah Millman's assessment:

The GOP can continue to function as a party opposed to all tax increases and in favor of the most hawkish position on all foreign policy questions. But, from my perspective, it cannot be a governing party. It can only operate as a brake on (or goad to) the ambitions of some other party, which would then be the only proper party to trust with the power of the Executive.

Brought to you by the Internet:

Building on Paul Campos' points, law professor Jason Solomon notes another problem with the excessive number of law students – the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) program gets more expensive for taxpayers:

[M]ost recent law graduates, for now and the foreseeable future, will be on IBR soon, if they aren't already. Their loan payments will be capped, but as a result, they won't even be keeping up with the interest accruing on the loan. These payments will provide the gov't some additional revenue in the short-term, but in 20-25 years, there's going to be a debt on Uncle Sam's books for each student for hundreds of thousands of dollars of principal and unpaid interest. When that gets "forgiven," it just means the cost gets transferred to the taxpayers, adding to the deficit.

Steven Davidoff argues that one possible solution – lowering the cost of law schools – is not as easy as it might seem.

Budapest, Hungary, 8.40 am

Should Obama win reelection and the GOP keep control of the House, Stan Collender wonders how Boehner will balance avoiding the fiscal cliff with retaining his position as Speaker:

Boehner will be on a very short leash during the lame duck and will have to continually prove to his tea party wing that he merits its support. Unless Democrats are willing to do something almost unimaginable and vote for Boehner, he cannot remain as speaker without the tea party wing’s votes.

Collender thinks this might drive Boehner to extremes:

Boehner has already shown that he’s more than willing to take positions to accommodate his tea party wing so he can stay as speaker. For example, his fire-and-brimstone speech in May when he insisted that he would not allow the debt ceiling to be raised again unless federal spending was cut by the same number of dollars the borrowing limit is raised – as basic a tea party position as there is — was clearly an effort to show that faction of his party that he was one of them and totally worthy of their support. There’s no reason to think Boehner won’t do that and more again.

This scenario makes a deal to avert the fiscal cliff far less likely than anyone is assuming. Indeed, if the White House doesn’t cave to GOP demands, it almost seems as if Boehner will have to let the fiscal cliff happen to keep his job.

A close look at Obama's job approval numbers:

Nate Silver tries to imagine a Romney victory without Ohio, where Romney is losing badly:

[O]ne sign that Mr. Romney’s team is preparing a "Plan B" to win the election without Ohio would be if they begin to place more emphasis on Iowa and Nevada. They would then have to hope that a shift in the national environment would carry states like Virginia and Florida back into their column. It isn’t a great plan. But when you’re the Republican candidate and are down outside the margin of error in Ohio with six weeks to go, you don’t have any great plans.

Meanwhile, Harry Enten reviews Gallup's forecasting record:

Both Gallup and Rasmussen continue to show a close race that most other pollsters don't see. That doesn't mean they should be ignored; they should be examined as part of a larger pool of polls that indicate a clear Obama lead. Gallup was a pioneer in the polling industry, but first doesn't equal best. Gallup may have the right ingredients, yet the sauce is just a little off. There's no reason to think they are right this time around while everyone else is wrong.

Nyhan sees little reason to think so:

[W]hile Obama will have increased leverage in the upcoming “fiscal cliff” scenario, there’s little reason to think the upward trend in legislative polarization will relent any time soon, or that Obama can magically change public opinion from the bully pulpit or force Congress to act through outside pressure. Similarly, it’s not clear that a president’s re-election creates especially strong incentives for the opposition party to start compromising. It’s true, for instance, that Bill Clinton cut a budget deal with Republicans in 1997, but he was also impeached in 1998. Similarly, George W. Bush faced far more relentless and effective opposition from Democrats in Congress during his second term than his first. Despite John Kerry’s loss, Democrats killed Bush’s proposal to add private accounts to Social Security in the 109th Congress and subsequently won a landslide victory in the 2006 midterm elections.

Sprung counters:

[T]he points that Nyhan concedes — that  a reelected Obama would have the whip hand in fiscal cliff negotiations, and that Clinton cut a budget deal (largely reflecting his priorities) after his reelection –  go a long way toward making Obama's argument for him. "Breaking the fever" is not primarily, or initially, about about producing comity between the parties; it's about changing the opposition's incentives. Clinton's reelection did do that; the fact that he later handed the Republicans a sword to gore him in the person of Monica Lewinsky does not negate the leverage he won or the relatively rational compromises he was able to strike with a GOP Congress — yielding balanced budgets that Gingrich boasted about in the GOP primaries as if he'd been Clinton's right-hand man.