While certain segments of the Republican political establishment may see Jeb Bush as an obvious candidate for President, the majority of the voting public seems to have moved on. Bush’s current struggles in the polls aren’t simply a factor of the Trump phenomenon, but the inevitable result of the voters simply not liking Bush that much.
The Labor Department reports that the economy added just 173,000 jobs in August, below economists’ expectations of a 212,000 gain.
Last year, Pennsylvania enacted a $2-a-pack cigarette tax in the City of Philadelphia to help bail out the city’s troubled school system. The tax came into affect on October 1st, but the state is already moving to increase cigarette taxes statewide. Sin taxes are the last fix for profligate legislators addicted to government spending.
While the state has been dragged in and out of federal court over the past three months over its failure to comply with a consent decree reimbursing care for the developmentally disabled, the Republican appointed Comptroller, Leslie Munger, has authorized more than $1 million in grants to Planned Parenthood. The state payments were “grants,” according to the Comptroller’s records, so the money doesn’t appear to be tied to any Medicaid or other federal payment mandates.
PPP – Public Policy Polling – is unique, however, in that they use their polling, and their perceived record of accuracy, to actively push a Democrat agenda. On Tuesday, PPP made its first effort to try to affect the GOP primary contest, rather than simply measuring its state of play. It ventured into the world of messaging by also asking voters whether or not they thought Barack Obama was a Muslim or if they believed he was born in the United States.
Keep in mind, much of this groundswell against the Republican establishment has occurred in August, while Congress has been in recess. Next week, however, Congress returns to tackle, among other items, Obama’s deal to lift sanctions on Iran and government spending for the year. Another replay of Republican leaders tendency to avoid confrontation with Obama will super-charge outsiders’ momentum.
A new Monmouth University poll of likely caucus-goers in Iowa confirms what anecdotes suggest; base Republican voters have a serious problem with their own elected officials. The top four candidates in the Republican primary, three of whom have never held elective office, together win the support of 65 percent of Republicans in the state.
A new Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll finds Carson closing the gap with frontrunner Trump. Carson has 18 percent support among likely caucus-goers, while Trump has 23 percent support. Combining the first and second choices of voters shows the two men tied at 32 percent.
The 2008 Democrat nomination was permanently reshuffled when Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Caucus. Obama’s win surprised pundits at the time, but a new poll from Bloomberg/Des Moines Register suggests another Hillary defeat is possible. This potential upset is being broadcast five months early.
The deadlock is almost an existential disagreement between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrat leadership in the state Legislature.
At the end of May, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio led the GOP field. He was followed closely by Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Walker and Rubio were close to tied, given the margin of error. Donald Trump was in the back of the pack, polling behind former New York Gov. George Pataki.
For almost a decade, the Republican party has interpreted losses at the ballot box as its inability to attract Hispanic voters. This, in turn, is blamed on segments of the conservative wing of the party whose rhetoric allegedly turns off Hispanic voters. When conservatives empower a Republican victory, as in 2004, 2010 or 2014, the win is dismissed as almost an aberration. Oh, that victory you have there is because Hispanics didn’t vote, Republican leaders imply.
Hillary is still popular with Democrats and continues to post a strong lead in the race for the Democrat nomination. Less than 30 percent of Independents, though, have a favorable impression of Clinton. Just over 60 percent have an unfavorable view of her. Fewer than 1-in-10 Independents aren’t sure how they view her, meaning she will have to change voters’ minds about her to be competitive next November.
The unmistakable trend in current polling for the nomination is that the closer candidates are perceived to be to the GOP leadership, the less support they have from Republican voters. The top two candidates in the RealClearPolitics average of polls are Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, released Thursday, the two candidates command 40% of support out of a crowded field of 17 candidates.
A new poll from Quinnipiac suggests the speculation about a possible presidential run by Vice President Joe Biden isn’t going away as we pass Labor Day. While Hillary Clinton still leads the race for the Democrat nomination, Biden performs better against potential GOP rivals than Clinton. The existential challenge for Clinton is that she is considered the least honest and trustworthy of any candidate running, in either party. Almost 70 percent of Independent voters don’t consider her honest.
The national political dialogue is centered on which candidate is up or down in various national, and specific state level, polls. Yet when voting begins in about 5 months, the path to the Republican nomination won’t be as simple as coming out on top in final polling, or even voting on election day. First, a candidate must survive a complex nominating process.
While the massive sell-offs in China may be the catalyst for the current turmoil, the market downturns are long overdue. Over the last 7 years, the markets have been driven higher by unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus. The underlying economy has never caught up to the historically high valuations in the stock market. As the economist Herb Stein dryly noted, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” A stock market separated from fundamental economic reality cannot go on forever. It is stopping.
Jeb’s raffle is a brutal reminder that the presumptive frontrunner doesn’t understand the party he is seeking to lead into the next Presidential contest. Colbert has played a significant role in dumbing-down political discourse in this country. His celebrity is based on his success skewering conservatives on his eponymous Comedy Central show. While his show was never a ratings success, it played a pivotal role in establishing media narratives against conservative politicians and conservative policy positions.
The 2016 election is very likely to be a crisis election, with voters looking for leadership in an anxious world. Another financial crisis, or a series of crises, seems certain to dominate the next Presidential election. The slowing of growth in China, the devaluation of its currency and the exhaustion of Central Bank printing presses will wreck havoc on world markets and lead to multiple bankruptcies.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders registered his highest support ever in the Reuters poll, winning the support of 23 percent of Democrats. Vice-President Joe Biden, who isn’t a candidate (yet), earns the support of 12 percent of Democrats. Almost 10 percent of Democrats say they wouldn’t vote in the primary, given the current choice of candidates. In other words, “none of the above” is currently running 4th in the Democrat primary, just behind a candidate who isn’t running and ahead of three who are.
When she launched her campaign for President, Hillary made income inequality one of her central themes. “The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top,” Clinton said. “Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion.” Collecting almost a cool million for pancakes pretty much defines the Hillary Clinton campaign.
In Iowa, Jeb Bush is in 7th place. In New Hampshire, which was expected to be the strongest of the early states for him, he is in 3rd. In South Carolina he is in second, but with almost one-third the support of the frontrunner. Interestingly, the South Carolina polls were taken before the first GOP debate, when the Trump boomlet gathered steam.
Just a few weeks ago, professional Republican strategists predicted that Trump would already be heading for the exits. Almost 60 percent said he would bow out of the race before the end of the year. That hasn’t happened. So, on Wednesday, predicted frontrunner Jeb Bush launched his first direct attack on Trump. “He has given more money to Democrats than he’s given to Republicans.”
The index measures nations on personal, civil and economic freedom. The United States has fallen three spots since Barack Obama became President.
All the Democrat candidates’ plans quibble over how one pays for college, rather than looking at the higher education system itself. In many ways, the Democrats’ plans for college are similar to the party’s approach on any policy issues. Their debates, whether the issue is health care or housing, are over who will pick up the tab for the policy, not whether the underlying challenge itself needs reform or change.
The obvious story of the “Trump Summer” is his continued dominance of the GOP primary race. It would be an understatement to say that Trump has survived a media onslaught against him. Even Fox News aimed its most potent journalists at him during the first GOP debate and widely missed their target. The campaign of every Republican running for President has been impacted by the Trump candidacy and the smart ones are starting to adapt.
It should come as no surprise that the lawsuits challenging the House maps in the three states were brought by the National Democrat Redistricting Trust. The organization is run by former staff members of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. It is a blatant attempt to litigate what was lost at the ballot box.
Like the Democrat party, the national Republican party and its erstwhile allies at Fox and the Wall Street Journal, are losing their control of the party’s nominating process to outsiders. The top three GOP candidates, Trump, Carson and Cruz, have support of almost half the Republican voting base.
The latest Fox poll finds that 58 percent of Americans believe Hillary Clinton lied about not having classified information on her private email server. A majority, 54 percent, also believe her use of a private email put that nation’s security at risk.
In truth, the only person being serious in this whole exchange is Trump. One doesn’t have to be a conservative to have some trepidation reading world news these days. China has launched a currency war, our Middle East policy, such that it exists, is dependent on angels suddenly taking power in Iran. Our sphere of influence is narrowing in the world, as other countries decide to chart their own course independent of the U.S.
The interview shows that Scott Walker’s campaign is absorbing the latest polling data. The candidates doing best in the polls, beyond Trump, are Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Walker and Ted Cruz. Candidates are moving in the polls based on their relative distance from Republican leadership in Washington.
The poll is the latest evidence that the the early innings of the 2016 are not strictly just a story about Donald Trump. The larger dynamic is that voters are rejecting any candidate who is seen as tied to the Washington Republican establishment.
The Herald poll, conducting by Franklin Pierce University, is the first to find Sanders leading Clinton in any early state. The polls’ results, though, are consistent with other polling in the Granite State. Clinton’s recent leads in the state have been in the single-digits, with her support in the low 40s, in line with the Herald poll.
Donald Trump seems to be weathering a weekend of controversies surrounding his criticism of questioning from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly during the debate.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has stopped paying his campaign staff. Meanwhile, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul faces some significant legal challenges if he continues his campaign, which recently has seemingly been on a downward trajectory.
Other than the fact that they are generally hairless bipeds, there is almost no similarity between the candidacies of Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet, at opposite ends of the political spectrum, these two improbable candidates are attracting interest and support that defies conventional political logic.
A transcript of the debate shows the Fox moderators exhibited all the reasons voters are increasingly turned off by politics. Virtually every question asked of the candidates was framed as a negative, unearthing some key factoid from an opposition research document on their record and asking them to address the item.
The highest poll ranking of a candidate acceptable to the Republicans in D.C. is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in fifth place with just 8 percent. This is stunning considering the obvious attacks on Trump by Fox moderators, the limited number of questions offered to Cruz and Carson and the relegation of Fiorina to a non-prime time debate slot.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina clearly won the debate, likely earning herself a fresh look by Republican voters and likely a podium at the next Republican debate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved swiftly Thursday to shut down any possible conservative attempt to block funding for Planned Parenthood, the federally-funded abortion provider weathering a political scandal.
