Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty July 28, 2014 Today I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, and at noon I'll be speaking and signing books at the John Locke Foundation -- 200 W Morgan St., Suite 200, Raleigh. If you're in the area, come on down! The Massive New York Times & CBS Poll That Should Frighten Democrats The New York Times and CBS News tried a massive endeavor to collect a lot more polling data from everywhere in the country. The results — even if they're iffy, and it's only late July — should send a chill down the spine of every Democrat: On Sunday, the research firm YouGov, in partnership with The New York Times and CBS News, released the first wave of results from an online panel of more than 100,000 respondents nationwide, which asked them their preferences in coming elections. The results offer a trove of nonpartisan data and show a broad and competitive playing field heading into the final few months of the campaign. | You know you want to come! Get complete info at NRCruise.com. | | | | The Republicans appear to hold a slight advantage in the fight for the Senate and remain in a dominant position in the House. They need to pick up six seats to gain Senate control, and they hold a clear advantage in races in three states: South Dakota, Montana and West Virginia. The data from YouGov, an opinion-research firm that enjoyed success in 2012, finds the G.O.P. with a nominal lead in five additional states. The five states where the Republicans hold a slight lead in the YouGov panel include three Southern ones — Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina — where Democratic incumbents face tough re-election contests and where Mitt Romney won in 2012. Republicans also have a slight edge in Iowa and Michigan, two open seats in states that usually vote for Democrats in presidential elections. At the link, they discuss their methodology, the steps they took to ensure their online sample reflected the population of offline voters, etc. If you want to dismiss that, and conclude it's just an online poll, fine. That's your choice. A couple reasons to find these results plausible: It's not all roses and sunshine for Republicans. In Colorado, Cory Gardner, one of the stronger GOP challengers, trails Sen. Mark Udall, 47 percent to 51 percent. In Alaska, Begich leads both challengers listed. In the two GOP-held seats that the party needs to keep, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is up 4 and in Georgia, Purdue is up 6 on Michelle Nunn — neither margin is particularly overwhelming in states that are deep red in presidential elections. There aren't a lot of results that look wacky. In four of the Senate races where the GOP candidate leads, the margins are 2 percentage points or less — Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, and Terri Lynn Land in Michigan. Flip those, and Republicans only gain four seats, a sum most on the right would find disappointing. If there's a thumb on the scale, it's the wrong one. If you think of the New York Times and CBS News as liberal news organizations, these results are an argument against interest. Now throw in this poll result: Americans are so down on President Obama at the moment that, if they could do the 2012 election all over again, they'd overwhelmingly back the former Massachusetts governor's bid. That's just one finding in a brutal CNN poll, released Sunday, which shows Romney topping Obama in a re-election rematch by a whopping nine-point margin, 53 percent to 44 percent. That's an even larger spread than CNN found in November, when a survey had Romney winning a redo 49 percent to 45 percent. Two years ago, Obama won re-election with about 51 percent of the vote. An electorate that's disappointed and frustrated with Obama is not going to turn out to vote for Democrats. They'll either vote for Republicans or stay home. Great: The Afghans Aren't Keeping Track of the Guns We Give Them. As noted on Campaign Spot shortly after midnight, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released a report this morning indicating that the Afghan military is doing a poor job of keeping track of the weapons provided to them by the U.S. Department of Defense. The report by Special Inspector General John F. Sopko offers a chilling conclusion: "Given the Afghan government's limited ability to account for or properly dispose of these weapons, there is a real potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents, which will pose additional risks to U.S. personnel, the ANSF, and Afghan civilians." Checking the inventory at the supply depot against the records, the inspector general's staff found 24 M2 machine guns missing, four M48 machine guns missing, and 740 M16 rifles missing. The inventory also found 80 more M24 sniper rifles than the records indicated should be there, 191 more M48 rifles, and 82 M9 Beretta pistols. 
They found the Ark of the Covenant in these crates, but not the missing weapons. Guess What's 'Right Up There with the Best Satirical, Reality-Based Fiction ever Produced'? A sterling review of The Weed Agency from Aaron Hughley, writing in the Bowling Green Daily News: As far as I am concerned, "The Weed Agency" ranks right up there with the best satirical, reality-based fiction ever produced. And even though the book is a relatively easy read, I was nonetheless struck at the poignancy of Geraghty's literary style. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, it is difficult not to smile — and sometimes laugh out loud — at the truths the author lays bare at virtually every twist and turn in this quirky yarn. The story begins in February 1981, shortly after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States, and ends in December 2012, just after the re-election of Barack Obama, the 44th president. In the 31 years between these two seminal events in our nation's history, Geraghty weaves a tale that often too closely mirrors reality. The central theme of the novel revolves around the notion our federal government is spinning out of control as it works feverishly to gain even more control over virtually every aspect of our lives. But before you jump to the seemingly obvious conclusion that the primary protagonists in the book are Democrats, (spoiler alert) several episodes in the storyline will no doubt cause you to seriously reconsider that assumption. In the final analysis, the author is probably more critical of the Republicans, who he sees as complicit in creating the surreal and patently absurd circumstances that have come to dominate our legislative process during the past three decades . . . Although I am not a huge fan of fiction, I readily admit I thoroughly enjoyed "The Weed Agency." It reminded me of the kind of absurd yet intimately seductive humor that made "Saturday Night Live" such a juggernaut for the first five years it aired. Geraghty has the somewhat rare yet undeniable ability to speak truth to power on many levels by merely describing situations so patently inappropriate they immediately disarm any attempt to challenge their efficacy. So if you occasionally get tired of the endless bickering, finger-pointing, and posturing that has come to epitomize the nightly "news" shows, take a break. Head to Splash Lagoon at Beech Bend Park, put on plenty of sunscreen and curl up with "The Weed Agency." There is something to the old adage that humor is indeed the best medicine. Speaking of The Weed Agency, you'll think I'm making this up, but I'm not: A little-known branch of the Commerce Department faces elimination, thanks to advances in technology and a snarkily named bill from Sens. Tom Coburn and Claire McCaskill. The National Technical Information Service compiles federal reports, serving as a clearinghouse for the government's scientific, technical, and business documents. The NTIS then sells copies of the documents to other agencies and the public upon request. It's done so since 1950. But Coburn and McCaskill say it's hard to justify 150 employees and $66 million in taxpayer dollars when almost all of those documents are now available online for free. Enter the "Let Me Google That for You Act." I am pleased to report that when a conservative blogger — not me — shared a story on this Commerce Department branch to a GOP Senate staffer, that staffer responded, "Did Geraghty write that?" ADDENDA: A chilling thought from the boss: Maybe President Obama wants to be impeached, or is intending to provoke that response from Congressional Republicans. Jonah encapsulates a really important difference between the Left and the Right in just two paragraphs, illustrating why the occasional shared populist tone is unlikely to ever amount to much: The Right's "libertarian populism" wants to separate big business and big government. That means no more "too big to fail" and no more of government picking winners and losers. The Left's anti-big-business populism is very different. It doesn't want to cut the government's incestuous relationship with big business; it simply wants to bring business to heel. Big business should do what Washington tells it to do, and when it does, it will get treats. When it doesn't, it will get the newspaper to the nose. But big business will never be let off its leash, if the Left has its way.
Don't delay! Sign up today for the NR 2014 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise, and for our spectacular pre-cruise kick-off gala November 8th featuring Ambassador John Bolton and Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio! Learn more here.
To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
| Why not forward this to a friend? Encourage them to sign up for NR's great free newsletters here. Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives.
| 
Follow | 
Tweet | 
NR Podcasts | 
Send | National Review, Inc.
Manage your National Review subscriptions. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. This email was sent by:
National Review, Inc.
215 Lexington Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10016 | 
Comments
Post a Comment