As a white, male, middle-aged conservative talk radio host from Virginia, John Fredericks is something close to the Platonic ideal of a Fox News fan.

And until last year, he was one. But then Fox’s treatment of the Republican primary race — the presentation of Karl Rove as a political analyst despite his having “thrown in for Romney” and Sean Hannity’s clear ties to the Republican establishment — began to grate on him. So he changed the channel.

“I’ve gone from all Fox to no Fox, and replaced it with CNN, which I think right now is giving me a much fairer analysis of what’s going on,” he said. “I feel they’ve lost that independent conservative mantra that had drove people like me to them. I used to feel that I got it straight, and I got an independent conservative view. Now, what I get is some wholly owned subsidiary of the RNC [Republican National Committee].”

Across the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, there were similar grumbles among conservative activists that the cable channel was no longer speaking for them as it once did.

The grumblers were picking up on a strategy that has been under way for some time — a “course correction,” as Fox chief Roger Ailes put it last fall — with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency. Lately, Fox has increasingly promoted its straight-news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and debates of the Republican primary season. Just last week, it hired the openly gay liberal activist Sally Kohn as a contributor.

Read More at Politico By Keach Hagey, Politico

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey will run a three-day gantlet in Congress starting Tuesday morning as they face Republican critics of President Obama’s new military strategy.

Panetta and Dempsey will testify on the president’s defense budget in back-to-back-to-back hearings, beginning with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Obama’s budget request, released Monday, cuts absolute defense spending for the first time in a decade and slashes more than 100,000 troops. Those reductions are in line with the president’s strategy revamp, which drops a requirement that the military stand ready to fight two large-scale ground wars at once.
Panetta defended Obama’s proposed cuts in opening remarks on Tuesday and reminded lawmakers that the $487 billion reduction in Pentagon spending the president is implementing is their own handiwork.

“It was this Congress that mandated, on a bipartisan basis, that we reduce the Defense budget, and we need your partnership to do this in a manner that preserves the strongest military in the world,” Panetta said in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action.”

Read More at The Hill By Jeremy Herb, The Hill

David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs.

Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.

The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.

“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.

Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.

Read More at The Daily Caller By Tucker Carlson and Vince Coglianese, The Daily Caller

Of all the polling that takes place over the next three weeks, Michigan might get the highest profile. Mitt Romney has strong ties to Michigan; his father was a popular governor in the state, and most people assumed Romney would not have to expend much energy there to win a Republican primary. The first hint of trouble came two weeks ago in a Rasmussen poll that showed Romney only 15 points up over Newt Gingrich but only at 38%, roughly what he got in 2008 against two strong challengers. I wrote at the time that Michigan could provide an opening for an unpleasant surprise for Team Romney, and today’s ARG poll of 600 likely Republican primary voters has delivered it:

Rick Santorum leads the Michigan Republican presidential primary with 33%. Santorum is followed by Mitt Romney with 27%, Newt Gingrich with 21%, and Ron Paul with 12%.

Of course, this could be an outlier, as none of the previous polling in Michigan has had Santorum out of the teens. Now, though, Santorum takes 42% of the Republicans surveyed in the poll (72% of the sample), with Gingrich coming in a distant second at 24%. Romney wins nearly a majority of independents at 48%, with the other three candidates in a virtual tie in the teens. Santorum now leads among Tea Party adherents 37/29 over Gingrich, and comes in a close second to Romney among non-TP adherents 35/30, with Gingrich at 14%. Romney tops Santorum among women only by six points, 39/33, while Santorum beats Gingrich among men 33/28, with Romney at 17%.

Team Romney had better hope that this is an outlier. A Michigan loss would seriously damage Romney’s electability argument, and would give Santorum a great deal of momentum heading into Super Tuesday. Is it an outlier, though? PPP tweeted yesterday that their multiple-day survey in the state so far showed Santorum up by as much as 10-15 points over Romney, and has Newt Gingrich losing to Ron Paul. Those results just got published, and Santorum leads 39/24:

Rick Santorum’s taken a large lead in Michigan’s upcoming Republican primary. He’s at 39% to 24% for Mitt Romney, 12% for Ron Paul, and 11% for Newt Gingrich.

Santorum’s rise is attributable to two major factors: his own personal popularity (a stellar 67/23 favorability) and GOP voters increasingly souring on Gingrich. Santorum’s becoming something closer and closer to a consensus conservative candidate as Gingrich bleeds support.

Read More at hotair.com By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air