Month: July 2010

Republican–Tea Party ‘Contract on America’ Revealed

Buck Banks

At 11 a.m. today, Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, DNC Vice Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other Democratic members held a press conference to introduce what they call the “Republican-Tea Party Contract on America.” According to DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan, these Democratic leaders, “will present the American people a handy 10-point blueprint for how the Republican-Tea Party would govern, based on actual positions taken and held by Republican-Tea Party members.” The blueprint includes repealing the health-care law, privatizing or phasing out Social Security, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, repealing financial reform and abolishing the Education and Energy Departments.

Republican_Tea_Party_Contract

Poll: Schwarzenegger Approval Stalls at 19% – Even Lower Than Bush And Palin

Jon Ponder

And even 19 percent approval seems high:

Casting a shadow over [GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg] Whitman’s campaign is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s continuing status as the least popular Governor in the country. 71 percent of voters in the state disapprove of the job he’s doing and only 19 percent give him good marks. Generally when you have an outgoing Governor that strongly disliked you’re not going to be inclined to replace him with another person in the same party.

Schwarzenegger is now even less popular in California than George Bush and Sarah Palin — arguably the other two most famous Republicans — are nationally:

According to [a NBC/Wall St. Journal poll earlier this month], just 29 percent view [Palin] favorably, compared with 43 percent who view her unfavorably (not far from George W. Bush’s 29 percent-50 percent score). In addition, the poll shows that 52 percent have problems with a candidate who has been endorsed by Palin, versus only 25 percent who are comfortable with that attribute. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Palin is more of a political celebrity than a political figure.

As I said last month, Schwarzenegger’s career as governor should be a cautionary tale about electing novices in times of crisis.

Just 1.38% of Fox News Audience Is African American – Majority Are the ‘Absolute Oldest’ Viewers on Cable

Jon Ponder

Huffington Post:

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter tweeted that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News has averaged just 29,000 black viewers in primetime so far this television season (9/09-7/10). That represents just 1.38% of its 2.102 million total viewer audience.

CNN and MSNBC, meanwhile, both have far more black viewers, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of their overall audiences.

MSNBC has averaged 145,000 black viewers, representing 19.3% of its 751,000 total viewer audience.

CNN has averaged 134,000 black viewers, representing 20.7% of its 648,000 total viewer audience.

Last year, the trade magazine Variety reported that figures for the 2007-2008 television season showed that the average age of Fox viewers was 65 years old — the “absolute oldest” audience of any cable channel.

NH Sen: Palin Endorsement of GOP Candidate Appears to Have Backfired

Jon Ponder

Public Policy Polling:

[New Hampshire GOP senate candidate] Kelly Ayotte’s seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in 2010- she has a 45-42 advantage over him, down from 47-40 in an April PPP poll…

Most of the movement both in feelings about Ayotte and in the horse race has come with moderate voters. Moderates make up the largest bloc of the New Hampshire electorate at 47 percent, and Hodes’ lead with them has expanded from just 8 points at 47-39 in April to now 21 points at 51-30. Ayotte’s favorability with them has gone from +5 at 32/27 to -19 at 27/46.

The Palin endorsement may well be playing a role in this. 51 percent of voters in the state say they’re less likely to back a Palin endorsed candidate to only 26 percent who say that support would make them more inclined to vote for someone. Among moderates that widens to 65 percent who say a Palin endorsement would turn them off to 14 percent who it would make more supportive.

Democrat Paul Hodes is unopposed. Ayotte faces Bill Binnie, Jim Bender and Ovide Lamontagne in the Republican primary on Sept. 14. They are running to replace Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, in the general election on Nov. 2.

Divorce Has Declined Since Gay Unions Were Legalized, So Where Is Threat to ‘Opposite’ Marriage?

Jon Ponder

Kill the Gays: Poster from a National Organization for Marriage "rally" in Indiana this week
Kill the Gays: Poster from a National Organization for Marriage rally in Indiana this week - Click photo to read more
One of the most nonsensical claims by opponents of gay marriage is that it is a threat to “traditional marriage,” by which they mean what their intellectual hero, Carrie Prejean, the disgraced former Miss California USA, referred to as “opposite marriage.”

For people who aren’t tuned into the debate, the canard that gay marriage threatens heterosexual marriage sounds vaguely reasonable — like marriage is a zero-sum game and that as gay marriage increases so will the divorce rate among straight couples.

A recent report from Pew Research indicates that the opposite of that is true:

The national divorce rate is higher now than it was a century ago, but it has been declining for the past two decades. According to provisional data for most states from the Centers for Disease Control, there were 3.5 divorces per 1,000 people in 2008, compared with 4 per 1,000 people in 2000. (Marriage rates have also declined but the divorce rate also has declined if expressed as the number of divorces per 1,000 married couples.) [Emphasis added.]

The year 2000 is key here. Before 2000, anti-gay activists had been winning their war against gay marriage, including the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act by Congress in 1996. In 2000, however, the course of the war began to change, and the good guys started to win:

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Verbatim

Buck Banks

The law doesn’t require you to be a successful crook. It just requires you to be a crook.

— Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Niewoehner, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, making closing arguments in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

CO Gov: Tancredo Enters Race, Could Toss Election to Democrat John Hickenlooper

Jon Ponder

Tancredo
Tancredo
Ken Rudin:

You should get out of the race for governor, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) told Colorado Republicans Scott McInnis and Dan Maes last week, if polls show that you can’t beat Democratic candidate John Hickenlooper in the November election. And if you don’t, I’m going to run as a third-party candidate.

McInnis and Maes, battling each other in the Aug. 10 primary, refused. Today … Tancredo joins the race as a candidate of the American Constitution Party.

Of course, Tancredo — who served in the House as a Republican for five terms and sought his party’s presidential nomination in 2008 on an anti-illegal immigration platform — has to first register with his new party. But that’s just a formality.

McInnis, a former congressman who had been his party’s frontrunner for gov., has been under a barrage of criticism over plagiarism charges… Once upon a time, back when Bill Ritter (D) decided to retire, Republicans were confidently predicting they would take back the governorship. But between the McInnis woes and the increasing negativity in the Senate contest between Jane Norton and Ken Buck … the opportunities for GOP gains in both contests are in jeopardy.