Poll: Paul in top spot in Iowa GOP battle

/20 Comments/in /by

(CNN) – With 13 days to go until the Iowa caucuses, a new poll indicates that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas sits atop the field of Republican presidential candidates in the state that holds the first contest in the primary and caucus calendar.

According to an Iowa State/Gazette/KCRG survey released Wednesday, 28% of likely Iowa GOP caucus goers say Paul, the longtime congressman who’s making his third bid for the White House, is their first choice for the Republican nomination, with 25% backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Paul’s three point margin over Gingrich is well within the survey’s sampling error.

Eighteen percent of those questioned say they support former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s making his second run for the White House, with 11% backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Seven percent say Rep. Michele Bachmann of neighboring Minnesota is their first choice for the GOP nomination, with 5% backing former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, less than one percent supporting former Utah Gov. and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, with 5% undecided.

The poll was conducted over a long period of time, starting on Dec. 8 and ending on Dec. 18. The survey indicates that with the caucus closing in, the battle for Iowa remains fluid, with only 28% saying they’ve definitely decided on which candidate they would support.

But the survey suggests that when it comes to the commitment of support, Paul may have an advantage.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at CNN Political Ticker By Paul Steinhauser, CNN Political Ticker

The Tea Party train wreck that never happened

/3 Comments/in /by

Three weeks ago, E.J. Dionne (or “Baghdad Bob,” as James Taranto has called him) saw nothing but doom in the GOP’s future, as “the Republican establishment … is essentially powerless,” having surrendered its soul to the evil Tea Party, which has driven the country to hell.

Events since have proved this judgment mistaken: The establishment lives, and is doing its duty; part of the Tea Party has been merging with it; and the “system” is working as planned.

What are the signs that the system is working? When the prospect of former House speaker Newt Gingrich as the presidential nominee of the Republican Party first appeared to be rising, first responders from all parts of the party rushed to their stations en masse.

Former House colleagues called him unstable. The National Review termed him “erratic.” Ann Coulter called him all hat and no cattle. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., weighed in with a similar judgment.

Tea Party stars rushed to shore up Mitt Romney, the most probable Gingrich alternative. Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., had already endorsed him. Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., now endorsed him. Christine O’Donnell, who unseated Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s GOP Senate primary, endorsed the ex-moderate.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at washingtonexaminer.com By Noemie Emery, washingtonexaminer.com

Feud Between Romney, Gingrich Intensifies

/1 Comment/in /by

The slugfest between Republican presidential frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is escalating, with two sparred from a distance over attack ads that have come to dominate the volatile contest.

The rift underscores the contrasting campaign styles of the two men as they ready their final pitches to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. And it left each decrying a new campaign finance system — fueled by deep-pocketed political action committees — that each benefits from.

In Iowa, Gingrich vowed his White House bid would remain positive, while in the next breath he labeled the Romney camp’s tactics “disgusting.” The former House speaker, known for a bare-knuckles campaign style when he engineered the GOP takeover of the House in the 1990s, suggested at a campaign stop on Tuesday that his opponents “hire consultants who get drunk, sit around and write stupid ads.”

Romney protested that he couldn’t control the independent PAC expenditures, but pointedly declined to disavow the ads. The former businessman and Massachusetts governor, who’s been on the stump in New Hampshire, is seeking to project a tough, pragmatic image, allowing there’s “no whining in politics.”

“I’m a big boy,” he said on MSNBC.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at OfficialWire By Kasie Hunt and Shannon Mccaffrey, OfficialWire

Senator Coburn: US still wasting billions on pork

/2 Comments/in /by

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) today released a new oversight report, “Wastebook 2011” that highlights over $6.5 billion in examples of some of the most egregious ways your taxpayer dollars were wasted. This report details 100 of the countless unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects spread throughout the federal government.

“Video games, robot dragons, Christmas trees, and magic museums. This is not a Christmas wish list, these are just some of the ways the federal government spent your tax dollars. Over the past 12 months, politicians argued, debated and lamented about how to reign in the federal government’s out of control spending. All the while, Washington was on a shopping binge, spending money we do not have on things we do not absolutely need. Instead of cutting wasteful spending, nearly $2.5 billion was added each day in 2011 to our national debt, which now exceeds $15 trillion,” Dr. Coburn said.

“Congress cannot even agree on a plan to pay for the costs of extending jobless benefits to the millions of Americans who are still out of work. Yet, thousands of millionaires are receiving unemployment benefits and billions of dollars of improper payments of unemployment insurance are being made to individuals with jobs and others who do not qualify. And remember those infamous bridges to nowhere in Alaska that became symbols of government waste years ago? The bridges were never built, yet the federal government still spent more than a million dollars just this year to pay for staff to promote one of the bridges.”

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2011” include:

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.

• $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

• $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.

• $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

• $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.

• $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

• $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.

• $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.

• $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

• $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.

Read Senator Coburn’s complete report HERE.

 

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama: Pride before the fall?

/0 Comments/in /by

It’s no secret that President Obama has an inflated view of himself.  This becomes crystal clear when the President, as he routinely does, blames everybody but himself for the nation’s problems.  A leader who does not acknowledge his or her own mistakes is clearly suffering from an overdose of hubris.  Because President Obama apparently can’t help but display his arrogance, it came as no surprise to many when he declared himself to be the fourth greatest president in the history of the United States in a recent CBS interview (an interview that many will understandably confuse with a game of slow-pitch softball).

For a fleeting moment, I thought Obama may have finally come around to reality and was trying to say that he should be considered the fourth worst president.  But instead — and in typical Obama arrogance — the President put his administration at the top stating, “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president.”  And then, after a brief pause, he begrudgingly permitted “the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.”  See the video clip by clicking HERE.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Gingrich Assails Judges As He Courts Conservatives

/11 Comments/in /by

As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state’s caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.

There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich’s ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it’s taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.

“I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job,” Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.

Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed “radical” rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he’d consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.

In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts “grotesquely dictatorial.” He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at OfficialWire By Shannon Mccaffrey, OfficialWire

Is the Republican aristocracy afraid of winning, or just content with losing?

/4 Comments/in /by

Northeastern, milquetoast Republican “moderates” who toil long and hard to avoid the social embarrassment of association with uncivilized, conservative inhabitants of flyover country must understand that we in the Party base are NOT willing to graciously lose the 2012 election.

If Karl Rove, George Will and Peggy Noonan wish to escape the disapproving gaze of haughty Hamptons friends by mocking every Republican candidate who vaguely appeals to conservatives, let them. This time around, we who actually appreciate living and working in a free, prosperous United States are not going to surrender our ideals to the “wise counsel” of RINO elites for the sake of “party unity.”

In mid November, David Frum–that eager ambassador of feigned conservative values–submitted to New York Magazine a primer on the dangers posed to the Republican Party by the “radical right.”

In it, he expresses amazement that anyone in “his Party” can “…[denounce] the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult” or that they could conceive the iron-fisted federal “…regulation of private insurance [and] individual mandates” could lead to death panels! (1)

He is mortified that members of “his Party” adhere to the outrageous contention that Barack Obama is “…willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism.”

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at Coach Is Right By Doug Book, Coach Is Right

Jeb Bush pens campaign-like economic manifesto

/0 Comments/in /by

With a little more than two weeks to go before Republicans begin voting in presidential caucuses and primaries, the GOP faces the possibility of a muddled result in Iowa; a primary race that may take months of bitter campaigning to resolve; and a large number of Republican voters who remain unhappy with the current presidential field. Some of those voters are still hoping another candidate might enter the race.

That is why a new article from former Florida governor Jeb Bush is likely to attract attention from voters and political analysts alike. In the Wall Street Journal, Bush has written an article, “Capitalism and the Right to Rise,” that could be read as a simple statement of economic beliefs — or a campaign manifesto.

Bush begins the piece with a nice word for House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan. After that, the article is a standard Republican call for an end to excessive and intrusive government regulation. “We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise,” Bush writes. “We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck. That is what economic freedom looks like.”

Perhaps Bush just wanted to say something. Or perhaps he wanted to join the presidential conversation, either as an influential voice or a possible candidate. If his motivation is the latter, it would be a change from months — years — of denying that he would run for president in 2012. Both Bush and members of his family have said repeatedly that he will not run, that after spending his peak earning years as governor of Florida, he needed to make money for his family. Were he to decide to take run, Bush would have to reconcile his action with his many, many denials.

Of course, he wouldn’t have to persuade those Republicans who would still like to see another candidate enter the race. Polls have shown that a significant number of GOP voters, perhaps a third, are not satisfied with the current field. And some commentators, most notably Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, have suggested that the race might end up in a deadlocked convention, or with the entrance of a new candidate after early caucuses and primaries.

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

 Read More at Washington Examiner By Byron York, Washington Examiner