The latest sign of GOP competitiveness and of growing disaffection with Obama: “Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter and Republican challenger Pat Toomey are deadlocked 44-44 percent in Pennsylvania’s marquee 2010 U.S. Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. President Barack Obama’s job approval in this pivotal swing state remains below 50 percent at 49 – 45 percent.” That’s in Pennsylvania.
Three cheers for the status quo: “Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide say that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 34% think that passing that bill would be better.”
The president of the Club for Growth mocks the non-binding Copenhagen climate control deal: “Like most Americans, I feared President Obama went to Copenhagen to sign a binding, job-killing, economic suicide pact. I am greatly relieved that the last-minute agreement President Obama negotiated is being widely described as ‘meaningful.’ When politicians call something ‘meaningful,’ that means it isn’t. Without even reading the accord, pro-growth, limited government conservatives today can celebrate the word, ‘meaningful.’ Today that adjective probably saved thirty million jobs.”
The New York Times says the same thing: “Leaders here concluded a climate change deal on Friday that the Obama administration called ‘meaningful’ but that falls short of even the modest expectations for the summit meeting here.”
I think Lou Dobbs has a better shot with Hispanics. From ABC News (not The Onion): “Al-Qaeda Reaches Out to Women.”
James Capretta: “Senator Nelson is clearly uncomfortable with the bill as written. Any fiscal conservative would be. It’s not a close call. As the senator said yesterday, the country would be far better off with a more scaled-back bill. He’s right about that. And it’s in his power to deliver just such a bill. Pushing the discussions into 2010 would not end the health-care debate. It would only make it more likely the Senate voted in the end for something the public — and Nebraskans — would find acceptable.”
MoveOn.org doesn’t think it’s a close call either.
No hope but rather some unwelcome change for poor D.C. school kids: “Democrats in Congress voted to kill the District’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides 1,700 disadvantaged kids with vouchers worth up to $7,500 per year to attend a private school. On Sunday the Senate approved a spending bill that phases out funding for the five-year-old program. . . President Obama signed the bill Thursday.”
Right Back Atcha, James
I got a good chuckle this morning from this post on something called the Sovereignty Caucus blog attacking me as an out-of-touch Manhattanite because of my pro-immigration posting on contentions:
Who is the author of this populist outrage? In what farmhouse in which Midwestern state does he sit shuddering with rage at the bicoastal elites who are “zooming over” his head?
This item was penned by none other than James Pinkerton, a former aide in the White House of George Bush Sr., who was briefly famous for formulating something called the “New Paradigm,” the content of which has long been forgotten by all but the author.
And where does Pinkerton live? I believe in New York, where he is a columnist for Newsday and a contributor to the Fox News Channel. At least I’ve certainly run into him at parties over the years in fancy New York settings. (Perhaps he commutes to these gatherings from Dubuque?) He is also affiliated with think tanks such as the New America Foundation, which are presumably funded with “tax-deductible foundation money.”
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