Right Wing Nut House

I’ve got a piece up at PJ Media I would like to share.

A sample:

The world is slowly returning to its proper axis after being out of kilter for a while. San Francisco is once again the best team in the NFL. The Chicago Cubs lost 100 games. Hockey players are locked out, causing the fourth work stoppage in 20 years. NBC is the number one TV network again. Nucky Thompson is back and is as slimy as ever. And Nicholas Brody has also returned, teasing us with the prospect that he really isn’t an American terrorist, just some poor, misunderstood Muslim convert who may be the next vice president of the United States.

Oh…and did I mention Republicans have given us permission to believe the polls again?

That’s right. Mitt Romney’s stellar debate performance has revived his moribund campaign, energized his supporters, and put the magic back in opinion polls. Somehow, the same random sampling that pollsters were using when Mr. Romney was in deep trouble has produced favorable results for the GOP candidate. The latest Pew survey interviewed 567 Romney supporters and 552 Obama partisans. The sample shows the race dead even among registered voters and gives Romney a 4 point lead among likely voters.

The Pew poll on 9/19 interviewed 1,188 Obama supporters and 1,062 of Romney’s. That survey gave the president an 8 point lead over the Republican and had GOP partisans howling about “rigged” polls.

Whether one “believes” the polls or not, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the race is close. It was close when Romney was supposedly in trouble and it’s close now. It is likely that a few hundred thousand votes — maybe less — in two or three states will determine who will be sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2013. This has been foreordained for months, and the dynamics that have prevented either candidate from pulling away remain the same. That fact is that people are looking for a reason to vote for Romney and kick Obama out, but the Republican candidate has been unable to give them one.

This is partly his fault, but it is mostly due to a vicious campaign of lies and half-truths that have painted the GOP candidate as a cross between Gordon Gekko and Babbitt — an evil, uncaring plutocrat who would ship his grandmother’s job to China if given the chance. Romney was able to break through the clutter during the debate where 68 million Americans began to wonder who this smiling, confident, moderate guy was and what did the GOP do with the “real” Romney. The change in voter attitudes toward Romney is remarkable. The aforementioned Pew poll shows that voters now think he’s not such an ogre after all. His favorable rating is over 50% for the first time, placing him in a tie with Obama. And he is slaughtering the president in voter perceptions on how well he can handle the deficit (+15) and create jobs (+8).

I was not joking about being given permission to believe the polls again. The logic used to justify this rediscovery of the efficacy of polling is so precious, that you just want to wrap your arms around the right winger and give them a great big hug.

From the comments:

Rick, you miss the point, again. It isn’t that we believe the polls, it’s that even with their easily proven left-slant, Romney is ahead!

The reason many of us are calling for a Romney landslide is that he is ahead even in biased polls. I suspect the real margin is more like 10+ percent.

Right. You will find that pony if you keep digging in that manure pile, I promise!

If anything, the follow-up comment is even more bizarre:

That was exactly my reaction after reading that. I still believe the polls are understating Romney’s actual position. They’re still rigged but no amount of rigging can hide the apparent reality.

I agree. The reality on the Planet Mongol sure beats the reality on Planet Earth.

A final thought from a real space cadet:

Moran’s snark about the polls is as silly as most of the stuff he writes. Apparently, he thinks that people now accept the polls as gospel. Of course, he neglects to mention that the polls could hardly NOT show a Romney surge, after even democrat pundits awarded him an overwhelming victory. And he disingenuously fails to point out the the voting model in many of the key polls has now been changed, dramatically in some instances. Who knows why. Perhaps because the have to switch over to registered and likely voters at some point, why not when Romney is clearly surging so they can make the case for an obama comeback when the surge phenomenon subsides.

Other than Rasmussen, all of the polls are as dishonest now as they were two weeks ago. Maybe they better reflect the current state of the election, but if they do, it certainly isn’t due to the integrity of the pollsters. And even Rasmussen, btw, should be viewed sceptically.

The only poll I put any faith in was the one the media couldn’t hide or distort…the poll of horror in the eyes of the liberal media when they realized the horse they had protected for five years was finally exposed as an absolute failure.

The “voting model” has changed? Oh, really? From what bodily orifice did the gentleman pull that one from? That’s just bat guano crazy and a perfect example of making sh*t up as you go along.

Pew, Rasmussen, Gallup, Reuters, etc. don’t change their “voting model” (whatever the hell that is) without everyone who knows how to read knowing about it. I would chalk this up to typical internet commenting bullsh*t except there is nothing typical about it; it’s extraordinary internet commenting bullsh*t and the gentleman should be congratulated for being so inventive.

Be that as it may, I have no idea what Romney will do about Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, or the rest of the mess in the Middle East. All I’m sure of is that he won’t think the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderates” and that he won’t treat Vladmir Putin as if he’s a partner in anything. He probably won’t be any tougher on China than Obama, but it’s good to make them think he will be. And if you listen to some subtle hints by Romney, you will hear him talk about the most significant change in US foreign policy since the end of World War II — the pivot toward Asia. President Obama has begun this shift, much to his credit, but if the wealth of the world is shifting to the east, it makes good sense to elevate Asia to a more prominent place in our thinking.

Europe isn’t dying - yet. Nor is it irrelevant. But the axis of the planet is tilting toward China and the emerging economies in the far east and getting in front of the curve by recognizing the importance of India, Indonesia, and the dynamic economies in southeast Asia is vital to our future security and economic well being.