Day: July 25, 2012

Romney’s Foreign Trip Stumbles at Start – Campaign Adviser Tells UK Paper That, Unlike Obama, Romney Is ‘Part of an Anglo-Saxon Heritage’

Jon Ponder

President Bush accepts a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from ambassador of England, Sir Christopher Meyer, July 16, 2001. "He was a man of great courage. He knew what he believed. And he really kind of went after it in a way that seemed like a Texan to me,  said the President explaining why he would like the likeness of an Englishman placed inside the Oval Offfice.  He charged ahead, and the world is better for it." White House photo by Paul Morse.
President Bush accepts a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from ambassador of England, Sir Christopher Meyer, July 16, 2001. White House photo by Paul Morse.
The Romney campaign is already out with a complete and utter denial, but Jon Swaine, a reporter for the London Daily Telegraph, reports that a pair of anonymous Romney advisers made a series of highly charged political, which is to say undiplomatic, statements in an interview in advance of Mitt Romney’s trip abroad today. The purpose of the trip is to showcase Romney’s skills at diplomacy and and foreign affairs. During his time in London, he will also watch his horse in a dressage competition at the Olympics in London:

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Okla. Lawmaker in Jail, Can’t Make Bail

Buck Banks

He is currently still in jail because our money has been going to campaigning, so he will serve the time he needs to serve until we can get funds to get him out. The fact is we should have found other resources to possibly pay that.

— SunShine Fox, campaign manager for and fiance of Oklahoma state Senate candidate Fred E. Ray Smith (R) who was arrested and jailed over the weekend for failure to appear in court for outstanding child support payments, the Oklahoman reports.

NBC News Flogs Horse Race: President Up by 6 Points in Poll, But NBC Leads with Obama’s ‘Weak’ Favorable Rating, Even Though It Is 14 Points Higher Than Romney’s

Jon Ponder

One metric that never gets factored into presidential election prognostication is the degree to which the media manipulates facts in order to keep the race as close as possible. Folks like Chuck Todd, the top poll watcher at NBC, certainly have a motive to promote a tight race — imagine what their ratings would be if it were crystal clear now that the race was going to end in a rout in November.

“Romney would be the first GOP presumptive presidential nominee since 1996 to head into his nominating convention with a net-negative favorable/unfavorable score.”
– NBC News, burying the lede

The release of data from the new NBC Wall Street Journal poll this week is a case in point. The full results of the poll were embargoed until Tuesday, so on Monday, Todd and others at NBC teased the poll by releasing the most dire result for Pres. Obama they could find in the data. After weeks of bearing the brunt of Mitt Romney’s negative and spurious advertising, the president’s negatives were up a bit.

Whoah. That’s bad news, right. Well, on Tuesday, when the top line of the poll hit the news, it revealed that Obama leads Romney by 6 points, 49 percent to 43 percent. In 2008, Obama-Biden beat John McCain and Sarah Palin by 7.2 points (52.9 to 45.7 percent) that was considered a walloping. But in describing the president’s 6 point lead over Romney now, NBC said, “The horse race remains tight.”

Compared to what? […]