While most polls show the race for New Jersey Governor to be neck and neck, Public Policy Polling has Republican Chris Christie leading incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine 47-41:

Corzine had pulled to within a point of Christie on our poll three weeks ago after trailing by as many as 14 points over the summer, but his momentum has stalled since then and Christie’s built his lead back up to 4 points last week and now 6.

If Corzine’s momentum has stalled, then perhaps even multiple visits from the president couldn’t push him across the finish line.  He’s been helped by the failure of his challenger to make the case for his candidacy, with “only 40% of voters” thinking Christie “made a strong case for why he should be elected Governor,” including 27% of those backing the Republican.

It is that failure which has allowed independent Chris Daggett to run as well as he has.  Sometimes, I wonder, if Corzine set him up as a stalking horse in order to divide the opposition vote, a clever strategy for an incumbent with an approval rating below 40%.  Seems a lot of people in the Garden State have similar thoughts.  One of our readers linked an article making just that point. There’s even a report than a New Jersey Democratic State Committee is paying for “robocalls” for Daggett.

Couple this with Democrats asking the New Jersey Secretary of State to ignore mismatched signatures on absentee-ballot requests and you find the incumbent playing some pretty hardball politics in anticipation of Tuesday’s contest.  These are just a few signs of their determination to keep Obama’s man in Drumthwacket.

If come Tuesday night, it’s a close race, with no clear winner declared long after polls have closed, you should be able to eventual outcome.  But, no one will ever know who won the plurality of votes.  We will know one thing–that the Democrat will have won even as majority of voters did not want him to renew his lease on that celebrated mansion.

In his July 4 post, Roger Simon wrote, “Obama is already over.”

In six short months the now-spattered bumper stickers with “Hope and Change” seem like pathetic remnants from the days of “23 Skidoo,” the echoes of “Yes, we can” more nauseating than ever in their cliché-ridden evasiveness.

When I read that piece, it struck that I had felt something similar, only that I would have used a different expression, calling the president “old news.”   To be sure, there were some moments in the transition as he tapped to a bevy of moderate Democrats for top jobs in his cabinet and Administration, he genuinely seemed to be the “new kind of politician” he billed himself on the campaign trail.  I now believe he sealed the fate of his Administration two days after his election, the day he announced the appointment of hard-charging Democrat and left-wing firebrand Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff.

No one interested in governing from the center and reaching across the partisan divide would have tapped such as committed partisan as his top White House aide.  And while there may be some moderate faces in the Administration, most of policies have come from the liberal wish lists accumulated over the past four decades.  Perhaps building on a point Michael Barone first made nearly eight months ago, Daniel Henninger noted last week that, in a world of increasing choices, the Democrat favors a one-size-fits all approach to health care reform.

This, he found, is starting to make the Administration “look totally out of sync with the new zeitgeist, the spirit of the age” (more…)

AP (or Yahoo!) editors seem to have pulled their headline for an article on Dede Scozzfava’s withdrawal from the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district from a left-wing blog: “Future of GOP and moderate Republicans uncertain,” with “reporter” Valerie Bauman asking in the first paragraph, “Are moderates welcome in today’s Grand Old Party?”

Note what Ms. Bauman leaves out in the list of issues which caused rank-and-file Republicans to turn on the eventual turncoat:

During the campaign [Scozzafava] failed to connect with voters, party officials or, perhaps most important, campaign donors, largely because of her support for abortion rights, same-sex marriage and union rights. That opened the door for Hoffman, who took every opportunity to remind people that Scozzafava was not the kind of Republican they wanted representing their interests in a Democratic-led Congress.

Not once does she mention the “stimulus” and reduces the issue “card check” to “union rights.”   Seems like someone is trying to make the Conservative candidate appear a bit troglodytic.  Nowhere does this “reporter” provide any evidence of Ms. Scozzafava’s record in the New York General Assembly, treating the ex-candidate like a moderate when she voted like a liberal.

Ms. Bauman’s bias shows either a determination to denigrate the conservative candidate or an ignorance of the resonance of the spending issue.  Or both.  And either reason should disqualify her from securing a job with a news organization concerned about even-handed political coverage.

No principles.

No respect.

No honor.

Just a simple lust for power.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As political pundits, White House spinmeisters and we bloggers prepare to evaluate the meaning of the coming off-off-year elections on Tuesday, Michael Barone offers some numbers to help put the various races into context:

Six days from now the voters of New Jersey and Virginia will elect governors. Voters in the 23rd district of New York and the 10th district of California will elect new members of the House of Representatives to replace incumbents, a Republican and a Democrat, who were appointed to positions in the Obama Defense and State departments.

All four of these constituencies voted for Barack Obama 51 weeks ago. Obama won 57 percent of the vote in New Jersey, 53 percent (his national average) in Virginia, 52 percent in New York 23 and 65 percent in California 10.

Each race will show us how far the Democrats have fallen (or risen) in the various constituencies since the presidential election last fall.

In the interest of putting these results in a broader historical context, we should also compare the gubernatorial results in New Jersey and Virginia to those held in the same states in the years following the two most recent elections of a new president, 1993 and 2001. (more…)

‘Republican’ Scozzafava endorses Democrat against Conservative Party’s Hoffman.

If she prefers the Democrat who supports the President’s health care plan to the Conservative who opposes big-spending policies, then clearly conservatives and libertarians were justified in their skepticism of this woman who has now proven herself to be a DIABLO.

Word from Honduras this weekend that a tentative settlement might have been reached between ousted former president Manuel Zelaya and the interim government in Tegucigalpa might bring the episode so many ignorant members of the Obama Administration, its State Department, and deer-in-the-headlights fawning (get it?) press have insisted on calling a “coup”, which it isn’t and has not ever been. I won’t rehash the whole thing. I’ve written about it here, here, and here. Follow the links in those posts (particularly the ones that point to Wall Street Journal articles) for a brief history of the whole mess.

I’m optimistic because the settlement calls for the Honduran Supreme Court first to issue an opinion on his return. Then Zelaya must face his nation’s Congress who will vote on whether or not to allow him to serve out the remainder of what would have been his term as president. Given (as Otto Reich mentions) that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against him in June, and the Congress voted 122-6 against him at the time, it’s unlikely he’s going to be taking back his old office.

I’m cautious, however, because why would Zelaya knowingly agree to face such an inevitable shit-storm? He undoubtedly has the support of Venezuela’s Chavez, who will undoubtedly attempt to rouse (through coersion, threats, or out-right bribes) members of that representative body (which, I needn’t remind you is populated by a majority of Zelaya’s own party) into reinstating the would-be dictator. I’m not ready to claim victory for the Honduran people just yet. After all, it is Central America, and it’s not as if there’s a stalwart American voice calling for the defense of law and order (or even respect for the Constitution). I smell a rat. We’ll have to wait and see.

Oh yea, and America. How have our leaders worked to restore law and order in Honduras? Well, if Zelaya is (once again) sent packing and the elections scheduled for later this month go on as planned in an orderly and democratic fashion, it’ll be no thanks to President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Since the beginning of this crisis, the Obama Administration and State Department seems to have been working stridently against fair and lawful resolution to this saga. All along the way, they have offered zero in defense of their non-sensical position of denying Hondurans their right to a solid Constitutional government while supporting this Chavez mini-me. When asked to defend their decisions, they have bobbed and weaved. While the Congressional Research Service (a law branch of the Library of Congress) found the ouster to be legit, State’s top lawyer, Harold Koh continued to stonewall on even the reasoning behind the inconceivable decision of the Secretary and her boss.

The agreement allowing Zelaya to (once again) face his peoples’ representatives to (once again) decide his fate gives Clinton and Obama just what they need: A face-saving out. Nobody, once this is over, is likely to revisit their oulandishly stupid decisions and prevarications on the situation. Indeed, if all is well and over, they should be very grateful for hte short attention-spans of their handmaids in the US press.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Yes, I know the two Democrats are running for Governor in different states, Deeds in Virginia, Corzine in New Jersey.  But, polls show each man  drawing about the same percentage of votes in his respective state.  The RealClearPolitics average of polls has Deeds at 41.0, Corzine at 41.3.

Now, what if more late-deciders in Virginia break for the Democrat than do in Jersey.   Deeds likely won’t score an upset, but he may come within ten points of Obama’s showing in the Commonwealth last fall.  I daresay the Garden State’s incumbent Democratic Governor won’t run that close to his party’s standard bearer in the most recent presidential election.

But, with a third party candidate in the election, that showing could still keep Corzine in Drumthwacket for another four years.

Now, it’s clear with the President’s multiple visit to Jersey on behalf of the embattled incumbent (I believe he’s there now), with one of Obama’s top political aides devoting serious attention to the race, the White House hopes to spin aCorzine win as evidence people have not turned on the president.  As Politico’s Ben Smith put it, “the White House desperately wants to win to avert the consequences for its own agenda of a Republican winning in a traditionally Democratic state.”

Even if Corzine wins, he won’t muster more than 42 or 43 percent of the vote, well behind Obama’s showing just one year ago in the Garden State and possibly even behind his fellow partisan in the Old Dominion.

Hardly a sign of confidence in the Democratic Party that.

UPDATE:  As a sign of how invested Obama is in the Garden State gubernatorial, the Washington Times reports that by sundown Sunday, the president “will have attended five events for Mr. Corzine’s bid“.

I’ll leave it to other conservative bloggers to analyze the angry ramblings of left-wing bloggers and pundits now that liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava has suspended her campaign for election to Congress from New York’s 23rd District.  Those posts (and column) I’ve read focused not on actual arguments conservatives have been making against the “stimulus” and “card-check” supporting Republican nominee, but on the antics of the conservatives make in the realm of their liberal imagination.

Had Ms. Scozzafava come out against the “stimulus” and card check, had stated clearly she opposes congressional Democrats’ big-spending initiatives and supported free-market reforms similar to those House Republicans have offered, she would not have seen her poll numbers sink as they did and likely would have stood a strong chance at being elected to Congress.  Even if she were more liberal on social issues.

This is not about a far right takeover of the GOP.  This is not about purging the party of those who differ from its mainstream on social issues.  It’s about the spending, stupid.

Government spending has skyrocketed in the nine months since Obama took office, despite that Democrat’s campaign promise of a “net spending cut.”  If Dede Scozzafava had put some significant distance between herself and the President’s free-spending Democrats, she would not have seen rank-and-file Republicans desert her in droves.  Nor would independent voters be flocking to the Conservative candidate.

And since so many of our critics on the left quite often seem to ignore they points we make, let me repeat myself, borrowing a manner of speaking from the 1992 Clinton campaign, it’s the federal spending, stupid.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Major props to Alex in Denver for boiling our argument down:

Apparently, according to Senatus, one must be focused entirely on gay political issues to be legitimately gay. Sexual attraction to the same sex is not enough. Frankly one of the things I love about this blog is the recognition on the part of the authors that sexual identity is not the same as political identity. That leads to some tough choices: the post about endorsing Hoffman is an example. Ideally we gays who also support economic freedom and strong national security wouldn’t always have to parse our interests that way. However, that interest parsing, prioritizing, and selecting from among imperfect choices is precisely what makes this blog interesting to read.