If it all comes down to Wisconsin...

It's 7 a.m. here in Wisconsin, which might just make the difference in the Electoral College, with our measly but magnificent 10 votes. I've seen various permutations of the Electoral College map — here, create your own map — and it's easy to see how Wisconsin could put Romney over the top even if he loses Ohio and Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Air Force One touched down in Madison at 2:30 a.m., and a small group of people were lined up on State Street at 6, but the line has grown in the last hour. Madison gave Obama his largest crowd of the campaign when he was here a month ago, but he was here a month ago, and that was in the afternoon in the middle of campus. Now, it's early Monday morning, a time when young people are difficult to rouse from their warm beds, and, speaking of warmth, it's 30° in Madison right now. It was a long wait in the rain for the campus speech last month.

And people must remember that you don't just get to see Obama and that other guy you might care about. (Do the young folk care about seeing Bruce Springsteen?) You have to put up with the local politicos — the mayor and so forth. Meanwhile, it's all on TV.... and has been for months. (Years?) The reason to go is not so much to see, but to be seen. Lend your body to the photograph of Obama with the Wisconsin Capitol looming in the background. As it looms, you may wonder, where was Obama when you were marching and chanting and drumming last year protesting Scott Walker? Where was Obama last spring when you dragged Scott Walker into a recall election? He expressed tepid support from afar, but declined to set foot in Wisconsin, even when he was right at the border in Minneapolis/Chicago.

Ironically, that recall election forced Republicans to develop their ground game in Wisconsin, and that's exactly what may push Mitt Romney over the top tomorrow. Here's RNC chairman Reince Priebus, yesterday on "State of the Union":

[The Democrats] haven’t been able to win in Wisconsin for a long time. They claim that the Obama machine was out during the Walker recall. We basically crushed them in Wisconsin. I have seen firsthand the difference between Obama’s rhetoric on their ground game and the reality, and the reality is they’re not as good as they think they are....

When you see that Wisconsin State Capitol in the background in today's Obama photo-ops, remember all that it symbolizes: an immense GOP victory in 2010, a huge and rude months-long uprising of the left end of the Democratic Party's target constituency (shunned by Obama himself) in 2011, and, in 2012, a decisive victory in the recall election for GOP Governor Scott Walker. What about all those Democratic voters splayed out around the GOP-dominated Capitol building? Hello? This is Madison, Wisconsin. The state Capitol building is always surrounded by Democrats. Every day, every month, every year. Madison does not control election outcomes in Wisconsin. In fact, there are an awful lot of people in Wisconsin whose idea of Madison is: This is not what Wisconsin looks like. And the people of Madison return the sentiment. We've been amusing ourselves with the saying "Madison is X square miles surrounded by reality" for a long, long time.

Obama will win by a landslide in Madison, but Madison — as we all know and have been telling ourselves for decades — is not reality.

"Billionaire Thomas Peterffy's ‘socialist’ ads raise questions."

Headlines Politico, pointing its readers at a very effective ad that they might otherwise avoid:



The "questions" referred to in the headline are about who is helping Peterffy, a political neophyte, to make and place such ad. But there's nothing interesting there, and Peterffy comes across as an intelligent, persuasive independent:

Typically, such ads call for supporting or opposing specific candidates, but Peterffy’s ad is more vague because it doesn’t mention specific candidates — only an encouragement to vote Republican....

Peterffy said he supports Republican candidates because he sees the rhetoric of social justice and fairness from Democrats, including President Barack Obama, as a slippery slope. He also said Romney’s 47 percent comment reflected his own fears about the future of the country and was taken out of context.

“My understanding was that he said he had no ability to influence the 47 percent,” Peterffy said. “That’s the very logic I’m based on. I’m worried about when that 47 percent goes to 60 percent.”

"Althouse: If you could write your 'How Obama Lost Me' post in the next 24 hours, the race could come down to your influence!"

Writes Ruth Anne Adams in the comments to the "last 72 hours" post. She adds "But if you're going the way of Colin Powell not so much" and "But if you could at least reveal your voting preference in the next few hours, that could win a wager or seven."

I think she's misremembering what the "lost me" posts of the past were about. I started blogging in 2004, a presidential election year, and, after much coverage of the election, including a commitment to something I called "cruel neutrality," on September 26th, I wrote a post called "How Kerry lost me." This wasn't me explaining why I was going to vote against Kerry. It was me acknowledging how I felt and realizing that I could mine the blog archive to discover where that feeling came from.

Yet I find myself expressing an increasing amount of hostility to Kerry, so I thought I'd go back and trace the arc of my antagonism through my various posts.

It was a bloggy project, solving a mystery about myself by taking advantage of the archive. For example, I found the wellspring of my antagonism in a single remark: "You're not listening" (said to a man who asked him what his position on Iraq was, as if the man had simply failed to pay attention to some supposedly previously stated position, when I too had been waiting for Kerry to answer that question). And I found what was, to me, "his final, fatal mistake" (disrespecting Allawi!), which prompted me to write the "lost me" post.

In 2008, I wrote "How McCain lost me," which may have created the impression that "lost me" posts are an Althouse blog tradition. That post was written after the election, but — I said at the time — "it's the same in that I'm mining my blog archive to try to understand how my resistance to the candidate formed and hardened and caused me to vote for the other man."

I know that I voted against McCain. Up through August, I genuinely didn't know which candidate I'd vote for, but I knew I was taking more shots at Obama and therefore giving the impression that I favored McCain. I didn't trust Obama, and I feared (and still fear) what Obama would do with a Democratic Congress. McCain was a more familiar character, less fun to write about, and he was also the underdog. But by mid-October, I knew that unless something big happened, I would vote for Obama. It was nothing new that Obama did. I didn't start liking him more, and I never got caught up in the Obama lovefest.

It was a lot of work to mine that archive. Oddly, despite all that work, my commenters have accused me for the last 4 years of having fallen for Obama delusions. But the point of the work was not to drum anything into your head. It was, as it had been in 2004, an effort to see where my decision happened. That's what I'm interested in: How people think, where, in the emotional/reasoning mind of an individual, does a decision take place? The blog archive gave me the ability to examine that. What I wrote in the "lost me" posts of the last 2 elections was not anything like a newspaper's endorsement of a candidate or an argument designed to persuade anyone to agree with me. It has more to do with my professional interest in how judges make decisions: How does the human mind work?

Why haven't I done a "lost me" post this time around? I haven't had the experience of noticing that there is a mystery that I could solve by delving into old blog posts. As you can see in that last indented paragraph, above, I didn't trust Obama, and I feared what he would do with a Democratic Congress. We all saw what he did with a Democratic Congress. He let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have their way with him. It was horrible. It led to the Tea Party and the trouncing Democrats took in 2010. I've felt no connection to the Democratic Party since then. Of course, I don't like half of what the Republicans stand for, but I've still voted for some of them, notably Ron Johnson and (twice!) Scott Walker, because... what choice do I have? The Democrats have been leading us into financial ruin.

If I could have been assured that the GOP would control both houses of Congress, I might have thought Obama would be good. I like balance, moderation, and pragmatism. If one of the hardcore righties had won the Republican nomination, I would probably have gone for Obama. But Mitt Romney got the nomination, which is what I had been hoping for (after Mitch Daniels decided not to run). It was time to pay attention again to Obama The Candidate, and his campaign centered on vilifying Mitt Romney in the most inane Occupy-Wall-Street style that was completely alienating to me. Romney seamlessly transitioned from being my choice in the primaries to being my presumptive choice for President. I remained open to Obama. Obama could have won me.

Then came Benghazi, and a door closed.

The real reason Obama has campaigned on small things — like Big Bird and "Romnesia."

According to Stanley Kurtz, it's a plot to realign the electorate, "creating a long-term Democratic majority that would allow him and his successors to stop catering to the center and finally govern decisively from the left."

Somehow, within the lulling smallness, there's a scary bigness.

Obama’s frantic efforts to gin up the women’s vote and the youth vote aren’t only desperate attempts to secure his base. They flow from a deliberate decision not to fight for the center, but to build an independent majority on what is supposedly the “demographically ascendent” left.

Over at The Nation, Richard Kim gets it. Writing about the Lena Dunham “first time” ad controversy, he speaks of it as part of an effort “to realign the electorate towards the Democratic Party for a generation.” But the best place to read about Obama’s larger strategy is “Hope: The Sequel,” the New York magazine piece by John Heilemann that got attention last May.... describ[ing] an Obama campaign willing to risk turning off socially conservative Democrats and independent voters by hyping leftist social issues....

That reminds me of the way Republicans turn off the socially liberal folks (like me) who would be receptive to the rest of what they have to offer. The 2 parties have corresponding strategies, including trying to scare people about how extreme the other party really intends to be. I don't trust any of them.

"Mr. Obama's was a White House that had—and showed—no respect for Republicans trying to negotiate with Republicans."

"Through it all he was confident—'Eric, don't call my bluff'—because he believed, as did his staff, that his talents would save the day. They saved nothing. Washington became immobilized."

Peggy Noonan, drawing on Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics."

Also at the link: Noonan's analysis of the first debate and her basis for believing that the Obama we saw there was the "real Obama."

"Romney May Be the End of the Line for the Republican Establishment."

Opines Scott Rasmussen.

Establishment Republicans in Washington broadly share the Democrats' view that the government should manage the economy. They may favor a somewhat more pro-business set of policies than their Democratic colleagues, but they still act as if government policy is the starting point for all economic activity.

Republican voters reject this view. They are more interested in promoting free market competition rather than handing out favors to big business. They detest corporate welfare and government bailouts, even though their party leaders support them....

If Romney loses in November, the Republican base will no longer buy the electability argument for an establishment candidate.

If Romney wins and does nothing to change the status quo, the economy will falter....

The Romney/Ryan decision to fight hard in Wisconsin.

A Republican presidential candidate hasn't won here since Reagan beat Mondale (in 1984), but Republicans have won the governorship twice in the last 2 years — there was a recall election — and they won the last Senate race and are on track to pick up the other Senate seat. And so we are about to get all the TV ads and so forth that recognize our status as a true battleground state.

Mary Spicuzza has some good detail here:

"There’s something going on in Wisconsin. The grass-roots army that we have built in Wisconsin, they’re crushing it out there," said Rick Wiley, political director of the Republican National Committee and former executive director of the state GOP. "It’s a state that has truly turned a corner. It’s ripe."

The work Gov. Scott Walker and his supporters did during the recall could benefit the GOP ground game — political shorthand for the volunteers who help turn out voters and promote a candidacy — during the next two months.

It was a terribly foolish decision for the Walker haters to go for the recall, but I doubt if these people dare to look straight at the reality that they may be the reason why the GOP is able to get over the top in the presidential election.

"Walker showed that the GOP can come with a ground game, it’s going to help Romney," said Joe Heim, UW-La Crosse political science professor. "It has added to the enthusiasm among Republican voters."

And it has tired out the Democrats. But Spicuzza found an Obama spokesman — Ben LaBolt —  to say "The truth is the recall has had a motivating effect on our side as well." Okay, let's see how that "motivating effect" works against a "grass-roots army" that is "crushing it out there."

[T]he Obama campaign is planning frequent visits in the coming two months. Obama has made several stops in Wisconsin in recent years, during his campaign and after taking office: in Green Bay, Madison, Racine, Milwaukee and Manitowoc. His last visit was in February in Milwaukee....

[Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll] said the Green Bay and Fox Valley areas will be key. Obama did well there in 2008, but Bush won there in 2000 and 2004. He said Wausau and the area north of it, and the southwest corner of the state, also will be important.

"A Democrat cannot win the state by winning Madison and Milwaukee, and losing Milwaukee suburbs and Green Bay, Wausau, Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls," Franklin said. "When Wisconsin Democrats have won statewide, they’ve won those areas."

Again, the Republicans have that grass-roots army they built during the recall and they’re crushing it out there. And let's remember that Obama failed to stop by the state to help out the Democrats in that recall. He might have stirred his Wisconsin people up last spring, when they really needed him and he could have made a big impact, but, instead, he conspicuously disappointed them — seemingly taunting them by doing fundraisers just across the border. He only tweeted his support for the Democrat. Presumably, he kept his distance because he knew Tom Barrett would lose, and he didn't want to look ineffectual.

And speaking of taunting us, Obama keeps taking shots at the Green Bay Packers — e.g., “I generally don’t interact with Packers — except when I’m in Wisconsin.”

37.6% call themselves Republicans now, and only 33.3% say they are Democrats.

Other Rasmussen polling shows a record high percentage of Americans identify themselves as Republicans — record high, meaning since 2002. The percentage is 37.6%. How many Americans call themselves Democrats? 33.3%. (This was a poll of adults, not likely voters. I suspect Republicans are more likely to be likely voters, don't you?)

"A New Guide to the Democratic Herd."

Illustrated with a cute animation of blue donkeys.

And here's a corresponding animation with red elephants.

Chuck Todd said "the stupidest thing" Josh Marshall has ever heard.

It's just painful for poor Josh to watch. Todd somehow actually says: "Democrats wish they had the diversity of speakers and deep bench [of the GOP] to show America...." Gasp!

"And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear."

Writes Joan Walsh at Salon. Here's what Paul Ryan said that Walsh thinks is "straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia":

“When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life... I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

If you believe the individual can think and decide for himself and pursue happiness as he defines it... you're delusional — in Walsh's view. You see what she's saying? She's saying you didn't build that — the very phrase Obama is straining to disown. You didn't build that, you can't build that, and you're psychotic if you imagine that you can. She's deeply into the collectivism the Democrats don't want to openly embrace.

But she doesn't think she's openly embracing it. She thinks Ryan is paranoid to imply that the Democrats favor "the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners." Pressed, she might — I assume — assert that it's fine for individuals to try to come up with their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives and to set out to achieve their goals, but that it's inaccurate to portray this enterprise as solitary and in defiance of the larger efforts of government and society (which they depend on no matter what they do).

But that's not what Walsh says. She's stirring up partisan discord and not inclined to concede that our differences, in the United States, are only a matter of leaning toward individualism or collectivism as we mostly keep to the middle of the road.

"The Republicans are smart enough to get the ‘pope of America,’ and the Democrats are stupid enough not to invite him."

"The Catholic vote is the most critical vote. They’re the wild card... So, why wouldn’t you ingratiate yourself to the pope of America and send a wink and a nod to Catholics?"

Who's the "pope of America"? It's Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan:

He's also a scholar and a passionate defender of the church's traditional views on what he calls "settled questions." If you've ever wondered why exactly the Catholic church opposes gay marriage and ordination of women as priests, listen to Dolan articulate the church's beliefs. It's far from a simple matter of saying "no."...

For example, here's the archbishop on gay marriage: "I have a strong desire to play shortstop for the Yankees. I don't have a right to because I don't have what it takes. And that would be what the church would say about marriage."

I was playing the video on that, and Meade said: "He sounds like Scalia." And I said: "That's what I thought!"

And here's Dolan arguing against the ordination of women as priests: "Jesus gave women positions of responsibility. The only ones at the foot of the cross except for St. John? Women. The people that discovered his resurrection? Women. The people that were with him on his journeys? Women. People say, 'This guy was kind of a pioneer in women's rights.' So, if he were going to intend them for the priesthood, he woulda done it. And he didn't."

Got that?

"I'm Todd Akin... Rape is an evil act. I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize."

Can you find it in your heart to forgive him? If you forgive him, should you say, nevertheless: Get out, you're hurting your party right now, and it's a big distraction? It's a wrong irreparable in a short time span. Now, you've got until 5 p.m. to get out of the race.

It's like some cowboy movie: You've got until sundown to get out of Dodge.



Now, I think Akin should drop out. It's not fair for him to hold the spotlight, and he's hurt his entire party. From the party's point of view, every day that's about him — and the war-on-women topic rape — is a day that not about the economy and what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan might do to save us from the depredations of the Democrats.

And yet... would the Democrats oust one of their own because he said one thing wrong? The GOP got played into destroying George Allen over the inane word "macaca." Democrats have their ways of disparaging Republicans for being racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever. It's not like they're going to stop. Each time they take a guy out it creates incentive to take another guy out. We can ruin X, like we ruined Allen and Akin.... It's a fun game... for them.

If Akin steps down, will takedowns like this continue?
	Yes, which is why he should stand his ground.
	Yes, but this one's too important, and he should step down.
	No, this is an unusual incident, not part of a series.
	No, the Democrats don't play the game Althouse describes in the post.
pollcode.com free polls

"Social issues are far down the priorities list, and I think that’s the trend."

"That’s where it needs to go if the Republican Party is going to be successful."

So say the young party members.

I'm old, and I'm not a member of any political party, but I agree.

A Bush and a Paul will speak at the Republican National Convention.

Jeb and Rand.

The GOP will highlight its women at the convention.

Condoleezza Rice, Nikki Haley, and Susana Martinez.

Polls through the spring showed President Barack Obama outpacing Romney among female voters, although strategists from both parties say that gender gap is narrowing. A strong play for female voters at the convention should be expected.

Haley, who backed Romney in her state's first-in-the-South primary, is the youngest sitting governor in the country and her husband will deploy to Afghanistan next year. So she will probably have a strong message for military families, as well as for younger voters.

Martinez, who made history in her state and nationally when she was elected, could appeal to Hispanic women, a sizable demographic that broke for Obama four years ago. She can also address voters who feel securing the nation's Southern border is a top concern....

"The Democratic Party has actively encouraged the GOP’s descent into antifeminism."

"And though Democrats have reaped considerable gains from the fallout, their efforts have often ultimately been to the detriment of the country’s women."

Presented for discussion. Read the whole article before reacting to the quote I extracted to get your attention.

49% to 38% — voters trust Republicans over Democrats on the economy (which they consider the most important issue).

According to a new Rasmussen poll.

Back in January, Republicans had the edge by 47% to 40%, so that's a 2 point shift toward Republicans, the highest since last October. Voters have favored Republicans over Democrats on the economy since June 2009.

Cain "was showing us a candidate for the presidency of the United States desperately trying to retrieve a soundbite..."

"... and not even trying to hide the fact that he was trying to retrieve a soundbite. Because we're kind of all in on the game, and it is a game, right?"

Writes Peggy Noonan:

The reporter asked him if he agreed, in retrospect, with President Obama's decisions on Libya. Mr. Cain said, "OK, Libya." Ten seconds of now famous silence ensued. Then: "I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reasons." Another pause, and then: "Um, no, that's a different one."

He was saying: That's a different soundbite.

Later, with an almost beautiful defiance, Mr. Cain told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "I'm not supposed to know anything about foreign policy." That's what staffers are for. "I want to talk to commanders on the ground. Because you run for president [people say] you need to have the answer. No you don't! No you don't!"

But you do, Noonan says. For a GOP candidate to display comfort and even pride in how little he knows plays into the hands of Democrats, who love to argue that Republicans are "not really for anything, they just hate government." Why else would you "blithely dismiss the baseline requirements of a public office, as Mr. Cain does"?

The charge that Republicans just hate government carries other implications—that they're stupid, that they're haters by nature, that they're cynical and merely strategic, that they enjoy having phantom foes around whom to coalesce, like cavemen warming themselves around a fire.

Cavemen? Where did that come from? That seems unfair to cavemen (who were, I assume, very connected to reality and focused on doing what works). Anyway, you see the point. Republicans may favor limited government, but that requires competence too and they're going to lose the election if they don't realize that before it's too late.

"It’s still impossible to sum up what Obama’s presidency is about right now, except saving his own job."

That's how Maureen Dowd sums it up this week.

Lot of insults for Republicans too: "They’re revolutionary Bolsheviks who want to eat Obama alive" and "nihilist[s who] go unchallenged in their crazy claims to be saving the country they’re hurting."