Gallup's First Likely Voter Poll Out

Here is Gallup's first likely-voter result.

Gallup's likely voter screen is basically the same one they have used forever.

In this poll, the Romney margin on the if-the-election-were-held-today question is 5 percentage points higher among those who pass the likely voter test than among the registered voters who don't.

The Choice We Face

I have written to you that this election is the most important since Lincoln's in 1860.  If we allow this President to continue in office for another four years we may never recover the foundation of our prosperity: our economic liberty.

Obama Will Not Easily Recover from his Denver Debacle

Mitt Romney's performance in the first face-to-face meeting with Obama was surprisingly good.  His strength in defending his proposed economic policies from sound-bite attacks was the least of it.  His assertive attitude at the podium -- fairly stated as "I have as much right to stand here as you do, Mr. President." -- was not the biggest part of it, either.  The fact that he almost never looked down to refer to notes, but rather looked pleasantly at the President as he spoke was not the key, though the contrast with Obama's near constant smirk while staring at his notes was remarkable.

The Fruits of Anti-Colonialist Strategy

Dinesh D'Souza's point in his now-famous analysis of Obama's motivation on foreign and domestic policy alike is clear in the present Middle East policy crisis.

Our President knows exactly what he wants to do about the loss of respect for the U. S. in the Middle East: first, apologize for American values; then insult any American who dares speak up to point it out.

Polling in Individual Swing States Infrequent

Many of you look at the RealClearPolitics electoral map with some regularity, so you probably know it presently shows Romney trailing Obama in electoral votes by 191 to 221 with 126 electoral votes in swing states that are close enough not to call right now.  You are to be congratulated for not paying too much attention to the horse-race polls, of which the RCP summary and average is here.

The End of Democratic Socialism

Seldom does a political observer nail a problem in such clear language as this:

Whither the Campaign Now?

The WSJ's Kimberly Strassel hit the nail on the head in her column this morning.  With his selection of Paul Ryan as running mate, Mitt Romney has an opportunity to change the debate about the future of "entitlements."

The Demagogues... er... Democrats will screech that the devil Romney/Ryan ticket will steal your Medicare savings and give them to their rich fat-cat Wall Street friends.

The Romney/Ryan campaign will be judged by the electorate on how well it hammers home the twin messages that Obama seeks to remain on the track that leads over the cliff in ten years, and that maintaining Medicare and other middle class entitlements at the current planned levels can only be paid for by job-killing middle class taxes.

On the Obama plan, we all will have less.  The elderly will have their health care rationed as more physicians refuse to take the prescribed payments.  With higher taxes, the middle-aged and young will have less incentive to produce the necessary goods and services to trade to the health care sector to meet the needs of our aging society.

As usual, central planning assures its own failure, and fails to plan for it!