PPP has a Republican primary poll that makes it clear that the Republican primary is becoming a two-track race: the flat-earthers are flocking to Perry while the more reality-based ones favor Romney (though narrowly).
–Romney leads Perry 23–18 among GOP voters who believe in global warming…but that’s only 27% of them. With the 62% who don’t believe in it Perry’s up 38–14. One interesting note on those numbers- Perry’s favorability with Republicans who believe in global warming is 37/50. Are those folks going to vote for him in the general election if he ends up as the nominee?
–With Republicans who don’t think Barack Obama is a Socialist Romney leads Perry 26–13…but with the 71% who do think Obama is a Socialist Perry is ahead 35–16.
The dynamics on nearly all the issues surveyed favor Perry, except for one, Social Security. You can see why Romney is going after this issue.
–Only 33% of Republicans agree with Perry that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. But he’s really running up the score with those who do, leading 40 to 15. That makes up for the fact that he has only a 24–23 advantage on Romney with voters who disagree with him on that front.
I doubt that 33% percent goes so heavily for Perry because they think Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a Ponzi scheme is (they got the metric system), they just like Perry and back him on it.
Morzer
Looks like someone added an unnecessary % after the 27.
Nancyboy
Converse crazification?
beltane
@Nancyboy: In the land of the crazy, the sane man will be thought of as mad.
Morzer
@Nancyboy:
Small tribe of sane Republicans located in Amazonian jungle….
The Dangerman
Absofuckinglutely; the Republicans could nominate Casey Anthony and they’d vote for her.
Culture of Truth
I assume the Giant Deadly Rampaging Snakes issue favors Perry as well.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Stupid vs. Lying, who will win the race? Tune in to next week’s CNN/TeaParty Madness to catch the Seven Deadly Sins debating each other, live on-stage! How does Lust poll with voters? Can Gluttony make a bid for attention? Does Wrath have an inside path to the nomination? Our panel of experts will cover these topics and more.
david mizner
It’s been a good couple weeks for President Obama, with the rise of Perry, who’s take on Social Security makes him all but unelectable in a GE. Dems should be rooting for Perry to beat Romney..
It’d also be helpful if President Obama didn’t propose to cut SS.
david mizner
@Morzer:
I betcha Romney leads Perry handily among the Republicans who don’t think Mormonism is a fake Christian cult.
Culture of Truth
Yes, the GOP base will vote for either one, so they might as well nominate Mitt, who will have better chance with indys and fence sitters.
4jkb4ia
That meme that SS is a Ponzi scheme has been around so long that at least some of those people absolutely believe in it, even though if you know what a Ponzi scheme is SS is not one. Also too, that is code for being willing to abolish SS so a) it should scare everyone and b) just liking a candidate shouldn’t cut it. Not even “Perry is the real conservative” should cut it. The average Tea Party supporter as of last year wasn’t really thinking about SS and Medicare.
But with global warming, that is the issue that encompasses everything else. If the world and your grandchildren are at stake and you know that nothing will be done about it for four years, that could be more important than your party. Renewable energy is an issue that Americans like so much that Perry’s being the governor of an oil state and being willing to support domestic drilling as the answer to everything because that’s all he knows has to be a winning campaign message.
Mino
Oh, boy. It’s gonna get crazy if the only hope of the Demorats winning back the House is to run against Obama.
The Financial Times is leaking on his Monday speech–said to include cuts in Medicare/Medicaid and possibly a chained COLA for SS. And all this concession before getting a single revenue increase.
I don’t think the Democratic Centrists have any idea of the firestorm that will hit them if they prove untrustworthy on these three issues. They won’t have a party. What is wrong with these people?
Linda Featheringill
Romney or Perry? Hmmmmm.
In the last debate, Romney actually won the debate but Perry won the audience.
Among the people [the base?] that are active enough in Republican politics to participate in caucuses, etc., Perry probably has the edge. To your delight or dismay as the case may be.
Mnemosyne
@david mizner:
Given that he didn’t cut SS the previous 12 times you swore up and down that no, really, this time he’s totally going to announce cuts, I’ll take that bet.
Mnemosyne
@Mino:
The Blue Dogs tried running against Obama in 2010, and they got decimated. One would hope they learned their lesson this time, but Blue Dogs never seem to.
Yawn. I’ve lost count of how many times Obama was supposedly going to announce cuts to SS or Medicare only to have it be a bust. Wake me if it actually happens this time, and claiming that it totally would have happened if not for progressives raising a fuss doesn’t count. I’ve heard that excuse before, too.
Jenny
Perry Goldwater
david mizner
@Mnemosyne:
Link to where I “swore” he would?
I’m even predicting that he will on Monday — just saying he might.
At least you’re not one of those who claims that chained CPI would be a cut, though I suspect you’ll make that case if and when the President proposes it.
Jenny
In today’s PPP poll, the secret mooslim leads presumptive GOP nominee Rick Perry by 11 pts: 52-41
FlipYrWhig
@Mino:
Cuts to beneficiaries, or cuts to providers? Because there’s a world of difference. Then, on top of that, there’s the difference between cuts to beneficiaries that affect quality of life and cuts that have no such effect. Cuts to reimbursements for zero-turning-radius scooters, for instance, couldn’t possibly be a bad policy. Cuts to reimbursements for diagnostic tests that don’t change treatment recommendations, same deal. Treating them all as “cuts” sounds principled but also lets grifters and looters like Rick Scott keep grifting and looting.
Big Baby DougJ
@Jenny:
Clever.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I thought Mino was imagining _liberal_ Democrats running against Obama, waving the banner as protectors of the social safety net.
General Stuck
Perry has that undefinable quality about him, as did GWB, of the fine instincts of a political predator, and all his smarts are wrapped tightly around that instinct, and the faithful are excited by his prospect to take those to defeating Obama. And Obama will pick him apart piece by piece in a GE, like HRC and the Maverick. Unfortunately for us, that doesn’t guarantee Perry won’t win.
But Perry doesn’t have a personal brane like W did with Rove, to guide him through the common sense minefields of a POTUS GE, so he keeps on digging the SS hole deeper and deeper.
Though even Perry may not match the bloodthirsty craven assholes that make up the GOP base. The cheering for the death of those without health care, freaked out even the knuckledragger Perry, at least a little.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Why, so they can get their asses kicked as hard as the Blue Dogs did?
Running against a president who’s in the same party is fucking suicidal. I really hope, for their sakes, that the progressives in Congress aren’t as stupid as the Blue Dogs were.
david mizner
@General Stuck:
It’s interesting that the GOP establishment is coalescing so solidly around Romney, and I don’t think it’s just because they think he’s more electable. I think it’s partly because Perry is really is who Bush pretended to be, an honest-to-goodness Texan farmer who might actually care about the cultural issues Bush pretended to care about while he focused on funneling money to rich people.
Mino
The major cut to beneficiaries that was mentioned was increasing the age of eligibility. It includes cuts to providers, also. And Medicaid lumping.
And I know scooters are an easy joke, but perhaps keeping folks working and living at home is cost effective.
goblue72
We are dealing with a pig-ignorant American public that is going on 4+ years of an economic depression and is out for blood. Add on that these same pig ignorant voters are largely old white people whose favorite activity is blaming everyone else for their problems. It’s a recipe ripe for authoritarians.
Mino
Maybe all these trial balloons from the White House are just pulling the chains of progressives. But it’s getting to be very un-funny.
Mnemosyne
@david mizner:
Yes, it’s true — you never used the specific word “swore” or “swear,” so clearly claiming that the president is going to cut SS and Medicare/Medicaid is not the hobbyhorse you’ve been riding for two years since you didn’t use that specific word. In fact, since you never used the specific word “swore,” clearly you’ve never made the claim before. You sure got me there.
Ah, so even the firebaggers are starting to doubt their own schtick? (I’m assuming that you meant that you’re “not” even predicting it.)
I admit, I’m surprised you didn’t double down and insist that, no, you read on the intertubes that he really, really means it this time and all of those other times you said he would announce cuts were just headfakes to psych everyone out for the real cuts this time.
Culture of Truth
Perry is the longest serving Gov in the Republics history, so he’s got some skillz. Don’t know how his brain is though
Culture of Truth
above is meant to read “who his brain is”
General Stuck
@david mizner:
Perry is an empty vessel of any thing like human design. What there is of him is filled with and driven by pure insatiable ego and a mean streak sizable to the Rings of Saturn. He is Sarah Palin with testosterone, and if he were to become president, it be best you give your heart to baby jeevus, cause your ass belongs to the Apocalypse. George Bush was Tiny Tim in comparison the danger this motherfucker would bring to an Oval Office.
I suspect the sane members of the right wing brane trust are a tad frightened of a President Perry, like we all should be. But of course we are needful to be reminded that Barack Obama has let us down. I hope this answers any questions you might have.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: Keeping people mobile could be cost-effective. Handing over the billing and reimbursement for that mobility equipment to shady third parties seems like a recipe for massive fraud, of the kind that made Rick Scott a Lex Luthor-esque evil billionaire.
Mino
@4jkb4ia: Actually Texas is pretty busy with green projects. Perry probably had little to do with them, however.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth: “how” is also an acceptable answer.
Mino
Yes, fraud etc. is part of his reduction package, too.
jwb
@david mizner: Perry will be easier to defeat than Romney for sure (I’d say Obama gains 3-4 points), but I wouldn’t get to thinking that Perry or the dead dog that the GOP nominates will be easily defeated by Obama. The economy is such and the anger is such that you shouldn’t take anything for granted.
Mino
@Culture of Truth: I was amazed that Hutchinson did so poorly. I thouhgt a lot of Dems would cross over in the primary just to get rid of Perry.
Davis X. Machina
I loved it when Ponzi hip-checked the juke box, and it changed to his song. Or when he did the same thing to the vending machine, and got a coke for free.
What could possibly be bad about a Ponzi scheme?
Now a Ralph Malph scheme, or a Potsie scheme — that I couldn’t go for.
MattR
@Davis X. Machina: That was back in the good ole days. After Ponzi jumped the shark, it hasn’t been the same.
Mike in NC
Bobby Jindal recently endorsed Perry. Is that good news for Willard?
Triassic Sands
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
Insomniac
Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania (and possibly other states with a recently elected Republican-controlled state government) this is/could be happening: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/gop-electoral-college-plan-beat-obama-2012
Greg Sargent has more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/gop-games-in-pennsylvania-are-an-outrage/2011/03/28/gIQAENgASK_blog.html
Turgidson
@Jenny:
Goldwater ran against a popular incumbent when the economy was humming along. And despite being far saner than Perry if you look at them in a vacuum, he was considered batshit at the time by everyone but the Birchers and dipshits like Buckley and his ilk.
That said, I do think Obama would beat Perry even in a bad economy – depends how bad, though.
harlana
I guess the Rove Machine doesn’t work like it used to
Frankensteinbeck
@Mino:
‘Trial balloons’? Every single claim that Obama was about to cut the safety net or endorse cutting the safety net has turned out to be false, and there were a lot of them. If he had the slightest desire to, he could have gutted Medicare, Medicaid, AND SS in the debt/budget negotiations. Indeed, the GOP demanded he do so and he told them no, he wouldn’t consider it. He gives multiple speeches not merely saying he won’t cut them, but explaining why they’re crucial to the US both morally and in practical terms.
Thinking he wants to cut Medicare, Medicaid, or SS has gone past ‘unsupported’ to ‘paranoid delusion’. The only arguments I’ve seen have consisted of ‘he’s speaking in code’ and ‘he appointed a couple of guys to a committee once’. Oh, and ‘I heard a rumor that he’s going to do it FOR REALS this time!’
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: I see it a little differently, because I really do think he wants to achieve… let’s call it “savings.” Most of the liberal blogosphere worry stems from IMHO a lack of imagination and/or trust, by which the only way to accomplish savings is “cuts,” and the only way to accomplish “cuts” is to stick Grandma on an ice floe with a can of cat food.
But there really are ways to save money that is nominally associated with Medicare and Medicaid _without_ damaging the safety net itself — because the ways things stand, in the Medi- programs there are billions of dollars flowing out, achieving nothing, and ending up lining already-rich interests’ already-bulging pockets.
I genuinely want to find places where that happens and plug those leaks. I think that’s Obama’s approach too. Painting with a broad brush so that it’s all “cuts” is doing a disservice to progressive policy-wonkery.
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
Sure, but that’s not what they’re talking about. You could make the argument that he does want to clean up the inefficiencies and corporate perks, particularly in Medicare. You have at least SOME evidence there, since he took an axe to the insurance company Medicare Advantage skimming. Even then, he’s clearly in no hurry to make more than little pokes, or he could have gotten out the knife a dozen times by now. The man just has no desire to cut these programs, and has never displayed any.
KoolEarl
Snakehandlers %60
Country Clubbers %20
Randroids %11
Someone else/undecided % 8
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: I think we’re saying pretty much the same thing, just around two different corners.
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: @Frankensteinbeck: Well, I’ve never been called a concern troll before. Interesting. Guess we’ll just have to see. But I’ve got to tell you, trust is a problem with this White House/Congress.
P.S. Biden just announced major savings in “waste, fraud and abuse”. If it stops there, no problemma.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: I think way too many self-avowed progressives have deliberately chosen to withhold that trust. And while I can see the big complaint about concession, folding, caving, etc. — although I take a different view about why, foregrounding the influence of the conservative Democrats he always has to corral — I don’t see why there’s always been so much worry about _betrayal_ in particular. I guess the big smoking gun is the public option, but to me it makes much more sense to see that as conservative Democrats drawing their own line and refusing to budge than as dastardly Obama stabbing progressives and progressive ideals in the back.
(You can also make a case that his performance on civil liberties hasn’t been up to snuff, and point to telecom immunity, but IMHO that wouldn’t be nearly the same level of betrayal as people seem to dread, or expect, might happen on the Great Society and New Deal programs.)
I think “concern trolling” suggests that the worry isn’t real. I think the worry _is_ real — I just think it’s vastly overblown and runs far beyond the evidence.
piratedan
“listening to Perry try to put a complicated policy sentence together is like watching a chimp play with a locked suitcase.” mike murphy, republican stategist and advisor to john mc cain
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: Everyone always says “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Where it’s going to get sticky is in cases caught by “comparative effectiveness research,” as certain (expensive, brand-name) treatments get blacklisted for underperformance, and the pharmaceutical companies and medical-device makers howl and moan about the injustice of it all, Big Government getting between you and your doctor, and that whole ball/kettle/can of wax/fish/worms.
The Republic of Stupidity
And how do the ‘flat earthers’ break on this one?
I’d suspect they’re solidly behind Perry…
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: Have they started to implement “best practices” yet. And I thought that was to be advisory, not mandatory. Has something changed?
Liberals remember Clinton’s third way of NAFTA job losses and the effective destruction of welfare. And only a Democrat could have accomplished that. Dems would have fought and blocked any Republican effort to pass those programs. Now look at what has happened to child poverty with this economic downturn.
With Obama proving to be pretty damn centrist, I’d say I’m gun shy, that’s for sure. A lot of what he’s passed has been corporatist, not populist. I really hope I’m wrong. But don’t tell me after the fact that it’s no big deal. Which is what women were told after Stupac.
Jason T.
What do they call a Whopper?
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: Well, my take is that “centrism” and “corporatism” are emerging in a kind of pincer movement from the conservative Democrats whose support Obama can’t lose if he wants to do anything legislative. And that an Obama unencumbered by those checkpoints (the Nelsons, Landrieu, Webb, McCaskill, Feinstein, Warner, et al in the Senate; the Blue Dogs in the House) would never choose any of those ways forward. IMHO Clinton was much more of an ideologue on the “neoliberalism” of free trade and a rolled-back welfare state than Obama is, but I respect that it’s a judgment call.
I think Obama is trying to community-organize Democrats in Congress into their own way forward, which means a lot of rightward movement from the drawing board to the actual legislation. And that it gets misread in the punditocracy and the blogopshere as moving towards _Republicans_, when really Obama is moving towards conservative Democrats. It’s just easy to get confused, because conservative Democrats think and vote like the Republicans most of us were used to in the ’80s.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino:
Sorry… I was hypothesizing about what a Medicare Advisory Board might want to try, and what the response might be. It was more of a sketch than anything like an expert view.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mino:
If you’re feeling gun shy – and EVERYONE feels gun shy after the Bush years – look at what Obama’s done so far. Refused to cut with a gun held to the economy’s head, and DID expand the safety net gigantically while adding 2000 pages of new regulations to control costs and insurance company exploitations. I think you can be pretty confident that he’s on the side of protecting Medicare, Medicaid, and SS, and if he says ‘strengthening’ he MEANS strengthening.
Jebediah
@Frankensteinbeck:
Whenever I feel like I am starting to put on the emo pants, I remind myself not only of what he has gotten done, but the solid wall of screaming, poo-flinging howler monkey opposition he’s faced in getting it done. To me, the idea that he shouldn’t get a second term is unthinkable.
And if my wishes all come true, the Senate will have enough D’s to not worry about filibusters, and a whole raft of teatard Congressasses will be sent home to deal with their back child support. Then we can all see (and argue about) what he would do if he didn’t have to bargain so much. But especially given the R field, everyone should be doing what they can to make sure he gets re-elected.