Tea Party Nation poll shows 52 percent will vote for Romney if he is GOP nominee

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Most self-affiliated members of Tea Party Nation, one of the largest national organizations for the grassroots conservative movement, would vote for Mitt Romney as president if confronted with a choice between him or President Obama, according to a poll of members released to The Hill on Friday.

The group surveyed its members this week in an informal poll posted at the group’s website. The question asked was: If Romney is the GOP nominee, what will you do in the general election?

Fifty-two percent of about 1,150 respondents said they would “hold their nose” and vote for Romney if he becomes the GOP nominee, while 23 percent said they would vote for an unspecified third-party candidate. Twelve percent said they would not vote in the presidential election at all if the choice is between Romney and Obama.

Twelve percent of those polled said they would “vote enthusiastically” for Romney.

The unscientific results underscore a general lack of enthusiasm for Romney from the conservative wing of the Republican party, but also contrast with a poll taken by the same group in August. In that survey, 45 percent of 1,700 members answered ‘no’ when asked, “If Romney is the nominee, will you vote for him in the General Election?”

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 Read More at The Hill By Alicia M. Cohn, The Hill

What’s next for Sarah Palin? How about a ‘supercommittee’ of governors?

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What’s next for Sarah Palin? She seems at the moment to be finding a role as a general commentator, remarking on Ron Paul’s foreign policy and whatnot. That is, she seems to be at loose ends. There is much more she could do as an Alaskan, in terms of advancing regionalism and states as laboratories, as Rick Perry talks about it.

Palin’s role these past two years has been much as the La Passionara of the Tea Party movement. Seeing her at the Nashville Tea Party Congress at the beginning showed a connection to this rustic grassroots movement, which brought it to large recognition.

But something happened in the interim. Old-school professionals like Dick Armey commandeered the rising spirit and it became an unfocused conservative howl, and old-fashioned country rant against those effete Washington people.

The Tea Party has lost its original intent. State sovereignty issues as they are maturely discussed by Andrew Napolitano on Freedom Watch and Thomas Woods and Rick Perry and governors like Butch Otter of Idaho and candidates like Alaska’s Joe Miller and advanced by legislators like Delegate Jim LeMunyon of Virginia need some time to percolate. And there couldn’t be a better Petri dish than Alaska.

A sympathetic president like Perry cannot dictate these changes top down. They have to rise up from the states and governors must take the initiative. And the status of governors must be enhanced. Palin is in the perfect position to bring leadership to this new direction.

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 Read More at The Hill By Bernie Quigley, The Hill

Video: Are “Occupiers” like the Tea Party?

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President Obama recently compared the OWS protestors to the Tea Party. But are they so similar? Watch this video and find out. (Caution: Crude images and Language)

Tea Party still hunting for its champion

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By Michael Levenson & Matt Viser – Tea Party activists have time, energy, and a ready-made volunteer army to devote to the presidential campaign. Now, if they could only find a candidate.

Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and, more recently, Herman Cain have captured the hearts of Tea Party activists and religious conservatives, but none has so far been able to consolidate and sustain that backing. Their see-sawing support has some in the movement beginning to worry that Mitt Romney – the favorite of many in the GOP establishment, but a candidate the Tea Party has kept at arm’s length – will capture the nomination.

“That absolutely creates, for leadership in the Tea Party movement, strategic problems,’’ said Joe Miller, a former US Senate candidate from Alaska who now leads a group, Western Representation PAC, whose stated goal is defeating Romney. “We’re not seeing anything other than a fracturing right now of the vote.’’

This was supposed to be the Tea Party’s year to rock the Republican primary. After helping Republicans capture the majority in the US House in the 2010 mid-term elections,Tea Party activists were expected to play a pivotal role in helping to select the party’s presidential nominee.

And they have plenty of candidates to choose from: Bachmann started the congressional Tea Party Caucus. Cain has been speaking at Tea Party rallies since 2009. Ron Paul has been called the “grandfather of the Tea Party.’’ And Perry wrote “Fed Up!’’ an anti-Washington, Tea Party manifesto.

Yet Romney, a candidate many in the movement view as too timid and too moderate, has consistently stayed near the front of the pack, buoyed by a well-funded campaign, major endorsements, smooth debate performances, and a sense of inevitability surrounding his second run for the nomination.

Tea Party activists and religious conservatives, however, contend a crucial factor plays in their favor: Romney cannot seem to tally more than 20-25 percent support in national polls, meaning almost 80 percent of the vote is still in play. As the field inevitably narrows, they say, their potent forces will unite behind one alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

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Read more at Boston.com HERE.

Ron Paul thinks now is the time to make his move

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By Kim Geiger.  Fresh off a $2 million-plus fundraising day, Ron Paul is planning an advertising blitz in four early voting states in an effort to build momentum for his 2012 presidential bid.

The Texas congressman is a longshot for the GOP nomination. Paul’s support in the polls has hovered in the single digits and low teens for the entire campaign. But he’s managed to draw heavily on grassroots fundraising, making him the third-ranking fundraiser in the GOP field.

Paul’s campaign thinks now is the time to spend big.

The strategy, according to spokesman Jesse Benton, is to get on the airwaves now, while they’re quiet.

“We also think other candidates aren’t going [on the air] right now,” Benton said. “There’s going to be a certain din toward the end where you’re going to have outside expenditures – it’s going to be a little harder to get the message heard.”

Paul will be the first of the GOP presidential candidates to come out with a major ad campaign. He’ll spend more than $2 million over the next four weeks, much of it on television advertising. The ads will air in Iowa and New Hampshire as well as South Carolina and Nevada. (Videos below.)

One ad calls Paul “a visionary who predicted the financial crisis.” Another warns that “America is in trouble,” and casts Paul as the only consistent candidate in the race.

Paul has run for president twice before – as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 – and has generally been dismissed as a fringe candidate. But if there was ever a time that Paul’s message might gain traction, now seems to be it, as voters appear dissatisfied with the political establishment and the weak GOP primary field.

On Monday, Paul unveiled his “Plan to Restore America,” which would, among other things, cut $1 trillion from the federal government in one year, eliminate five cabinet departments, and lower the corporate tax rate to 15%. As a symbolic gesture, the plan cuts the president’s salary from $400,000 to $39,336, the average median income of an American worker.

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Read more at the Los Angeles Times HERE.

Obama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says

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Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday that the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.

“I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security,” Cole told a panel at the George Washington University law school.

The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial.

In a Wednesday Los Angeles Times op-ed, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) president Salam al-Marayati threatened the FBI with a total cutoff of cooperation between American Muslims and law enforcement if the agency failed to revise its law enforcement training materials.

Maintaining the training materials in their current state “will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community,” al-Marayati wrote.

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 Read More at The Daily Caller By Kenneth Timmerman, The Daily Caller

Fast and Furious: What a Tangled Web They Weave

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Tuesday October 18 proved to be an important day in the slow march towards justice for the families of murdered federal agents Brian Terry and Jaimie Zapata.

First, the U.S Senate unanimously voted in favor of an amendment prohibiting funds from going to any future gun-walking type operations. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the amendment in direct response to the 2009 Fast and Furious debacle. The bipartisan consensus prompted Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to join Cornyn in his demand for answers from Attorney General Eric Holder.

When I look at what happened in Operation Fast and Furious, I was fast to be furious about the bungled, botched occurrences that occurred. It was poorly planned, poorly executed, had flawed leadership, and it was definitely of questionable integrity and value.

The southwest border is America’s border. Anything that happens down at your border affects us. That’s the way we need to think about ourselves, we’re all Americans, we all need to look out for one another.

Second, ABC’S Jake Tapper became the latest mainstream media reporter to focus on what he called “a big scandal.” In a Nightline interview Tapper confronted President Obama on the controversy surrounding the “Justice Department, the ATF moving guns tied to crime scenes.” Obama once again denied any prior knowledge of Fast and Furious.

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 Read  More at American Thinker By M Catharine Evans, American Thinker

Five Problems with Wind Power

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There are a few major problems with wind power, which proponents of this technology don’t want you to know about.

Problem with wind power #1. It isn’t that environmentally safe, at least according to environmentalists

This first major problem with wind power is exemplified by recent news.

We posted a story on our web site today on 35 windmills that have been shut down at night in western Pennsylvania because an “endangered species” bat was found dead at the base of one of the wind turbines. The wind farm can’t operate at night now until the bats go into hibernation later this year.

This is madness. If wind farms are one of only two sanctioned sources of energy by eco-freaks – the other is solar – then our nation is going to be in serious trouble in the future. But, even wind farms aren’t popular among the animal rights zealots because the turbines routinely kill birds and bats. In addition, those turbines require those “unsightly” power lines to transmit the electricity to homes, businesses, etc.

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Read More at epaabuse.com By Frank York, epaabuse.com