Aye Chihuahua,

Are you still planning on doing a post disputing The 48 Flip Flops of John McCain?

Like or Dislike: 0  0

D2. Regardless of how you might have voted in recent elections, in politics TODAY, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat, or Independent?

D2a. As of TODAY do you LEAN more toward the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?
Total   RVs

25      28 Republican
35      35 Democrat
33      33 Independent
3        1 No party/Not interested in politics (VOL.)
1        1 Other party (VOL.)
3        2 Don’t know
100    100

39   42 Total Republican/Lean Republican
48   47 Total Democrat/Lean Democrat

Gallup has Democrats 34% while Republicans 30%, so where in the world your getting 10-15% is beyond me.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

How is this poll biased?

It has 315 Republicans and 324 Democrats out of 1037 respondents.

That’s not a 10% bias. That’s not even 1%.

Now the poll is weighted, of course, but Newsweek doesn’t say how it was weighted, so how can we now that it was 35/25 in favor of Dems?

Another point to consider is that self-identified Dems outnumber Repubs right now by at least 10%(closer to 15%), so even if it was weighted 35/25 it would probably be an accurate adjustment.

My two cents.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

[...] Real Clear Politics,  NO QUARTER, American Power, Bucks Right, TalkLeft, Open Left, PoliGazette, Flopping Aces, THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL™, Wake up America, The Jed Report, Power Line, Hullabaloo, Eunomia, [...]

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Aye Chihuahua,

I’d be interested in what you found. I’ve concluded steve benen is usually pretty accurate. For there to be that may ‘complete falsehoods’ –I’m very interested.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

For someone who prides himself in his ability to be in command of the facts, I cannot believe that Doug would just buy what the Carpetbagger people are selling and then copy/paste it here without challenge or question.

Doug, someone else posted the same list here once before and I did some digging into it.

If my memory serves me the first 8 or 10 items on the list were complete falsehoods and I didn’t go much further.

Later on today I will dig out my research and post it.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Don’t be so hard on Doug… he just hasn’t seen the Obama Comic Book yet.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

“They both have been ‘flipping’ a lot.”

You keep trotting that one out Doug and it’s still as unconvincing as the first time.

The fact is that McCain has a RECORD to run on. It may not be perfectly consistent but it IS A RECORD.

Your guy on the other hand does not. Oh, he has his experience as a community organizer and some flashy speeches to dazzle us with, but that’s it.

Great job Doug! You earn two Pinochios:

P.S. And I love how you folks have had to eat the crow of Obama’s tightening poll numbers. So much for the “bounce” he expected after finally removing Hillary from the race! You notice that the “O” has been targeting the women’s vote lately? I wonder why?

Like or Dislike: 0  0

Forty-eight flip flops in that Carpetbagger Report article Doug linked to. FORTY -EIGHT. It’s not even complete. It’s from mid-June, so it doesn’t have things like the Packers-Steelers flop either.

Like or Dislike: 0  0

They both have been ‘flipping’ a lot. Obama tended to get the really big headlines for dropping public funds and voting for the FISA bill. During that time McCain was out of sight in South America and talking at town hall meetings. It appears the public has caught more of a sense of Obama’s move to the center of political gravity than anything else McCain has said. Now several polls find Obama only 3 points above McCain. It does appear that the race is tightening more now.

I think Mirengoff is right here:

First, abandoning leftist positions is no guarantee that Obama will escape the perception of being left-wing. Voters may well conclude that Obama is both a leftist and a phony. Indeed, I think that’s the best reading of the current evidence.

But Mirengoff is on thin ice here:

To be sure, McCain’s reputation is subject to being tarnished and perhaps already has been to a slight degree. But other things being equal, McCain’s reputation gives him an advantage over the tabula rasa that is Obama. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

This whole paragraph is subject to serious doubt. To begin with, McCain’s reputation as a “straight talker” will be put under tremendous strain in comparison to his flipping once the MSM starts their media cycle on both candidates flip-flops. Here are some recent ones in the past two weeks or so the Carpetbagger passes on about McCain:

* McCain supported the drilling moratorium; now he’s against it.

* McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.

* McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.

* McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)

Wait, I’m not done with the last two weeks yet….

* McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.

* He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”

* McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.

And these come after these other reversals from April and May:

* McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.

* McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain supported moving “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.

* He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.

* McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.

* He wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.

* McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15924.html

McCain’s reputation subject to being “tarnished”– that’s putting it quite mildly. The truth is he is very vulnerable in light of his “straight talker” reputation, and may end up being the brunt of jokes, and even “subject” to hypocrisy if things in the MSM get inspected with vigor. …And that’s is why things are not “equal” when one compares the McCain rep. with Obama’s ‘tabula rasa’.

Certainly, as we’ve come to know, this election is a election about ‘change’ and here Obama has the advantage, if he can keep it. One could argue his tablet is not clean, but has ‘change’ written all over it. This is still a good stigma Obama has in the public mind.

Finally, the comment,

You get only once chance to make a first impression.

–Complete Hogwash!

Tell that to the ‘come back kid’. It may be a truism in job interviews, and while national public impressions can harden quickly, Obama won’t be easily classifiable to many Americans. He’s not typical and doesn’t fit conventional, political templates–and is actually atypical.

But much of this is talk is still pre-convention campfire babble to most Americans. Next week we’ll check polls again, wondering how Gramm’s remarks, Jackson’s remarks and all the other elements in this yap-fest get distilled into numbers.
Popcorn is a good idea.

Like or Dislike: 0  0