October 2012

Sean Trende on the state-national poll divergence.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, David Gamage — who teaches at Cal-Berkeley, worked for two years in the Obama administration, and regards himself as “an Obamacare supporter” — discusses “the perverse incentives” that Obamacare would provide to employees, employers, and romantic couples, alike.

“We feel that we are in a very, very good place, that this race is exactly where we hoped it would be a week out,” said Russ Schriefer, a senior advisor to Mitt Romney, on a Wednesday conference call with reporters. Schriefer says the Romney campaign remains convinced that the fundamentals of the…

The White House continues to offer only this line on Benghazi:

A reader writes in: 

President Obama comes to work, conducts a few conference calls on Hurricane Sandy, holds a press conference, and later travels to New Jersey to survey the damage caused by the storm. In doing so, he performs a job expected of him as president.

According to the pool report, Vice President Joe Biden said on the campaign trail, "You'll vote for me in 2016."

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn't explained what President Obama did and didn't do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there's been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the…

The Republican party of Massachusetts has released a new Halloween-themed web ad criticizing Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, particularly her positions on Obamacare and a balanced budget. "This election season, Elizabeth Warren is masquerading," the text reads. Watch the video below:

At a campaign event, Vice President Joe Biden promised "to give ... the whole load today":

Four senators sent a letter to the White House today, urging President Obama and his advisers to answer the growing list of questions about the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which lawmakers have posed in writing to his administration over the last month.  Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey…

A new ad from Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith of Pennsylvania features a personal testimonial from Smith's daughter, Allison.

Two different polls released Wednesday of Virginia likely voters show two different stories of the electorate in the Old Dominion. A Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS poll of 1,074 likely voters shows Barack Obama with a 2-point lead over Mitt Romney in Virginia, 49 percent to 47 percent. Meanwhile, a…

David Axelrod refused to say whether Barack Obama is winning independents in Ohio:

Barack Obama senior adviser David Axelrod promised to shave off his mustache of 40 years is Mitt Romney wins Minnesota, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. He made the promise on MSNBC--and pledged to come back on Morning Joe for the shaving.

An important report from the American Enterprise Institute's Maseh Zarif on Iran:

There is a peculiar divergence between various public opinion polls at the moment. On the one hand, Mitt Romney has built a narrow but durable lead in the national polls, averaging around a 1 percent advantage over the last three weeks. This has cheered the hearts of conservatives everywhere.

The media consortium that organizes the national exit poll has decided not to do full exit polls in 19 states, 16 of which are expected to vote for Mitt Romney.

Why the Iranians wants to attack the U.S.

Editor's note: We republish this Washington Free Beacon article as a public service, as the publication's servers are down due to Hurricane Sandy.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, is politicizing the clean-up of Hurricane Sandy and, he says he offered help to the Democratic mayors of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Emanuel does not appear to have made the same offer to Republican governors…

La Crosse, Wisc.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Former Nebraska senator and governor Bob Kerrey, the Democrat who is running for his old Senate seat to replace retiring Democrat Ben Nelson, said he would vote for Nevada's Harry Reid for majority leader if he is elected. Appearing on KFAB radio in Omaha Tuesday morning, Kerrey was asked if he…

A new Suffolk University poll says Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has a 7-point lead over her Republican opponent, Senator Scott Brown. According to the poll of 600 likely voters, 53 percent support Warren while 46 percent support Brown. The previous Suffolk poll,…

Mitt Romney's campaign has a new television ad directed at voters in Pennsylvania. The ad juxtaposes Barack Obama's record and rhetoric on the coal industry with Romney's plan.

Former President Bill Clinton, using the backdrop of Hurricane Sandy, blasted Mitt Romney for criticizing Barack Obama's unkept promise of "turn[ing] back the seas":

On MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell criticized Republican presidential Mitt Romney for making collections to help victims of Hurricane Sandy:

A pro-Syrian government Facebook page, News Network of the Syrian Armed Forces, is reporting that the hurricane that touched down on the East Coast of the United States is not a natural catastrophe. Rather, it's the work of Syrian and Iranian scientists.

A new 30-second ad airing on cable news in Wisconsin and New Hampshire features Americans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 voicing their disenchantment with the president over the last four years. The spot, which is an advertisement for the Citizens United film The Hope and the Change, will air…

A Huffington Post writer caught political reporters talking on Politico's livestream, predicting that there's "a 40% chance that [Mitt Romney] says something stupid." Via Twitter:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Crossroads GPS has two new ads running in Virginia focused on Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine's liberal record. In one ad, the conservative super PAC knocks Kaine for supporting the budget sequestration plan, increasing government spending, and "higher taxes on middle class families"--tying…

Via Maggie Haberman, the Obama campaign announces Bill Clinton will campaign in Minnesota:

Barack Obama hasn't been the least bit shy about showing his face on late night TV. In the past month or so alone, the president's made appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with David Letterman and even did a skit called "Slow Jammin' the News"…

Democrats Maureen Walsh and Andy Rosenberg stood on the side of a street in a Northern Virginia subdivision where the hum of Interstate 66 lingered in the background. They studied a rudimentary map of the neighborhood and flipped through pages on a clipboard to brush up on their script.  It was…

Nature's gaffe.

A new ad for Republican Senate candidate Jeff Flake of Arizona, which features Republican senators John McCain and Jon Kyl, prompted a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to call the spot a "hostage video."

The latest state-by-state polling from Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by a tally of 279 to 243 in projected electoral votes.  Among the nine key swing states, Rasmussen Reports now shows Romney leading in Florida (by 2 percentage points), Ohio (by 2 points), Virginia…

Vice President Joe Biden warned that Republicans want to give the rich "one point trillion dollars in tax cuts":

Bill Clinton revealed at a campaign rally today that President Barack Obama's feeling were hurt over Mitt Romney's ad suggesting Jeep might move some of its production facilities overseas:

The Independent Women's Forum has two new ads focused on convincing women voters to drop their support for Barack Obama after four disappointing years. The ads are running now through Election Day on TV stations in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Watch both spots below:

The latest polling of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows that Mitt Romney has now moved ahead of President Obama in Ohio.  The poll shows Romney leading by 2 percentage points — 50 to 48 percent.  This is the fourth poll listed by RealClearPolitics that has shown Romney ahead in Ohio this…

House Armed Services Committee chair Buck McKeon says he doesn't think President Obama even ordered the military to help the Americans under siege in Benghazi, Libya on September 11:

One week before the election that will likely determine Obamacare’s fate, Americans support its repeal by an even wider margin than they did in the immediate aftermath of its highly unpopular passage. 

Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. A new poll from the Boston Globe shows Brown with 45 percent support from likely voters while Warren has 43 percent support. This is the first poll in three weeks…

There are two U.S. economies. Well, not really. But there is the economy reported in the New York Times as part of its pre-election coverage, and far different one reported in the authoritative financial press.

On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume highlighted Mitt Romney’s clear advantage in Gallup, Rasmussen, and other national polling, and said, “Now…if those polls are generally correct, it is difficult to imagine that Ohio would be all that different.  Ohio has pretty closely tracked the national…

The father of slain State Department official Sean Smith says, "I want answers. ... I want to know how he died. I want people brought to justice who did this to him."

More than a dozen Twitter accounts that were used as a medium to publically threaten Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s life after the second presidential debate remain active, nearly two weeks later. This news comes after the Secret Service told this publication that it was “aware” of these very…

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent.  The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

Texarkana, Ark.

‘California is a wonderful state mismanaged by lunatics,” declares Steven Greenhut, vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Anyone who examines California’s economy ought to agree.

It began in 1984, when the Reagan reelection apparatus made the mistake of thinking that Bruce Spring-steen’s song “Born in the USA” would make a suitable anthem for the campaign. “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts,” President Reagan told a Hammonton, New Jersey,…

Richmond, Va.

On September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler invaded Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made clear in the House of Commons that he still entertained hopes for negotiations with the Führer: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be…

Just how awful was Thomas Jefferson? In an academic and media culture that sometimes seems determined to trash all things that hint at the magnificence of America, pretty awful. Jefferson, the brilliant Founder and chief author of the Declaration of Independence, that essential document of the…

The Scrapbook never intended to become a weekly chronicle of the woes of the Chevy Volt—the boondoggle that only a big -government-big auto alliance could have created. But desperate times call for desperate measures. It seems that a Michigan-based company making batteries for the Volt received…

Cincinnati

‘I was in the early days of my acting career in 1962, when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring made its way onto best-seller lists and college campuses and into living rooms across America and sowed the seeds of today’s environmental movement. The story of that movement still represents for me who we are…

Academics, I’m told, used to play a game at parties in which each person confessed to some great work he or she should have but never got around to reading. Stakes in this game rose quickly. One might begin by allowing one has never read The Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione and, a few drinks on,…

Viewers of the 2012 debates have witnessed an extraordinary turnaround. John Stuart Mill famously spoke of “a party of order and stability, and a party of progress or reform.” Once upon a time, Barack Obama and Joe Biden could claim the mantle of change and progress. But the televised exchanges…

At about 3 p.m. on Thursday, October 18, Barack Obama strode into the Manhattan studios of Comedy Central for a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The two men discussed several issues, including Libya. Stewart noted the exchange between Obama and Mitt Romney on that subject at the debate…

The good thing about the Electoral College​—​our strangely still-surviving 18th-century experiment in federalism​—​is that it’s clear, coherent, and -commonsensical. If you live in Ohio, say, a state that’s closely contested in the presidential race this year, you know down in your bones that your…

President Obama is on board Air Force One on his way to Orlando, Florida for campaign events. "[Obama] is bound for Orlando to squeeze in some campaigning before Sandy really bears down," according to the pool report.

Much has been made of President Obama’s considerable use of the pronoun “I” on the night he announced to the nation the killing of Osama bin Laden. As Mark Bowden notes in his recently published account of the killing and the decision-making that led up to the operation, The Finish, the president…

In late August, a poll by Mason-Dixon showed Missouri Democratic senator Claire McCaskill leading her Republican challenger Todd Akin 50 percent to 41 percent. But McCaskill's 9-point lead has shrunk to a 2-point lead, according to Mason-Dixon's most recent poll:

On Sunday's political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here's Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS's Face the Nation:

What was President Obama doing Tuesday evening, September 11, while Americans were under assault in Benghazi? Which of his national security team did he meet with, whom did he speak with, what directives did he issue? So far, the White House won't say. 

On ABC News's This Week, former House speaker Newt Gingrich suggested the White House's response to the Benghazi terrorist attack will continue to hurt Barack Obama's reelection campaign.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are tied at 49 percent in Ohio, according to a new poll from the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Ohio News Organization. Here's more from the Enquirer:

Mitt Romney has received the endorsement of the Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest paper. The Register last supported a Republican candidate for president 40 years ago, in 1972, when it endorsed Richard Nixon. Read an excerpt from the Romney endorsement below:

Yesterday, the CIA insisted that "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate." The denial is in reference to the report that the CIA held back forces from helping the Americans who were under attack in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein and I have finally found something on which we can genuinely see eye-to-eye.  Klein writes, “The stakes this year are higher — and most voters know it.”  He explains, “The most important fact of the 2012 election is that the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] was…

In remarks today in Virginia, Vice President Joe Biden got the name of the Virginia Democratic Senate candidate wrong:

Friday, in response to questions regarding the events of September 11 in Benghazi, President Obama said this: "Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right, particularly because I have made a commitment to the families impacted as well as to the…

Until now, most forecasters have been framing the assumptions underlying their projections on what they assume a reelected Barack Obama would do about taxes, appointments to the Federal Reserve Board, spending, the deficit and a host of other policies. Suddenly, they are back to the drawing board.…

On September 11, 2012, Rasmussen Reports had President Obama's job approval at 52 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove. Today, October 27, the numbers have reversed—47 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove. The economic news over these past six weeks has been on the whole a bit better than…

Former Republican governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii might win one of the major upsets in the U.S. Senate 2012 elections. As the most popular GOP figure in state history and an extraordinary campaigner, I suggest this despite the fact that Hawaii is one of the most Democratic states in the nation,…

In an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, retiring Republican senator Jon Kyl raised some possible reasons why Democrat Richard Carmona, one of candidates vying to win the Arizona Senate seat Kyl is vacating, might be seeking public office. If a past interaction Kyl had with Carmona reveals a…

President Barack Obama refused to say whether Americans were denied help during the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya:

Economic stimulus for the White House Mess.

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ” 

Bob Casey, the incumbent Democratic senator from Pennsylvania suddenly caught in a tough reelection fight, fought to secure $90 million in taxpayer funds for the Philadelphia Housing Authority as part of the 2009 stimulus law. But those funds Casey secured have come under increased scrutiny. C.J.…

The latest Wisconsin polling from Rasmussen Reports, taken yesterday and released today, shows Mitt Romney and President Obama tied at 49 percent apiece among likely voters.  A week earlier, Obama led by 2 points in Rasmussen’s Wisconsin polling — 50 to 48 percent — so Romney is on the rise in the…

New data compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that, last year, the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the…

When asked Thursday whether U.S. forces should have been dispatched to assist American servicemen under attack from terrorists in Benghazi on September 11, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta responded, “There’s a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking going on here,” adding that “the basic principle…

Newly released figures from Gallup show that the demographics of the American electorate (age, race, sex, etc.) have changed very little since 2008 except in one way:  Party affiliation has swung dramatically toward the Republican party, and away from the Democratic party, during President Obama’s…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Rifai Ahmed Taha Musa, one of Egypt’s most notorious al Qaeda-linked terrorists, attended the U.S. embassy protest in Cairo on September 11. Musa was just one of several al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who was present at the rally, imploring followers to punish those who produced the anti-Islam film…

Fox News reports:

Matthew Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon:

As he showed in the final presidential debate, President Obama’s understanding of the U.S. Navy—or for that matter, any navy—is suboptimal. His explanation about Navy carriers “where planes land on them,” and “ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines,” left out the largest single group of naval…

Democratic senator Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania only leads his Republican opponent, Tom Smith, by one point, according to a new poll from Rasmussen. Of the 500 likely voters polled, 46 percent support Casey while 45 percent support Smith. The new Rasmussen poll shows a three-point drop in support…

The average GDP growth for the first three quarters of this year is 1.77 percent, according to data released by the the Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning. That is less than half of what the White House predicted GDP growth would be this year, and less than a third of what the Obama…

Cleveland

As goes Ohio State football, so goes the nation?

Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publically broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days…

The latest Washington Post/ABC tracking poll shows voters moving toward Romney since the third debate: 

Campaigning in Virginia today, Paul Ryan mocked the pamphlet Obama released this week on his second-term agenda. NBC's Alex Moe reports:

Newspapers endorse candidates with such solemnity that you'd think they believe their readers actually care and that elections might actually hang in the balance.  "Oh my God, did you see this, Helen?  The Times is endorsing Obama. I guess that changes everything."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Wisconsin's Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin ducked a question at a press conference today about whether she still supports single-payer health care: 

As reported in the Hill:

Speaker of the House John Boehner has written a letter to President Barack Obama to ask for a public explanation of what happened at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

“Hello, I’m Rachael Ray,” was how Christopher Kimball introduced himself to the capacity crowd at the National Museum of American History. The audience burst into laughter without actually knowing why they were laughing—they were just excited to see the star of America’s Test Kitchen, the number…

The Benghazi story continues to evolve. CNN reports that multiple al Qaeda franchises, and others with al Qaeda links, are suspected of taking part in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate.

President Barack Obama told Rolling Stone that Mitt Romney is a "bullshitter." Mike Allen reports:

Steve Hayes, with Mara Liasson and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Massachusetts Senate candidate and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren knocked back a pint at Boston's legendary Doyle's Cafe, and a local TV news crew asked her what beers she likes.

A post in the Wall Street Journal blog covering India suggests relations are souring between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, long the main instrument of Riyadh’s ideological influence over South Asian Muslims. The desert monarchy has extradited several terrorist suspects to India, under a treaty signed…

Barack Obama's flip-flops, documented.

In a one-on-one interview, President Barack Obama tells NBC's Brian Williams that he has no "real relationship" with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Attorney Gloria Allred has reportedly been planning a pre-Election Day surprise targeting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The key for the attention-seeking lawyer, it seems, is to uncover "Mitt Romney’s 1991 testimony in the divorce of Staples founder Tom Stemberg," the Boston…

Cleveland

Richard Carmona, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Arizona, said that obesity would "dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist attempt."

Since I've become a pretty outspoken critic of "fact checking", I often get asked if there's any media fact checking efforts I approve of. The short answer is no, not really.

State-by-state polling by Rasmussen Reports now shows Mitt Romney narrowly leading President Obama in the projected tally of electoral votes — 261 to 253.  Of the nine key swing states, Rasmussen’s polling (all conducted during the past week except for in Pennsylvania) shows Romney ahead in Florida…

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll projects a 5-point turnout advantage for Democrats over Republicans (34 to 29 percent) yet still shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 1 percentage point — 49 to 48 percent.  This is Romney’s first lead since the summer in Washington Post/ABC…

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the "Diversity in Cyber Security Conference" tomorrow in Washington, D.C., a press release from the organization hosting the event announced in a press release. The group Women in International…

The Jerusalem Post reports that 80 rockets have been fired from Gaza on Israel:

Rasmussen Reports, the first polling outfit to release a survey from Ohio taken after the third and final presidential debate, shows that Mitt Romney has now pulled even with President Obama among the state’s likely voters — at 48 percent support apiece.  This is the first time since the summer…

Reuters reports:

In Virginia, Republican George Allen and Democrat Tim Kaine are in a tight Senate battle. The Real Clear Politics average shows Kaine with a one-point lead. Allen has a new 30-second TV ad in which he makes the pitch on taxes and defense spending directly.

Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood says "when someone doesn't get the job done, you gotta hold them accountable" in a new ad from conservative super PAC American Crossroads. Eastwood famously endorsed Mitt Romney earlier this year at the Republican National Convention with an unconventional address.…

Eli Lake's latest scoop on Benghazi: Suspect being held in Tunisia.

It is not even close: In a world poll of the U.S. presidential race, President Barack Obama is the clear favorite over Governor Mitt Romney. By a margin of 50-9 percent, Obama is favored in the poll of 21,797 respondents in 21 countries around the world.

A group of over 30 business leaders, including Jack Welch, slammed President Barack Obama in a paid advertisement that appeared recently in USA Today.

During Monday night’s presidential debate, the candidates beat their breasts vying to be tougher on China. Barack Obama pointed to his accomplishments, while Mitt Romney attacked the president for being afraid to label China a currency manipulator. The amount of time devoted to America’s largest…

To many Lebanese, the massive car bomb attack in Beirut on Friday that killed the Sunni Muslim head of internal security Wissam al Hassan and seven others evoked the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Members of the Shiite militia Hezbollah were indicted for the 2005 crime,…

The Tampa Bay Times, the paper that puts out (and funds) the supposedly unbiased PolitiFact, has just enthusiastically endorsed President Obama for a second term.  The Times writes that “[w]ithout hesitation” it “recommends Barack Obama for re-election as president.” The paper cites Obama’s “steady…

At a campaign stop today, an Ohio man told Vice President Joe Biden to "enjoy his last couple of months" as vice president of the United States, according to the pool report. The man told Biden, "Just because you're a good guy doesn't mean you're a good vice president."

The latest polling of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney with 50 percent support for the first time this fall, and with a 4-point lead over President Obama (50 to 46 percent) — his biggest of the fall. Romney now leads by 9 percentage points among independents.  The poll was…

President Barack Obama escalated his "Romnesia" attack against Republican Mitt Romney by referencing stage three cancer at a campaign event in Florida today:

In his latest fundraising email to supporters, President Barack Obama says, "Michelle and I will be fine no matter what happens" in the election. Instead, Obama's trying to win the contest "for our country and middle-class families."

In a decade, federal spending to pay for the interest on America's debt will exceed total spending on the defense budget by $125 billion, or 20 percent, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Budget Management. The projections are based on President Barack…

Several left-wing news outlets are reporting on a financial relationship between one of Mitt Romney's sons and a voting machine company--with some even implying that the relationship could lead to tampering with votes on Election Day to benefit the Republican. The only problem? There doesn't seem…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Mitt Romney won a focus group of undecided voters in Ohio by a vote of 6-2, according to a local CBS affiliate:

Boca Raton, Fla.

After the debate last night, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that Israel is "one of our strongest allies" in the Middle East:

The Campaign for American Values PAC is out with a new ad that asks, "Obama Secured the Dictator Vote, Does He Have Yours?"

During last night's debate, President Obama once again repeated the false claim that Governor Romney "wants to spend another $2 trillion on military spending that our military's not asking for."  And he's likely to repeat it in the days ahead.

Mitt Romney’s aim was to present himself with the demeanor and grasp of foreign and national security issues of a president of the United States. He succeeded. President Obama sought to make Romney appear unqualified to be president and commander in chief. He failed. And that was the story of the…

Charles Krauthammer declared Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney the winner of tonight's debate:

Fox News host Chris Wallace said Mitt Romney seemed like the president at tonight's presidential debate:

At tonight's presidential debate, Mitt Romney said that America's enemies looked at President Barack Obama and saw weakness:

Mitt Romney is more than holding his own with Barack Obama tonight. Only two other challengers have done as well debating foreign policy with an incumbent president—Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980 and, to a lesser degree, Bill Clinton against George H.W. Bush in 1992. Reagan and Clinton…

The New York Times corrects President Barack Obama: 

At tonight's presidential debate on foreign policy, Mitt Romney says that "after the election" Russian leader Vladimir Putin "will get more backbone":

The final presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney begins:

In Barack Obama's latest ad, the president's campaign claims, "A decade of war that cost us dearly and now for president a clear choice. President Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have left 30,000 troops in Iraq and called bringing them home tragic. Obama’s brought 30,000 soldiers back…

A Democratic hedge fund manager sees a role in Obama's second term.

Paul Begala, an adviser to the pro-Obama super PAC, says that the Obama campaign has given up on North Carolina:

It’s bad enough that the administration has repeatedly cut defense spending in the midst of fighting a war but it now appears it is also shirking its duty to make sure those serving in that war are able to vote and have their vote counted.  At the end of last week, Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas)…

Several months ago, President Obama’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, initiated the Senior Swindle, an $8.35 billion ploy (far more than either presidential campaign will raise this year) to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until…

Rasmussen Reports’ latest polling of likely voters shows that, by a 10-point margin, Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare. The poll shows that 52 percent of likely voters support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, while only 42 percent oppose it.  Repeal is popular among…

What to watch tonight?  There is the debate, of course, upon which hangs the fate of the nation if not the world.  That's important.  And, then, there is the seventh game of the National League playoffs, with the winner going to the World Series.  And, on Monday Night Football we have the Chicago…

The latest polling of likely voters by Rasmussen Reports shows that, for the first time, Mitt Romney has hit 50 percent support in Colorado — a state that Barack Obama won by 9 percentage points (54 to 45 percent) in 2008.  Romney now leads Obama by 4 percentage points in the Centennial State — 50…

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts has banned a Christian group from campus because the group requires student leaders to adhere to "basic biblical truths of Christianity." The decision to ban the group, called the Tufts Christian Fellowship, was made by officials from the university's…

In the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson highlights how Obamacare would needlessly complicate our society, make it more maddeningly litigious, give the I.R.S. more prominence, and make it harder for workers to get employers to give them so much as 30 hours a week. 

Independent voters trust Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 10 points on the question of which candidate they would trust to "set and manage" their wallet. A new poll by the Tarrance Group for Public Notice, a conservative non-profit, shows 46 percent of independents prefer Romney, while 36 percent…

It's worth recalling President Barack Obama's foreign policy instincts before tonight's presidential debate on that topic.

At tonight’s presidential debate on foreign policy, we can expect questions related to the civil war in Syria, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and the broader war on terrorism, including the September 11 Benghazi attack. But I hope that debate moderator Bob Schieffer also asks President Obama and…

Mitt Romney is far ahead of Barack Obama in Indiana, a state Obama won in 2008. The last poll of the Hoosier State showed Romney up 13 points. But down the ballot in the U.S. Senate race, the Republican candidate Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer, isn't as far ahead. That may explain why Romney…

Elections these days are determined in part by the swing of unaffiliated voters, which both sides closely contest. They also hinge on how strongly each party’s base turns out to vote.

Slowly but surely, the toxin of bias is being leached out of American culture, if incrementally and by degrees. A Catholic was elected president in 1960, and since then Catholic nominees and candidates have become commonplace. A Jew was nominated in 2000 for vice president, and was a help to his…

Here’s what The Scrapbook learned last week: Democrats believe any suggestion that taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize the Public Broadcasting Service​—​even if it means continually borrowing from China​—​is off the table, a political third rail, strictly taboo. Republicans seem to believe the…

Scrapbook readers will be familiar with the work of Nicholas Eberstadt, the nation’s bravest and most prescient demographer, from his appearances in the Wall Street Journal, the National Interest, and (of course!) The Weekly Standard. For 30 years Eberstadt has written eloquently of, and…

Tbilisi

The mini-storm over Mitt Romney, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Big Bird pitted two visions of the show’s finances against one another. Mitt Romney claimed he’d cut funding so that Sesame Street would have to air commercials. Big Bird defenders imagined a world in which a lack of…

On September 11, 2012, the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was assaulted by dozens of terrorists. U.S. ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. The attack followed an al Qaeda-inspired protest in front of the U.S. embassy in Cairo that same day. And in the days…

On the Weekly Standard cruise to Bermuda in July, I received an unusual request. After dinner one evening, I was approached by Carrie Ann Stallings from Jackson, Mississippi. She was on the ship with her husband, Alan.

The fizzy and exuberant cinematic confection called Pitch Perfect fits its title. This broad comedy about collegiate a cappella groups—made up of 8 or 10 kids who sing entirely without accompaniment and use their voices as their instruments—manages to be amusingly cartoonish and sweetly heartfelt…

There’s a collision brewing between Indiana and Washington over health care: whether our system will be a top-down affair of central planning, or whether it will leave any room for bottom-up arrangements that rely on dispersed, individual decision-making and resource-allocation by self-correcting…

In the first presidential debate of 2012, we saw, up close and personal, what Harvey Mansfield called in last week’s issue the ennui of Barack Obama. Obama’s ennui is related to his dislike for the real challenges of governing. More fundamentally, his ennui reflects his declinism. What’s exciting…

About the only talking point Joe Biden didn’t repeat in his debate with Paul Ryan was the one lionizing President Obama for having saved the country from another Great Depression. Biden used it in his speech at the Democratic convention, as did others, and it remains a hardy perennial of Obama…

Romney, W.V. 

Yes, we’ve chronicled the saga of the Chevy Volt before, but The Scrapbook is nothing if not tenacious when it comes to documenting public-private partnerships in stupidity. The latest word on the Volt is that it has suffered a crushing PR blow. Lyle Dennis is the founder of HybridCars.com,…

A website called 90days90reasons.com went online this summer, after the writer Dave Eggers got worried about the diminishing enthusiasm for Barack Obama among people like him. Eggers is a hipster, I guess you’d call him. He lives in San Francisco. He’s best known as the author of A Heartbreaking…

Danville, Ky.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that blogging is not the greatest byproduct of the advent of the information age. (That would be Double Rainbow Guy. Easily.) But it’s not the worst, either (acronyms, Rick Astley, Facebook, take your pick). Over the years, I’ve spent some time reading blogs,…

‘Slowly the ship glides into the harbor,” wrote one turn-of-the-century immigrant of arriving in New York, “and when it passes under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the silence is broken, and a thousand hands are outstretched in a greeting to this new divinity to whose keeping they now entrust…

Discussions of what would prove to be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last years tend to fixate on his death. Much talk there is—for Christoph Wolff, too much talk—of Mozart’s decline or fall, of the quality of resignation that supposedly crept into his music, even of the “autumnal world” that his late…

Relations between China and Japan, never particularly placid, have reached bona fide crisis proportions over the past several months—and could get worse.

Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dick Durbin of Illinois debated foreign policy on Fox News Sunday. Graham, a Republican, argued that the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a "national security breakdown."

One can’t help being in awe of the New York Times. The ingenuity it displays in running down Mitt Romney, if applied to a more useful project, would be a national treasure.

Yesterday a car bomb in Beirut killed a senior Lebanese security chief along with seven others, while wounding hundreds in Ashrafiyeh, a busy neighborhood in Christian-majority East Beirut. The target, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, was close to former prime minister Saad Hariri and his late father,…

The Obama administration appears to be mounting yet another version of its campaign to push back on claims that it misled on the intelligence related to the attacks in Benghazi on 9/11/12. But the new offensive by the administration, which contradicts many of its earlier claims and simply…

Ahead of what is sure to be a contentious presidential debate focusing on foreign policy on Monday, anonymous “intelligence officials” have decided to update the Benghazi story. “No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack,” a Los Angeles Times headline reads. A Washington Post headline…

It wasn’t that long ago that the National Football League – the jewel of professional sports – appeared to be in serious trouble, if not real decline. The New Orleans Saints’ head coach, former defensive coordinator, and several players had been suspended for putting “bounties” on opposing…

The good thing about the presidential debates is that they give us a clear idea of where each candidate wants to take the country. Not in great detail, with every twist and turn on the road to each man’s promised land marked off, but in terms of the general direction. Obama wants more government,…

Mitt Romney up one in both Iowa and New Hampshire?

Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by four points in Pennsylvania, while Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith leads incumbent Democrat Bob Casey by two points, according to a state GOP poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research. Of the 1,376 likely Pennsylvania voters surveyed, 49 percent…

Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:

The BBC reports that earlier today "A huge car bomb has killed at least eight people and injured 78 in central Beirut, Lebanese officials say."

Earlier today, the Obama campaign pushed around a story that they claimed proved Mitt Romney "was against the auto bailout...but personally [benefited] from it."

Although not widely noticed, Mitt Romney seems to be on his way to capturing as much of the white evangelical vote as George W. Bush famously did in 2004. Bush got 79 percent. A Pew poll conducted before the first presidential debate had Romney getting 74 percent of white evangelicals versus 19…

This morning, as MSNBC's Morning Joe came to an end, co-host Mika Brzezinski had some praise for colleagues and the company she works for. "We've been talking a lot this week about women and equal pay and all these issues," she said. "I have to say, in all seriousness, I'm very lucky to be working…

Last week, I spent some time talking about demographics and the latest CDC birth numbers. There were a number of interesting aspects to this data, but the big takeaway was that the percentage of first-child births has hit an all-time low. As I said last week, this suggests that we're slowly…

The latest polling from Rasmussen Reports shows that President Obama’s net approval rating is lower today than it was two years ago. Today, Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters is minus-3 percentage points (48 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval), while his net approval rating…

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz explained to local reporters that President Barack Obama has not visited North Carolina more because we live in a "big country":

The $831,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” that President Obama spearheaded and signed into law requires his administration to release quarterly reports on its effects.  But “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” is now four reports behind schedule and has so far not…

The NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids filed this report on the stimulus-receiving battery company, LG Chem: 

The boss with Shelby Steele, as well as host Peter Robinson, on this week's edition of Uncommon Knowledge:

Naturally, there has been plenty of talk this week about who won the debate. As I mentioned in my own recap, I thought that though Obama won more “points,” Romney did a better job advancing his argument for election.

On September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler invaded Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made clear in the House of Commons that he still entertained hopes for negotiations with Hitler: “If the German Government should agree to withdraw their forces then His Majesty’s Government would be…

George Will on mission creep at the Fed.

"Let's be very clear about this. The president talked about what he knew and when he knew it," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said on Tuesday night when asked about the Benghazi attack.

In their first polls conducted partly after the second presidential debate, both Gallup and Rasmussen Reports show that Mitt Romney has extended his lead over President Obama among likely voters.

A report from the Congressional Research Service released today finds that welfare spending is now the largest federal budget item. Presently, the federal government spends $745.84 billion to support 83 of these welfare programs.

At a campaign event today, Vice President Joe Biden asked the audience, "How many of you know someone who served in Iraq or Iran?"

Vice President Joe Biden issued a warning to an audience today referencing Paul Ryan’s book Young Guns. "The bullets are aimed at you," said Biden.

The New York Times reports today that the "the Obama campaign and Democratic groups have run commercials relating to abortion about 30,000 times since July 2 — about 10 percent of their ads — including one that falsely claimed Mr. Romney’s opposition to abortion extended to cases of rape and…

In today's headlines:

At a campaign event for Barack Obama's reelection campaign, Bill Clinton said that Mitt Romney's argument "is true, we're not fixed":

The European Union passed a new round of Iran sanctions on Monday, targeting the Islamic Republic’s vulnerable financial, shipping, and bank sectors.

In election law, as in so many things, the word “reform,” when associated with a new idea, is usually a sure sign that mischief is afoot. A case in point: early voting reform. This innocuous sounding but insidious idea, which has led some 32 states to allow voting to commence as much as six weeks…

So CNN is bird-dogging Mitt Romney on his claim that it is “illegal in this country to have automatic weapons.”

Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down and, most recently, of The Finish: The Killing Of Osama Bin Laden (for which he interviewed President Barack Obama), claimed on CNN last night that Obama and his political team are actively playing down al Qaeda for political gain:

A new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that the largest federal budget item is spending on welfare programs. To support the 83 programs that CRS identified as welfare programs, the federal government spends $745.84 billion. 

In the wake of the Treasury Department’s newly released summary of federal spending for 2012, it’s now possible to detail just how profligate the Obama years have been.  Here’s the upshot:  Under Obama, for every $7 we’ve had, we’ve spent nearly $11 (or, to be more exact, $10.95).  That’s like a…

When The Decline and Fall of the American Republic is written centuries hence, the date October 17, 2012, will occupy a prominent place in the narrative. On this day, a playoff game between the Yankees and the Tigers in Detroit was called not because of rain, but because of ... the threat of rain.…

An interesting anecdote at the bottom of the most recent press pool report from a Michelle Obama hosted fundraiser today in New York City.

Paul Ryan asks why Obama said one thing and Susan Rice said another.

Today’s New York Times mentions but then quickly glosses over President Obama’s statement in early 2009, in which he said, “One nice thing about — the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I've got four years. And…— and — and —…and, you know, a year from now I…

Dave Weigel at Slate corrects me on an entry in my long Benghazi rhetoric timeline today.

At last night’s debate, President Obama said gas prices were under two dollars per gallon when he took office because the “economy was on the verge of collapse.” And that if Mitt Romney were elected he “could bring down gas prices, because with his policies we might be back in the same mess.”

No less a student of the game than George Will calls the debate:

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion at the National Press Club where the heads of all of the major media 'fact checking' organizations participated. (I wrote about the event here.)

Twitchy reports that "Post-presidential debate, Obama supporters renew vows to murder Mitt Romney." The threats are numerous--and explicit and graphic. Many call for Romney's murder or assassination.

At a fundraiser today in New York, First Lady Michelle Obama expressed confidence in her husband's chances for reelection. "On Nov. 7 we're going to party hard," she said. Election Day this year is November 6.

A former staffer for Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jonathan Allen, "reporting" for the Virginia-based trade publication Politico, said that "President Barack Obama scored a technical knockout on foreign policy Tuesday night, dodging and weaving his way through a…

National Journal reports that the Marquette Law School poll, which has been very accurate in recent elections, shows a dead heat in Wisconsin: 

Gallup's week-long tracking poll of likely voters finds that Mitt Romney is leading Barack Obama by 6 percentage points, 51-45.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

At last night's presidential debate, President Barack Obama referred to U.S. diplomats as "my folks":

Jeremy, the first questioner at last night's debate, said today that "Mitt Romney's first answer--I felt like he was staring into my soul":

Last night, President Obama presented himself as a crusader for women's issues. He later tweeted: 

First Lady Michelle Obama appeared to break the debate rules last night by clapping:

Talking to CBS this morning, Vice President Joe Biden said he's "not going to speculate" on whether he should've known about the need for more security in Libya:

Hempstead, N.Y.  

The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the European Union (EU), was lauded by the Norwegian selection committee for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Among various attainments, some decades in the past and others arguable, the…

“Well, we’ve gone through a tough four years.”  That line from Tuesday night’s presidential debate wasn’t particularly surprising.  It was, after all, exactly what one would expect Mitt Romney to say about President Obama’s tenure in office.  What was surprising was that it wasn’t Romney who…

Tuesday's town hall-style debate was the second in as many weeks not to feature a question about Obamacare. In Hempstead, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were asked by undecided voters about gas prices, Romney's tax reform plan, Obama's economic record, Libya, unemployment, an assault weapons ban, and…

Arlington, Va.

Too bad for President Obama that he saved his aggressive performance for his second debate with Mitt Romney. If he had done as well in the first debate, the presidential race might look different today.

MSNBC's panel of undecided voters swayed toward Mitt Romney after tonight's presidential debate. Watch here:

Arlington, Va.

Some quick thoughts on the debate:

CBS's poll of uncommitted voters points to draw at the second presidential debate:

On October 2, the day before the first debate, Mitt Romney trailed Barack Obama in the Real Clear Politics poll average by 3.3 percentage points. Today, just before the second debate, Romney led by 0.4 points—almost a 4-point swing in two weeks. What now?

After the debate, moderator Candy Crowley backtracked and said Mitt Romney was right "in the main" on Libya:

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile praised debate moderator Candy Crowley of CNN for interrupting and 'fact-checking' Mitt Romney in tonight's presidential debate:

First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted praised for husband, President Barack Obama, following tonight's town hall debate:

A strong moment from Mitt Romney in tonight's debate when he went over President Obama's unkept promises and concluded, "The president has tried, but his policies haven't worked." Romney also said, "This is a president who has not been able to do what he said he'd do."

On jobs, President Obama said at tonight's debate that "there are some jobs that are not going to come back:"

In response to a question concerning high gas prices, President Obama explained that gas prices were low when he took office in January 2009 "because the economy was on the verge of collapse":

The Florida chapter of the AFL-CIO appears to be encouraging folks to break the law. In a message on the homepage of their website, the union writes, "There is a mantra that we --at the Florida AFL-CIO-- like to live by, 'Vote Early, Vote Often'."

Wondering how the handful of Americans were selected to grill Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in front of 70 million or so TV viewers at tonight's debate? ABC's Russell Goldman reports that the Gallup polling organization was tasked by the Commission on Presidential Debates with selecting undecided…

In 2004, after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal news broke in the press, Hillary Clinton went on Wolf Blitzer's show and demanded accountability. 

It couldn’t look darker for the Yankees with the American League Championship Series on the line. Down two games to none, they head into Detroit tonight to face stopper Justin Verlander (17-8 record in the regular season and a 2.64 ERA). The Tigers’ ace breezed through the Oakland A’s in the first…

In February of 2012, President Obama released a proposal to cut the corporate tax rate by 20 percent—bringing the current corporate rate down from 35 percent to 28 percent (and to 25 percent for manufacturers). But according to Robert Pozen, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Brookings…

A few weeks ago, I inveighed against the increasingly Orwellian psychological tactics being employed by the Obama campaign. It didn't seem like things could get much worse than asking you to upload photos of your personal pledges to the president, and smart phone apps that show maps telling you the…

The latest Quinnipiac poll, which shows Mitt Romney just four points behind Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, also shows a three-point Senate race. The incumbent, Democrat Bob Casey, Jr., leads his Republican challenger, Tom Smith, 48 percent to 45 percent, with 7 percent undecided.

Celebrity gossip magazine Us Weekly will be interviewing President Barack Obama. The conversation, which the magazine promises will touch on a variety of topics, will be published on October 26.

Food stamps enrollment has hit a new record high. 46,681,833 are now enrolled in the social welfare program, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, the federal department that runs the program.

The latest polling from USA Today/Gallup shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 4 percentage points — 50 to 46 percent — among likely voters in swing states.  USA Today writes, “As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds…

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to cut federal spending, cut wasteful programs, reform Medicare and Social Security, and create "5 million new jobs" in a "new energy economy." At Buzzfeed, Andrew Kaczynski has four videos of Obama making those promises at the town hall debate in 2008. Here, for…

A new ad knocking Florida Republican congressman Allen West features actors claiming they will become sick or injured in the future, and that West's opposition to embryonic stem cell research, will, in effect, kill them. The 60-second ad was produced by House Majority PAC, a Democratic group…

Via Sean Higgins, the Washington Post has a doozy of a story this morning about the travails of Jesse Jackson Jr. who is battling accusations of corruption as well as dealing with issues related to mental illness. While the Post's article carries a colorless headline, the revelations contained…

President Barack Obama posed for a photo-op this morning in Virginia, where he is getting ready for tonight's presidential debate. He ventured out for a photo-op, and had this very brief exchange with reporters:

Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania by only 4 points, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Of the 1,519 likely voters in Pennsylvania polled, 50 percent support Obama and 46 percent support Romney. That's an 8-point swing in Romney's favor from the previous Quinnipiac poll of…

Neera Tanden, a former aide to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, had this to say about the relationship of the two presidents:

According to Bloomberg, the heavily subsidized battery maker, A 123, has filed for bankruptcy protection, making it the latest in a long line of green failures that have produced very little renewable energy and very heavy losses for the American taxpayer.  Been good for the bankruptcy lawyers,…

In a poll conducted by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling for the Daily Kos and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama, 50 percent to 46 percent.

A New Hampshire poll of likely voters finds the swing state tied, with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama each receiving 47 percent support. The poll was conducted by Suffolk University in Boston.

Former presidential candidate Ross Perot has endorsed Mitt Romney, according to the Republican nominee's campaign.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton said, "The buck stops in the Oval Office."

Earlier this evening, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "the buck stops with her" in terms of the terrorist that killed the American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the reason the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, gave misinformation to the American people is because of the "fog of war." According to the notes of Wendell Goler of Fox News, here's what Clinton had to say:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "the buck stops with her," according to CNN, and takes "responsibility" for the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya:

Jeb, the Bush in the wilderness.

A new Pew poll of registered voters shows that independent voters who tuned into the vice presidential debate last Thursday preferred Paul Ryan to Joe Biden by an 11-point margin: 

Over the weekend, an Obama campaign supporter knocked on Ricochet writer Vance Richards's door and dropped off this flyer:

The Associated Press reports on a mass prison break in Tripoli, Libya: 

Obamacare makes the ’62 Mets look like the ’27 Yankees.  Since President Obama signed Obamacare into law on March 23, 2010, Rasmussen Reports has conducted 114 polls asking likely voters whether they’d prefer to keep Obamacare or repeal it.  All 114 times, voters have said they’d prefer to repeal…

David Axelrod has a message for those worried about debate moderators:

According to the campaign, Mitt Romney raised $170 million in September alone. That dollar figure includes money raised by the Republican National Committee and various state parties.

Here's a photo of First Lady Michelle Obama holding up her absentee ballot this morning:

Chicago's weekend body count has become a depressingly routine story:

A new chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee details the fact that, since January 2009, for every person added to the labor force, 10 have been added to those not in the labor force. Here's a chart showing the dwindling labor force:

After the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Al Gore blamed the president's poor performance on the altitude of Denver, the city that hosted that match.

A new ad airing across Wisconsin television stars three local women who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but who will be switching to Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan (a Wisconsin native) this year. "Paul Ryan embodies the work ethic of Wisconsin," says Connie of Green Bay. Watch the ad below:

The newly released Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely voters says that if the election were held today, Democrats would enjoy a 9-point advantage over Republicans in voter turnout (35 to 26 percent), and President Obama would beat Mitt Romney by 3 percentage points (49 to 46 percent).  The…

The House Oversight Committee, run by Chairman Darrell Issa, has released this set of photos from the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. These are from the attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans. The attack was…

The official Twitter account of the United States Army sent out a message to its more than 186,000 followers recognizing the 47th anniversary of the "first public burning of a draft card." Here's the tweet:

Via BuzzFeed, the State Department account of what actually happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012: 

The Washington Post reports: 

Anyone who doubts that the social psychologists of our great nation are underemployed will want to wait for the new issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which will soon publish a paper called “Appearance-based Politics.” Out at UCLA, a few graduate students with nothing better to…

I recall an interview with William Faulkner in which he said that he didn’t read books but read in books, the distinction being that he seldom consumed a volume from start to finish but preferred to stick his toes in here and there, read favorite chapters over and over, proceeding from finish to…

Halfway through what feels like the usual interview with a Hollywood entertainer in town to promote a new work, I’m stopped short. 

The Scrapbook resolutely refuses to take the Kennedy Center Honors seriously, and this year’s carefully balanced, politically vetted selection of lifetime achievers in the performing arts​—​Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, Natalia Makarova, David Letterman​—​prompts us to change our mind…

The Time cover story last week was headlined “The Mormon Identity.” The cover, featuring Mitt Romney in a stained-glass window, said in smaller type, “What Mitt Romney’s faith tells us about his vision and values.” Newsweek had President Obama on the cover, identifying him as “The Democrats’…

When a movie receives rave reviews from critics who say they need to see it again to understand it fully, you should treat such a recommendation as though you were Will Robinson from the old 1960s TV show Lost in Space hearing his friendly robot companion as it flails its accordion-like arms and…

David K. Randall begins this glide through dreamland with a quote from Aldous Huxley: “That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.” 

"The first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, so long anticipated, quickly sunk into an unenlightening recitation of tired talking points and mendacity. With few sparks and little clarity on the immense gulf that truly separates the two men and their policies, Wednesday’s encounter…

When Mitt Romney stepped on stage at the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3, he had been losing to President Obama on the issue of taxes for two solid months. The Obama campaign bombarded Romney with TV ads claiming he would raise taxes on middle-class families by $2,000 in order to…

"What really matters,” said Rob (John Cusack) in High Fidelity, “is what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films—these things matter.” 

This is perhaps the most lucid, even-handed, and convincing examination to date of the threat that President Obama—and his potential reelection—poses to our republic. No one who reads I Am the Change will come away thinking this election is about the economy. In truth, this election pits America’s…

Almost 25 minutes into last Wednesday night’s presidential debate, it was already clear Mitt Romney was doing better than expected, and that Barack Obama was a bit flat. But it wasn’t yet obvious at the end of the debate’s first segment that the debate would produce a decisive winner.

In noting the death last week in London of Eric Hobsbawm, The Scrapbook observed its usual doctrine of de mortuis nil nisi bonum. But then our attention was drawn to his New York Times obituary, which blandly explained that Hobsbawm’s “three-volume economic history of the rise of industrial…

Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told CBS's Bob Schieffer Sunday that the committee's hearings into the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Libya were "turning into a witch hunt."

Mark Steyn, writing for National Review Online:

At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut today, Vice President Joe Biden talked up the Obama administration's foreign policy of "leading from behind."

Joe Biden showed us just why Washington isn’t working, why politics has become so nasty, why stalemate is the order of the day: The Obama administration have contempt of anyone who respectfully offers ideas that challenge theirs -- or would challenge them if given even the slightest consideration.

Bridgeport's Democratic mayor Bill Finch, a supporter of Connecticut congressman Chris Murphy's bid for the U.S. Senate against Republican Linda McMahon, jokes about corruption:

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat challenging Republican Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate, dodged questions about claims that a local union was fining its members for not publicly supporting her campaign. This week, Warren repeatedly told Boston's local FOX TV affiliate, "I don't know…

It's been acknowledged that Vice President Biden's criticism of Paul Ryan in Thursday night's debate for the Wisconsin congressman's support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rings hollow, since Biden, when he was a senator from Delaware, also voted for the wars. Here's what Biden said Thursday:

We are entering an age of energy abundance. Or not. In keeping with the great tradition of economics, dubbed by Thomas Carlyle the dismal science, let me raise a cautionary note. What God has showered upon us, politicians can make unavailable. Not only because they have to balance our need for…

David Shuster proclaims: Biden 2016!

Democratic congresswoman Donna Edwards said that voters "may not care about Benghazi, but they care about Bin Laden."

Over the past two days, Real Clear Politics (RCP) has moved four states from “Leans Obama” to “Toss Up” — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Michigan. RCP now rates all nine key swing states (Fla., Ohio, Va., Colo., Iowa, N.H., Pa., Wis., and Nev.) as toss-ups.

President Barack Obama is set to make his sixth appearance next week on Comedy Central's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. From the press release:

Twelve years ago today, on October 12, 2000, al Qaeda terrorists on a suicide mission drove a small boat filled with explosives into the hull of the USS Cole while the Navy destroyer was docked at the port of Aden in Yemen. The attack killed 17 American sailors and wounded 39 others. The attack…

Supporters of Democrat Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign in Massachusetts have been accused of mocking a staffer of Republican Scott Brown outside a recent debate in Springfield.

After almost a week of exchanging fire with Syrian troops across its southern border, Turkey finds itself embroiled on another, albeit related, international front. Wednesday the Turkish air force scrambled two jets to intercept a Syrian passenger jet flying from Moscow to Damascus. The plane, said…

Mitt Romney has broken the 50 percent threshold of support in Florida and leads Barack Obama by four points in the Sunshine State, according to a new poll from Rasmussen. Of the 750 likely Florida voters polled, 51 percent support Romney and 47 percent support Obama. That's Romney's largest lead in…

As Mike Warren highlights, moderator Martha Raddatz apparently didn’t think Obamacare was important enough to make the cut as one of the nine topics she brought up during the vice presidential debate.  Two other closely related topics that didn’t make her cut were federal spending and the national…

On the campaign trail today, Mitt Romney pointed out that in last night's debate, Vice President Joe Biden "directly contradict[ed] the testimony—sworn testimony—of State Department officials."

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Bill Kristol, hosted by Michael Graham:

Reporter Ed Henry asked White House press secretary Jay Carney, "Would you say on Libya that basically the buck stops with the State Department on security then, it doesn't stop at the White House?"

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement Friday saying that Vice President Joe Biden falsely described Obamcare's contraception and abortifacient mandate:

Watching last night's debate, I'm more struck than ever that Obama may be able to fight the economic policy issues to a draw. Romney-Ryan still haven't answered the blame-Bush narrative, and that combined with scaring people about Romney-Ryan on taxes and entitlements have probably pulled…

It's demographics time again! Last week, the CDC released its preliminary birth data for 2011. Much of the analysis focused on the raw number of births, which declined for the fourth straight year. America's general fertility rate is now the lowest it's ever been. Which is not great news.

Less than a year ago, voters went to the polls in Ohio and resoundingly rejected Obamacare’s individual mandate. Actually, that’s an understatement.  Voters in all 88 counties of Ohio rejected it, and in all but seven of those counties they did so by a margin of at least 20 percentage points.  Even…

White House records reveal that the moderator of last night's vice presidential debate, Martha Raddatz, visited Vice President Joe Biden at his official residence on March 26, 2012. Raddatz is an employee of ABC News.

Vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News asked the candidates several questions on many important issues facing the country, including the terrorist attack in Libya, Iran, unemployment, Medicare, taxes, defense spending, Afghanistan, Syria, abortion, and what each candidate…

Eli Lake reports: 

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has given this year's award to the European Union. The committee explains in a press release:

After last night's debate, Vice President "may have some clean up of his own to do today on Libya," CBS reports:

During the vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan reiterated his opposition to abortion. Joe Biden explained that he’s personally opposed to abortion but doesn’t believe in protecting the unborn. President Obama has previously expressed his own position, which might best be described as not being…

In Thursday night's debate, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that President Barack Obama has "spoken to Bibi Netanyahu as much as he’s spoken to anybody."

Danville, Ky.

Danville, Kentucky

You don’t win a nationally televised debate by being rude and obnoxious.  You don’t win by interrupting your opponent time after time after time or by being a blowhard.  You don’t win with facial expressions, especially smirks or fake laughs, or by pretending to be utterly exasperated with what…

President Barack Obama says he "could not be prouder" of Vice President Joe Biden's debate performance. Via the pool report:

A new Republican web ad details Joe Biden laughing and smirking at Paul Ryan throughout Thursday night's vice presidential debate:

Joe Biden was aggressive, condescending, and shamelessly demagogic. Paul Ryan was earnest, youthful, and perhaps a bit over-scripted. The upshot was a vice presidential debate that was occasionally entertaining for partisans on both sides, but was mostly unenlightening. Ultimately, I suspect, it…

It remains to be seen how most Americans viewed Joe Biden's performance at Thursday night's debate, when the vice president repeatedly interrupted Congressman Paul Ryan and was shown on camera to be frequently smirking and laughing at Ryan's answers. But Biden's performance has pleased at least one…

"The smile, the laugh, I think a lot of people maybe view that and think that he was a little too hot, too aggressive, maybe condescending," said NBC's David Gregory of Joe Biden's debate performance.

In the Thursday night vice presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden criticized Congressman Paul Ryan for voting to "put two wars"--those in Afghanistan and Iraq--"on a credit card." But as the Washington Free Beacon points out, Biden's suggestion that he didn't vote for those wars is simply…

In regards to security at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Vice President Joe Biden says "we did not know they wanted more security":

"Mr. Vice President, I know you're under a lot of duress," said Paul Ryan.

Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan square off in the vice presidential debate. Watch here:

In email to supporters, Vice President Joe Biden promises tonight to "tell the truth and stand up for what we believe in." The subject line of Biden's email reads, "My promise to you and Barack tonight."

Vice President Joe Biden has been munching on M&Ms and animal crackers to prepare for tonight's debate with Paul Ryan, according to the Obama campaign. He's also been consuming coffee, tea, and Gatorade. 

The debate tonight between Representative Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden could be a game changer ... or not.  The usual media suspects are all over the debate with analysis and predictions that may, or may not, prove helpful.  Hard to recall anyone who divined how the debate between…

The Emergency Committee for Israel targets Wisconsin Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin in its latest ad: 

In the spirit of the election, many D.C. eateries have concocted politically themed menus—from BLT Steak's Obama and Romney burgers to the Occidental Grill's first lady cookies. THE WEEKLY STANDARD applauds these capitalist innovations, but a serious political magazine is simply not interested in…

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter says that the terrorist attack in Libya is an issue "because of Romney and Ryan":

President Obama had another hard-hitting interview today--with Cleveland's 92.3 The Fan. The topic of conversation? Sports.

Here's another video of Pat Smith, the mother of slain State Department official Sean Smith, demanding answers from the Obama administration on what happened at the American consulate in Benghazi where her son was murdered on September 11, 2012:

A GOP source sends along this video, shot by a Republican tracker, of a union member supporting Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren outside of a debate Wednesday night in Springfield, Massachusetts. The cameraman asks the union member if he was at an earlier debate between Warren and her…

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had some harsh words for her fellow Democrats in her 2004 book, The Two-Income Trap, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both U.S. senators at the time. In his New Yorker profile of Warren, Jeffrey Toobin…

Joe Biden, on his way to tonight's vice presidential debate in Kentucky, asks the press, "You ever see me rope-a-dope?"

The U.S. Senate race in Arizona to replace retiring Republican Jon Kyl was supposed to be an easy hold for the GOP. But the last several polls have shown the race is tightening between the Republican candidate, Congressman Jeff Flake, and his Democratic opponent, Richard Carmona, a former U.S.…

John Podhoretz, writing for the New York Post:

Seven days ago, President Obama led Mitt Romney by 3.1 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polling.  One week (and one debate) later, Romney now leads Obama by 1.1 points — a swing of 4.2 points in Romney’s favor.  Now the Wall Street Journal reports that, for the first…

Never underestimate the ingenuity of the New York Times when it comes to creating – not finding, creating – misfeasance by Mitt Romney. In a front-page, above-the-fold story on Wednesday, under the headline, “Romney’s Trade Message and Bain’s China Ties,” Sharon LaFraniere and Mike McIntire ran…

Steve Hayes, with Mara Liasson and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Since about the beginning of President Obama’s tenure, the Gallup poll has generally been one of the least positive polls for the Democratic party. This has prompted outrage and pressure from the left--even from presidential advisor David Axelrod.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Piers Morgan on CNN tonight that just because the Obama administration was putting out wrong information on Libya, "doesn't mean it was false."

The mother of State Department official Sean Smith, who was killed September 11, 2012 in the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, appeared on CNN this evening. 

"For me the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

During a conference call Tuesday evening, two State Department officials briefed reporters on the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012. Obama administration officials had insisted that the violence was a result of a “spontaneous” protest against an…

A new chart provided by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee details the alarming fact that enrollment in federal social welfare programs like Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Disability have far outpaced job growth over the last four years. Here's the chart:

In advance of tomorrow's vice presidential debate, it's worth recalling who made the most gaffes last go around, when Joe Biden faced off against Sarah Palin.

Ahead of the vice presidential debate, Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee takes a close look at Joe Biden's record on abortion: 

Republican Tom Smith, once thought a long-shot for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, continues to close in on his Democratic opponent, incumbent senator Bob Casey, Jr. A new poll of 725 likely voters from the Republican-affiliated firm Susquehanna Polling and Research shows a 2-point race, with…

The Hill's Amie Parnes and Niall Stanage report:

Fairfax, Va.

ABC's Emily Friedman reports:

Barack Obama has been known to do an easy interview every once and a while, but his latest radio interview might top them all.

A new report on Iran from the Bipartisan Policy Center:

President Barack Obama defended his debate performance last week by saying that he "was just too polite."

I've been wary of comparisons of this year's presidential race with that of 1980. I'd love it if the comparison holds, but have been worried 1) that the conditions aren't the same as in 1980 in all kinds of ways, and 2) that over-confidence the race will inevitably break to Romney at the end, as…

The Wall Street Journal editors write:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought up the now infamous anti-Muslim video at the transfer of remains ceremony held at Andrews Air Force Base, upon the arrival of the remains of 4 Americans killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The ceremony,…

The Associated Press reports:

So where are we, four weeks out? Romney suddenly finds himself with a lead in the polls, making liberals panicked and conservatives jubilant -- an interesting change of pace. 

The Des Moines Register reports:

Romney's Ohio campaign.

In the seven years since King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz assumed the throne of Saudi Arabia, the absolute monarch, whose reformist aspirations are widely believed to be sincere, has attempted to curb some of the outrageous human rights violations for which the desert kingdom is known. Many of these…

The Emergency Committee for Israel has released this ad, targeting Democratic Rep. Lois Capps from California:

The White House has not held a press briefing in the last 15 days, according to records on the White House's website. The last one was held on September 24, 2012, by White House press secretary Jay Carney.

The reviews are in from the Obama campaign's ad attempting to make Big Bird a campaign issue this morning, and ouch. Naturally, the Romney campaign has blasted out a smattering of headlines and damning tweets about it from reporters. Even the liberal blog Firedoglake ran with "Obama Ad About Big…

Exactly four weeks before Election Day, Mitt Romney has taken the lead in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average of recent polling.  Of the six most recent polls, three show Romney ahead, two show President Obama ahead, and one shows the race tied.  Overall, RCP shows Romney leading by a tally of 48…

Vice President Joe Biden has not sat down for a nationally televised interview in 5 months. The last big TV interview Biden did was on NBC's Meet the Press, when he jumped the gun and came out in favor of gay marriage before President Obama was able to publicly shift his position. Days later, Obama…

Among the nine key swing states, Pennsylvania is the closest thing to a must-win for President Obama.  Until the first presidential debate, he was comfortably ahead in the Keystone State.  But two polls taken either entirely or partly after the debate show Obama’s lead having dwindled to just 3…

A local Ohio newscast says that the Buckeye state is now "a statistical dead heat":

In a new television ad, the Obama campaign mocks Mitt Romney’s promise to end the federal subsidy to PBS:

During last Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama claimed that the private sector just can’t match the leanness and efficiency of the federal government. He was speaking specifically about privately covered health care versus government-run health care. Obama said, “Jim, if I — if I can…

NBC's Chuck Todd reports:

The Obama campaign is out this morning with a sarcastic ad all about Big Bird, mocking Romney for wanting to eliminate the federal subsidy for PBS. The press is already pointing out the Obama campaign is playing "small ball" in the wake of Obama's disastrous debate performance, even as Romney has…

Last night, President Obama defiantly declared that "al Qaeda is on its heels." The president made this claim at a fundraiser at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California.

The Pew poll on the presidential race released Monday has many interesting findings that will be scrutinized, challenged and assessed with less than one month left in the campaign. The survey, taken after last Wednesday’s debate (good for Romney) and mostly after Friday’s jobs report (good for…

Richmond, Va.

Build your own electoral map.

The weakest response to Mitt Romney's foreign policy address, which he delivered earlier today at the Virginia Military Institute, comes from Virginia-based trade publication Politico.

As Tim Kaine opens up a small lead in the race for the open Senate seat in Virginia, both the former Democratic governor and his Republican opponent, former governor and senator George Allen, face off in their second debate Monday night in Richmond. Both candidates' latest TV advertisements may…

The latest poll of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation.  In the two-and-a-half years since Obama signed Obamacare into law, Rasmussen has conducted 113…

James Capretta, writing at National Review Online, explains how Mitt Romney's claim that his plan would help individuals with pre-existing conditions to purchase health insurance policies is correct:

Yesterday, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez "won" reelection. Today, the White House is congratulating Venezuela on that outcome. 

Gallup writes that Mitt Romney’s debate performance was the most dominant in the history of its polling on presidential debates, and that performance has now vaulted him into a share of the lead in the presidential race.  Gallup’s post-debate polling shows that Romney and President Obama are now…

The prepared remarks from Mitt Romney's foreign policy address at the Virginia Military Institute:

Later this morning, in remarks at the Virginia Military Institute, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will say: 

In May 2009, President Obama released his updated budget estimates, which projected that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2012 would be $557 billion (see table S-1).  The Congressional Budget Office now says that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ended on September 30) was about $1.1…

Eli Lake reports:

We learn from the Times that:

Last night, the Obama campaign blasted out another email claiming that Mitt Romney's tax plan would either require raising taxes on the middle class or blowing a hole in the deficit. "Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class…

According to a piece published in today's New York Times, President Barack Obama "views" Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "with disdain."

Most of the post-debate punditry has focused on Barack Obama’s failure to win last week's head-to-head match-up. Both the left and right seem to agree that Obama lost, with disagreement as to why that happened, naturally.

Last night, President Barack Obama's reelection campaign announced the winners of their latest contest, "Meet Two Presidents" (Obama and former President Bill Clinton). The winners? Two women, both from swing states. Their reason for supporting Obama's reelection effort? Obamacare.

When Alice fell through her Oxford rabbit hole in 1865, she landed in a world in which the hidden elements of her imagination took on an oppressive materiality. The unknown land revealed to Alice might have changed her readers’ perception of childhood, if only they could have decoded what Alice…

At a rally in Ohio last week, Mitt Romney said, “Obama-care is really Exhibit No. 1 of the president’s political philosophy, and that is that government knows better than people how to run your lives.” The GOP nominee added, “I don’t believe in a bigger and bigger government. .  .  . I believe in…

In these pages last week, The Scrapbook noted that a second academic survey had been done suggesting that PolitiFact—the largest of the major media “fact checking” organizations—is biased against Republicans. The survey, by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University,…

In New York City, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on West 49th Street, Broadway audiences are spending $1.6 million per week to attend The Book of Mormon, a no-star extravaganza advertised solely by the words “the new musical from the creators of South Park.” It is the most ecstatically praised and…

Jesus had a wife! It’s the Gospel of Judas all over again. An exotic Gnostic document claimed to date from the fourth century,* written in Coptic, containing something startling about Jesus, and shrouded in secrecy until its sudden and dramatic unveiling. Next comes the derecho of media publicity,…

After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the…

Last March the social--networking thickets caught fire, sparked by an online video called Kony 2012. Its creator, founder of the San Diego-based group Invisible Children Inc., was hoping to broadcast the misdeeds of the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. The short film was viewed tens of millions of…

Two weeks ago, THE WEEKLY STANDARD Parody took aim at President Obama and those who decried the foreign policy criticisms of Mitt Romney following the attacks in Libya and Egypt. “Obama slams Romney for ‘politicizing terror’ ” read our fake New York Times headline. The article went on to explain…

Sally Bedell Smith has a thing for kings. Or, not kings quite so much as powerful people who form courts around themselves as a function of power or wealth. Her very best books all describe these arrangements: In All His Glory, about the CBS mogul William Paley; Grace and Power, about the Kennedy…

Roger Simon, the chief political columnist for Politico, began his column last week with an alarming report:

Aleppo, Syria

Boston

The Scrapbook is decidedly not in the habit of waxing nostalgic about the golden age of civility in politics. Our position is clear: There never was one. It is true that Congressman X (R) may have shared a highball with Senator Y (D) at the Monocle in 1965, but the Democratic majority in Congress…

Getting into a taxi at the end of a recent night on the town, I gave the driver my address. “Are you sure?” he asked nervously. I had to sigh in familiar exasperation—I’d been through this rigmarole many times before. And I only moved to Trinidad in May!

Bellevue, Wash.

Sometimes, a perfectly realized masterwork so far exceeds its mortal creator that it seems something larger and more powerful is speaking through him. 

The following excerpts of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy address, which will be delivered later today at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, have been released for preview by the Romney campaign:

Thank goodness the everyday Americans of Main Street, U.S.A. have someone to run on their behalf against the out-of-touch rich guy.  As the Hollywood Reporter writes, the candidate of the exceptionally rich and famous is arriving in town tonight for a $25,000-a-plate fundraising dinner (nearly half…

With just about a month until Election Day, Vice President Joe Biden is in the middle of taking nearly a week off the campaign trail. He will return to doing campaign events on Thursday, when he will debate Rep. Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate.

Robert Gibbs of the Obama reelection campaign doubled down on Joe Biden's comment this past week that the "the middle class that’s been buried the last four years." 

In its first national polling taken mostly after Wednesday night’s presidential debate, Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney up 2 points on President Obama (49 to 47 percent).  Before the debate, Obama was up 2 points on Romney (49 to 47 percent). Among independent voters, Romney now leads by 16…

As the Cajun primary in south Louisiana rages on, observers continue to describe the race between Congressmen Jeff Landry and Congressman Charles Boustany as a typical Tea Party versus establishment Republican race. But it isn’t. 

Bill Maher, a major donor to Barack Obama's super PAC, blasted the president's debate performance on his HBO show last night:

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that fighters “linked to” an Egyptian terrorist named Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad took part in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.  Ahmad was freed in 2011, after the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. The WSJ’s…

Friday’s jobs report might, but only might, have been the last one that will have any effect on the race to the White House. By the time the next report is published on November 2, only four days before the election, about 40 percent of all voters will have cast early or mail ballots. But the…

One month and one day before the most important presidential election in the past quarter of a century and perhaps in the past century and a quarter, Rasmussen Reports shows the race being about as even as it could possibly be.  At this point, Rasmussen’s state-by-state polling shows that President…

Dana Milbank: The president has no clothes.

Newly released polls from Rasmussen Reports and WeAskAmerica show that Mitt Romney has overtaken President Obama in Florida in the wake of the first presidential debate.  Three weeks ago, Rasmussen showed Obama with a 2-point lead in the Sunshine State (48 to 46 percent).  That margin has…

President Obama and his allies are celebrating finally getting the unemployment rate down below the 8-percent level that, 44 months ago, they said it would never exceed if Obama’s $831,000,000,000 “stimulus” were to be passed (see Figure 1).  But the celebration is rather premature — for the latest…

An Ohio man at the market told President Obama that business has been "Terrible since you got here," according to the White House pool report. Via the pool report:

Fairfax, Va.

Yesterday, at a rally in Wisconsin, a combative Obama characterized Romney's comments at the debate this way:

In news that shocked absolutely nobody in the entire sports world, Bobby Valentine has been fired as manager of the Boston Red Sox.  Valentine “went 69-93 in his only year in Boston, the ballclub's worst in almost 50 years.”

President Barack Obama asserted at Wednesday’s presidential debate that Governor Mitt Romney wants to spend “$2 trillion in additional spending that the military is not asking for.” Obama’s assertion echoes his earlier claim at the Democratic National Convention that Romney wants to “spend more…

Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, got considerable attention this week when, speaking in Norfolk, Virginia, he said American officials should make it clear to the government of Israel that "they do not have a blank check to take action that could do grave harm to American vital…

President Obama, speaking in Virginia, said, "We don't believe anybody is entitled to success in this country."

A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency lost a string of high-profile lawsuits brought by environmentalists challenging the Bush administration's regulations. And in certain circles, it was fashionable to cite those as proof of the Bush EPA's incompetence if not its utter corruption.

This morning's jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is being met with skepticism. The report found that, from August to September, the unemployment rate dropped from just above 8 percent to 7.8 percent.

After staring in some amazement at PolitiFact’s ostensibly unbiased rulings on the truthfulness of various statements made during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, I finally realized what the problem is: PolitiFact’s self-described Truth-O-Meter is clearly broken. Thankfully, however, it’s…

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released the following statement in response the latest jobs report, which reported that unemployment had dropped slightly to 7.8 percent:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate has decreased to 7.8 percent. The biggest drops in unemployment, from the report on August to the report just released on September, is among teenagers, blacks, and Asians.

The unemployment rate is now 7.8 percent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports:

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan talk to each other on the phone almost every day, and the day of the first presidential debate was no exception. "I told him after the debate that he crushed it," Ryan told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in a phone interview Thursday night.

A new TV ad from the Campaign for American Values highlights Barack Obama's recent apology to Islamists over terrorist attacks on American embassies, and contrasts that with the Obama administration's efforts to curb religious liberties at home.

October in an election year tends to be a bad month for incumbents seeking reelection. Going back fifty years, we have six decent comparisons to this cycle – 1956, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1996, and 2004. On average, the late September margin in the Gallup poll of registered voters closed by six to seven…

Apologists for President Obama’s weak performance in Wednesday night’s debate have found a scapegoat. It’s Jim Lehrer, the PBS anchor who served as moderator. The charge?  He let Mitt Romney run amok—that is, talk more—by not enforcing the time limits on speaking.  

"Obama came off even worse in his debate with Romney last night than he did in his debate with Clint Eastwood."

From the New York Times editorial page (where else?):

Mitt Romney has a new web ad out, which almost exclusively features clips from the Republican presidential candidate performance at Wednesday night's debate in Denver. Watch the ad below:

I hardly ever watch televised politics. I skipped both conventions. Last night's was the first presidential debate that I have ever watched in my life (OK, I think I caught a little Reagan-Mondale back in 1984). I get my news, including political news, from the Internet. So I mostly get…

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking earlier today in Iowa said, "Yes, we do" want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars:

Last year, when elite universities began announcing their intentions to bring back ROTC, Jonathan E. Hillman and I cautioned that if Ivy League ROTC was to succeed, it would require a real commitment from both the schools and the military.

Mitt Romney’s clear victory over President Obama in last night’s debate — during which the challenger didn’t land any knockdown punches but won essentially every round on the scorecard and dominated the bout from start to finish — was principally a result of his success in two areas. The first was…

Seems like the press are being kept far away from Joe Biden--and Iowans--at the vice president's rally today. Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register reports on Twitter:

I don't think he had a particularly bad debate. He's had a bad four years. That's how Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney's top aide, summed it up, and that pretty much captures it.  The president didn't have much to work with, and you can only go on making chicken salad out of chicken feathers for so…

Permit me to add two points to the comments on the first presidential debate. First, no one seems to have noticed that after extolling Americans for “their genius, their grit, their determination,” the president said that everything he has tried to do and will do if reelected is to see that these…

The president’s sycophants have seized on an excuse for why their candidate was stammering and incoherent last night: Barack Obama is just too darn “professorial.” The Huffington Post lamented Obama’s “professorial demeanor.” A New York Times editorial bemoaned the fact that the president chose to…

At last night's presidential debate, Barack Obama said that Mitt Romney's tax plan--cutting rates by 20 percent across the board and maintaining revenue neutrality by eliminating loopholes--is mathematically impossible.

Former Vice President Al Gore, reacting to the debate: 

Tim Mak of Politico reports:

A CNN poll shows that Mitt Romney won last night's debate on substance, not simply on style. Romney bested Obama on the economy, health care, taxes, and the deficit:

A friend notes Jimmy Carter's diary entry from the day after the 1980 Reagan debate—the last time a Democratic president lost a debate to a Republican challenger:

In President Obama's closing statement at last night's debate, he seemed to make a remarkable slip. "All those things are designed to make sure that the American people, their genius, their grit, their determination, is -- is channeled and -- and they have an opportunity to succeed. And everybody's…

Perhaps because Mitt Romney is a Winston Churchill fan and Barack Obama is not, I thought this morning of Churchill's "end of the beginning" remarks, delivered almost 70 years ago, at Mansion House in London, on November 10, 1942.

MSNBC hosts wondered whether President Obama lost last night's debate to Mitt Romney because he was unable to use a Teleprompter:

Denver

The Huffington Post's splash banner on its homepage:

Mitt Romney was on offense. President Obama was on defense. And when you’re on offense in a presidential debate—and aren’t mean-spirited or harsh—you prevail. Which Romney did in a 90-minute performance that I suspect even some of his advisers didn’t know he was capable of.

"I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan," President Obama said during his debate with Mitt Romney on Wednesday night. "It's on a website. You can look at all the numbers, what cuts we make and what revenue we raise."

If Mitt Romney campaigns over the next month in the bold, aggressive manner he debated Wednesday night, he will be the next president.

“Can we stay on Medicare?” Mitt Romney asked debate moderator Jim Lehrer after several minutes of back and forth on the issue between himself and President Barack Obama. It was a characteristic moment in Romney’s strong performance in Denver, when the former governor of Massachusetts sensed an…

President Barack Obama emails supporters, asking for financial help after tonight's debate:

President Obama's campaign manager did not claim victory in tonight's debate in a prepared statement released to the press. Instead, campaign manager Jim Messina sent this out to reporters:

At the end of the debate, it appears that President Barack Obama patted Mitt Romney's shoulder and said, "You won."

President Barack Obama's deputy campaign manager said: "Mitt Romney, yes, he absolutely wins the preparation, and he wins the style points."

Mitt Romney, on the role of government: 

"I think the president created a big problem for himself," said MSNBC host Ed Schultz. "I don't think he explained himself well on the economy. I thought he was off his game. I was absolutely stunned tonight."

President Obama was right in his closing statement: “This was a terrific debate.” So it was. For Mitt Romney.

Almost a year ago, James Ceaser of the University of Virginia wrote this in THE WEEKLY STANDARD ("The Gift of Gab, October 31, 2011):

A test exchange between President Barack Obama and the debate moderator:

It was said the first forty minutes or so of the first debate would be key. If so, Mitt Romney has passed a key test. After a slightly rocky start, Romney has taken charge, is in command, and is on course to win this debate—and perhaps to create an inflection point in this race. Romney seems the…

Denver

Watch here:

Denver

First Lady Michelle Obama wished her husband a happy 20th anniversary earlier today on the campaign trail, just hours before her husband squares off against Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate. Their wedding anniversary is today, October 3.

Five ways to cap tax expenditures.

Teddy Roosevelt finally won the Presidents Race at the Washington Nationals' final game of the regular season Wednesday. Previously, Teddy (rather, a costumed version of the 26th president) had never won since the Nationals first came to D.C. in 2005. But in the middle of the fourth inning, the…

Nate Silver noted yesterday that "Since conventions, Obama has led 64-27 (+37) on average in polls of Latino voters. He won them 67-31 (+36) in 2008." This morning, a new Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll came out showing Obama leading among Latinos by a whopping 50 points--71 percent to 21…

J.E. Dyer writes: 

The Nanny State has decided to make it possible for kids to eat their vegetables.  Indeed, to make it hard for them not to eat their vegetables. The kids, unsurprisingly, are saying, ‘We say it's spinach and we say the hell with it.’ So one school proposes to monitor the school cafeteria garbage…

A study by the Tax Policy Center, a project of the center-left Brookings Institution and Urban Institute, claims that Mitt Romney's tax plan is mathematically impossible.

A new report in the Tampa Bay Times suggests that Obama campaign staffers are impersonating election officials. The broader allegation is that Obama staffers are misleading voters.

Fred Barnes offers some advice to Mitt Romney, ahead of tonight's debate, in the Wall Street Journal:

On and around September 11, 2012, al Qaeda attacked multiple American assets around the world. The attack that has received the most attention is the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the U.S.…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained this new political ad that knocks President Obama for saying the al Qaeda terrorist attack in Libya is a bump in the road:

In Washington, they like to do things up right.  If you are the Veterans Administration, and you decide to have a couple of conferences, then you don't hold back.  The country may be deep in debt and sinking but that is no reason not to spend “$6.1 million on two weeklong conferences.”

The most recent RealClearPolitics average of the national polls shows President Obama holding a 3.1 point lead over Mitt Romney, 49.1 to 46.0. Additionally, his net job approval rating is now back to about even, 48.8 approve to 48.5 disapprove.

President Obama is prepping for Wednesday's presidential debate in Henderson, Nevada. It's a city, like so many others across America, that will be hit hard by Obamacare. How hard?

In a recent interview with Glamour magazine, President Barack Obama gives the United States an "incomplete" grade. Obama's grade is based on how women are treated in America. 

Ed Kilgore: Can Romney distance himself from Bush?

Here are five questions as we head into the first presidential debate of 2012:

At Monday's debate in Lowell, Massachusetts, Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was asked to name a Republican senator she would work with if she's elected. Warren answered by saying Richard Lugar, the senior and outgoing Republican from Indiana. Debate moderator David Gregory informed…

Virginia-based trade publication Politico investigates whether Vice President Joe Biden is a sex symbol:

Vice President Joe Biden said the middle class "has been buried the last four years" at a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina:

This is posted on an Obama campaign website:

At a townhall-style event in Iowa, Paul Ryan was asked to provide more specifics about the Romney-Ryan economic plan, and he proceeded to talk about Romney's 5-point plan for about eight minutes. Buzzfeed posts the video: 

A new ad from Romney and the RNC: 

Republican House candidate Mia Love of Utah leads her opponent, Democratic congressman Jim Matheson, by six points, according to a new poll from the Deseret News and KSL-TV. Love has 49 percent support in Utah's new Fourth Congressional District, while Matheson has 43 percent support. Here's more…

Former Obama administration official Steven Rattner said on MSNBC that Jennifer Granholm "must have had some medications or something in her system" when she addressed the Democratic convention last month:

A new study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum finds that President Barack Obama's spending plan would raise taxes on the middle class.  "[T]axpayers making as little as $30,000 will carry $1,500 more in taxes annually over the next 10 years," the study finds.

In late March 2011, the United States intervened in Libya to save Benghazi. A year and a half later, we've withdrawn:

Bret Stephens, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

In Pennsylvania, Republican Tom Smith is facing an uphill battle against Democratic senator Bob Casey, the son of the beloved former governor. But in four of the five most recent polls of likely voters, Smith, a 64-year-old farmer and coal mining businessman from Western Pennsylvania, has been…

Maggie Haberman relates Newt Gingrich's advice for Mitt Romney:

Gertrude Himmelfarb, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The second debate between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren was a contentious one, with Brown deploying a few well-placed lines that may have given him the edge over Warren.

Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway endorsed Mitt Romney ahead of Wednesday's presidential debate in Colorado.

The Romney team thinks Ohio is up for grabs.

Trust in President Barack Obama's ability to handle international affairs has plummeted among independents since the terror attack in Libya, a new poll finds.

In late August, the world’s most high-profile development project celebrated another milestone. The Millennium Villages Project opened its newest site, in northern Ghana, with newly minted Ghanaian president John Mahama and the UK’s international development secretary on hand. The official interest…

Mitt Romney is gaining with Hispanic voters, according to a new poll.

The latest national poll to be released today finds Barack Obama barely beating Mitt Romney, 50 percent to 47 percent, respectively. The poll was conducted by CNN/ORC and measures likely voters.

Polls have closed in Georgia, the small Caucasus Republic that took center stage in the 2008 presidential campaign when Russian troops poured over the border there and threatened to topple the country's pro-American government. With both sides claiming victory, the country of 4.5 million people may…

Three-term Indiana Democrat Rep. Joe Donnelly voted for Obamacare. He voted for Obama’s waste-filled $787 billion stimulus package. He is a down-the-line supporter of card check, the measure that would allow union organizers to bypass secret ballot elections.

A new chart put together by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee finds that, since 2001, the "number of non-citizens on food stamps quadrupled." Here's the chart detailing the growth in regards to non-citizens:

A pro-America rally is scheduled to be held tomorrow outside the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel. The expression of support for America is being organized by Im Tirzu Movement in order to "remind the United States that Israel is America's best friend in the Middle East"

The Washington Post reports: 

Last night at a campaign speech in Nevada, President Barack Obama seemed to try to draw a contrast between himself and Mitt Romney by saying he's the one "fighting for American values."

Bill Kristol, appearing yesterday on Fox News Sunday, offered some debate advice for Mitt Romney: 

Mark Halperin, this morning on Morning Joe, said the media is neither scrutinizing President Obama's questions nor asking critical questions:

Elizabeth Warren has taken a 5-point lead in her race against Scott Brown, according to a poll released Sunday by the Boston Globe. The Massachusetts Democrat has 43 percent support among likely voters, the poll says, compared to 38 percent support for Brown, the incumbent Republican senator.

Mitt Romney could have a winning argument that incorporates his messages on both the economy and federal spending. A new poll from the Tarrance Group, a Republican-affiliated polling firm, for Public Notice shows most Americans believe increased federal spending has not helped the overall economy…

Denver

What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent. And those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are…

When Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke rushed to the aid of President Obama with an act of raw partisanship called QE3, the media ignored the political implications of this latest plan to print massive amounts of new money to boost the stock market.

The Scrapbook scrupulously avoids Nazi analogies, such invidious comparisons being, almost exclusively, the province of the left. As strongly as The Scrapbook may feel about this or that, there is no politician in America remotely like Adolf Hitler, no program or proposal to compare with the…

Americans, particularly older Americans, continue to ignore the devastating effect that hackers can exert on one’s life. No matter how often they are warned to be vigilant about computer security, to erect firewalls to ensure that hackers do not infiltrate their PCs and steal credit card numbers,…

September 12 was a momentous day for Europe. It saw three separate events that in a powerful way may come to remake the European Union.  First, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that the nation’s parliament can ratify a new, permanent rescue fund for the eurozone, called the European Stability…

Over the last year or so, the argument has been made many times in these pages that media “fact checking” organizations are a discredit to the journalism profession. Further discrediting the journalism profession at this point is no easy thing to do, yet fact checkers seem more than equal to the…

The Sunday before last, my plane was half an hour away from Budapest and a stewardess was bustling clumsily down the aisle. I was reading John Lukacs’s Budapest 1900. Something in his description of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led me to be glad I was wearing a neat shirt and blazer. In some…

A cerebral law professor takes his progressive ideas into politics and inspires a personality cult that catapults him to the highest office in the land. Encouraged by the heady mixture of popularity and power, he makes an unprecedented move to abuse his authority. It guts the federalism on which…

Though every generation dutifully brings forth its crop of visual artists, some harvests are more blessed and bounteous than others. And while few have been as sparse as those of recent date, we can all take some consolation in the Whitney’s retrospective of Yayoi Kusama. Any age that engendered…

This week, Congress is under pressure to pass the 2012 farm bill before the current legislation expires on September 30. About every five years, Congress pushes through a farm bill, ostensibly a big bundle of agriculture subsidies that also funds food stamps. But the name is misleading. Nearly 80…

Bill Clinton’s address to the Democratic convention is widely seen as a pivotal moment in President Obama’s reelection campaign. It was an undeniably powerful speech, but particularly noteworthy were his remarks about the popular and bipartisan 1996 welfare reform Clinton himself signed into law.…

For nine days, the Obama administration made a case that virtually everyone understood was untrue: that the killing of our ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, was a random, spontaneous act of individuals upset about an online video—an unpredictable attack on a well-protected…

To paraphrase Freud: Liberals, what do they really want? Not the communism or socialism of the right’s fever dreams. They know that didn’t work. Today’s liberal agenda is more akin to the corporatist vision of the 1920s and ’30s​—​an economy in which the state directs the activities of the private…

There’s been an Orange Revolution in Ukraine, a Rose Revolution in Georgia, and a Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that helped launch last year’s Arab Spring. Is democracy sweeping the globe at last? Well—not yet, according to our author, a former editor at Foreign Policy who has been doing some…

Pleonasm and pomposity, those twins of purple prose, define a certain kind of religious writing. A certain kind of holiday writing, for that matter—read a typical newspaper column about Thanksgiving, if you need another example—and any number of political orations. Historians, scientists, social…

Things are getting ugly in Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents somehow managed to penetrate the coalition’s main base in Helmand Province, Camp Bastion, and blow up six Marine Corps Harrier jump jets and damage two others, making this the greatest single-day loss of American warplanes since the Vietnam…

Abigail Fisher, a white applicant to the University of Texas, contends that the university, in giving preference to minority applicants while rejecting her, discriminated against her unlawfully because of her color. The Supreme Court will hear the case this fall; it is likely that Fisher will…

Have you ever watched a football game in which a team runs the ball seemingly at will and wins in a rout? And then, in a rematch, that same team for no good reason throws the ball repeatedly, with little success? Meet Team Republican. In 2010, it ran Obama­care down the Democrats’ throats. The GOP…

A cartoon on the front page of the August 2 Independent, a weekly journal published in Burma’s capital, showed a rider approaching a fortress painted with the stars and stripes of the American flag.

The fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, published by Houghton Mifflin, was released last fall. In the typecast world of dictionary publishing, American Heritage is the “conservative” dictionary. Developed in the 1960s in the wake of company president James Parton’s failed attempt to…

Professor Stephen Schneck is a conundrum. He’s a Catholic who works for the Catholic University of America (CUA). But he’s involved with the group Catholics for Obama—despite the church hierarchy’s view that the president is attacking the religious freedom of Catholics. He’s pro-life. But he…

‘Modern proverbs” is surely a contradiction in terms—unless “modern” is being used in its unmodern sense of “commonplace,” as in Shakespeare’s “wise saws and modern instances.” The word “proverb” inevitably connotes the idea of age and seasoning—wisdom that has been tried by time. Indeed, a proverb…