The Florida Chamber of Commerce funded a poll taken by Cherry Communications on August 5th indicating that Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum leads Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink by nine points, 43 percent to 34 percent:

“Though both candidates have similar name identification ratings, Attorney General McCollum continues to hold the lead in this race, partly because of the significant crossover appeal among Democrats,” said Marian Johnson, Vice President of Political Affairs for the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Democrats point out that the Chamber of Commerce has strong ties to the Republican party, and criticized its findings, but the poll is similar to a Mason Dixon poll from June giving McCollum a 41 to 35 percent lead.  This is considered a top-tier gubernatorial race for 2010.  The poll also found that governor Charlie Crist had a 67 percent approval rating in the state.

As liberals worry that President Obama may be resigned to signing a health care reform bill without a public option, Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement this afternoon calling a public option the "best option":

"As the President stated in March, 'The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps keep the private sector honest, because there's some competition out there.'
"We agree with the President that a public option will keep insurance companies honest and increase competition.

"There is strong support in the House for a public option. In the House, all three of our bills contain a public option, as does the bill from the Senate HELP Committee.

"A public option is the best option to lower costs, improve the quality of health care, ensure choice and expand coverage.

"The public option brings real reform to lower costs over the 10-year period of the bill."

A second press release minutes later took aim at the media for repeating "a myth opponents of health insurance reform have been spreading: that people would be 'forced' to choose a public health insurance option." Pelosi's office cited AP, ABC's Jake Tapper, FOX News's Chris Wallace and NBC's David Gregory.

The public option "simply provides...a choice between various private plans and a public plan," the Speaker's office wrote.

New Rasmussen poll of the Illinois Senate race shows Republican Mark Kirk edging out his most likely Democratic foe, State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, by three points (41 to 38) with 17% undecided.

Kirk fares much better when matched up against the other possible Democrat, Cheryle Jackson. Kirk leads Jackson 47 to 30, again with 17% undecided.

Also from the poll: Barack Obama's approval rating is 56%.  48% of voters favor "the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the congressional Democrats" (including 29% who "strongly" favor it) while 48% of voters oppose the plan (including 39% who "strongly oppose it).

You just knew this was coming: it appears the White House has pulled the plug on the flag@ program that caused such controversy.

A similar concept worked well for Team Obama during the campaign with their "fight the smears" web site, but as Obama has learned on so many different levels during his first six months in office, governing is a lot different -and a lot more difficult - than campaigning.

It's smart politics to cut bait on another embarrassing and unnecessary distraction, though I'm a bit surprised the White House didn't do it sooner.

Not sure what to make of this. I find it exceedingly hard to believe that a Cabinet member would go on national television and shoot from the hip on a matter of such significance. That would be an act of rank incompetence and of the biggest policy blunders we've seen in some time.

But the other possibility doesn't lend itself to a favorable interpretation either: namely that Sebelius's comment was planned, either as policy or as a high-risk, high-profile trial balloon, and the administration is walking it back after getting immediate heat from the president's left wing base.

Either way, the swift leaks from the administration to undermine Sebelius's remark yesterday does leave you scratching your head wondering if this White House is at war with itself over health care policy and/or whether they have any clue what they're doing.

Brian Ross' sensational  report (and I mean that in the strictest, non-fawning sense)  on the growing dangers to President Obama's safety thanks to the rise of white supremacist militia groups is mainly based on a report issued last week by the left leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.

I don't want to dive into critiquing the validity of the report, but I do want to point out that toward the end of Ross's segment on ABC News he let Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, get away with saying this:

"I think that the President has, in effect, triggered fears among fairly large numbers of white people in this country that they are somehow losing their country." (emphasis added)

Fairly large numbers. Really? Is there any valid statistical evidence anywhere to support Potok's claim? If so, I haven't seen it. Yet Ross and his editors decided to keep that specific quote in the piece.

I would also add that Ross immediately followed that mistake with another: after hyping the SPLC report and raising fears about the President's safety, Ross admitted to viewers just before signing off that, "Officials tell my colleague, Pierre Thomas of ABC News, that the President's daily threat matrix has yet to reflect a sharp increase in threats."

Give Ross points for honesty, I guess. But from where I sit it seems like one of those cases where a reporter already has the story written in his or her head, and any facts that pop up running counter to that story end up getting buried at the end lest they spoil the effect.

For the record, I don't doubt that having a half black president has inflamed feelings of racism and grievance among a certain slice of white America.  How big is this slice? Nobody knows for sure, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say that it's pretty darn small.  What I do know is that it's irresponsible, absent any evidence, to go on national television and characterize it as "fairly large numbers" of people.

More to the point:  if you're a journalist who's going to run a segment hyping white racism as the reason our first black president's life is increasingly in danger, it's best to just stick to the facts.

NYT resident conservative, Ross Douthat, hits the nail on the right's campaign to scare seniors over health reform. Medicare is a program that's eating our budget alive, and small-government conservatives would do well to join efforts to contain its spiraling costs.

My point, not Douthat's, is that waste and overtreatment is such that Medicare could curb spending without impairing the quality of care. Actually, it could improve the quality of care by protecting older people from invasive treatments and meds with awful side-effects that do them more harm than good (but pad provider incomes).

Douthat gets at the politics of it, something real conservatives should note:

Medicare's price tag, if trends continue, will make a mockery of the idea of limited government. For conservatives, no fiscal cause is more important than curbing this exponential growth. And by fighting health care reform with tactics ripped from Democratic playbooks, and enlisting anxious seniors as foot soldiers, conservatives are setting themselves up to win the battle and lose the longer war.

I would add the question, Exactly what battle are they winning?

www.fromaharrop.com

The Democratic Strategist's James Vega has a bad case of denial regarding the ideological fringe within his camp.

Vega has written two critiques in so many weeks about a recent column of mine headlined “Both Parties Have Their Fanatics.”

In the second piece, on Thursday, Vega termed the column “a particularly nasty commentary.” The part he saw as “nasty” was the part referring to Democratic ideologues, because he appears ideological in his belief that conservatives have more radical ideologues.

In Vega's first write up he accused me of asserting that the Democratic fringe was “nuttier” than the Republican fringe. He argued that my column implied:

Democrats are not only nuttier than Republicans, but the liberal media, as usual, is giving them a free pass.

I don't believe either party has a greater purchase on radicalism. That was the entire point of my column. It's why I rounded off that there is an “ideological third” in both camps, despite one poll giving the impression that Democrats had more radicals.

In that column, I compared the “birther” conspiracy theorists to the “truther” conspiracy theorists. Vega's general critique was that the comparison amounted to false equivalence.

Here is how I led my piece:

Fully 35 percent of Democrats believe George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Fully 28 percent of Republicans believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States

Meet the fanatical third

The tale of two conspiracy theories is the tale of the most polarized among us. The two statistics are based on a poll apiece. Neither is an exact measure. Yet, lots of liberals say take the "birther" poll on face value. Lots of conservatives say take the "truther" poll on face value. So let's listen to both sides ...

I used qualifiers because a singular poll, on so contentious of a point, is imperfect at best. I never wrote of the Rasmussen “truther” poll until recently because it seemed inconclusive.

But I don't enjoy suffering soapbox politics from any political camp. The lecturing from some liberals, and the wider media, on “birthers” begged some, well, let he who is without fanatics cast the first stone.

It turns out, there is more data. Dartmouth Assistant Professor Brendan Nyhan jumped into the debate and found a survey conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University. That poll asked, in July 2006, the likelihood of this statement:

There are also accusations being made following the 9/11 terrorist attack. One of these is: People in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the [sic] United States to go to war in the Middle East.

Result:

• Very likely 16%
• Somewhat likely 20%
• Not likely 59%
• Don't know 5%

At the time, the poll did not offer a partisan breakout. So I got in touch with Guido Stempel, director of the Scripps Survey Research Center, and asked for the cross-tab by party. Here it is:

Very likely:

• Dem 22.6%
• GOP 4.9%
• Inde 16.7

Somewhat likely:

• Dem 28.2%
• GOP 12.6%
• Inde 15.2%

This means that, according to the Scripps poll, about half of Democrats, about a third of Independents and nearly a fifth of Republicans said it was "likely" that “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them” in order to go to war.

That's disturbing, even if we allow for statistical margin of error

But deep breath, as I wrote in my initial column, these questions often are “nets that capture extreme partisans,” and often emotions at a moment of heightened opposition.

But the “truther” conspiracy does appear to more significantly transcend partisanship. And no matter who believes it, it remains among the worst breed of conspiracy theories.

I heavily qualified the Rasmussen “truther” question because it only asked, “Did Bush know about the 9/11 attacks in advance?” And as Vega and others noted, that could have captured some folks who correctly knew that George W. Bush's administration was warned of the real threat of terrorist attacks similar to what occurred on September 11, 2001.

Nate Silver wrote, regarding my column, there is a “qualitative” difference between the “truther” and “birther” impact in Congress. I also cannot recall as many Democrats on the Hill tolerating the “truthers” when directly asked. But similarly, I cannot recall a man with a video camera asking a host of liberal Democrats the question.

I find it very hard to believe half of Democrats, a third of Independents and nearly a fifth of Republicans are open to “truther” theories. Even the Scripps question leaves some room for those who believe W. Bush's government was merely incompetent.

Vega's second post spends a lot of words attempting to outright disregard the Scripps poll, however. To me, that reaction is as absurd as a conservative who uses the Scripps poll to argue that half of Democrats clearly believe W. Bush caused or allowed the September 11 attacks to justify war.

The poll question gave a statement that infers either complicity in the September 11 attacks or enough foreknowledge--“took no action”--in order to go to war.

Vega titled that first critique, "a quick lesson: how to misinterpret a poll…”

His second critique is a lesson on how to ignore one.

Well, Vega chewed the poll, somewhat. He concluded:

I'll concede that there are some Democrats who are really nutty -- just a whole lot fewer, I suspect, than Republicans.

I don't know which political camp has more nuts. But Vega's reaction to the Scripps poll reminds me of the concluding paragraph in my initial column:

A few years ago, an Emory psychologist scanned the brains of self-described partisans. Partisans were able to notice the hypocritical statements of the opposing candidate but not the inconsistencies of their preferred candidate. Ideology, it was determined, showed effects similar to drug addiction.

A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week found Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (D) trailing Republican Pat Toomey by 12 points -- Toomey's first lead. A new survey from DailyKos/Research 2000, however, finds Specter back in the lead by 5 points (Aug 10-12, 600 LV, MoE +/- 4%). He also leads by 15 points in the Dem primary against Rep. Joe Sestak -- who leads Toomey by 1 point in a general election matchup.

Specter's 52% favorability rating is 15 points higher than both Sestak and Toomey, and 9 points higher than the Rasmussen survey found. Against Toomey, Specter wins 43% of independents, 3 points more than Toomey.

Dem Primary
Specter 48
Sestak 33
Und 19

General Election
Specter 45
Toomey 40
Und 15

Sestak 42
Toomey 41
Und 17

Specter leads Sestak by 20.0 points in the RCP Average for the Dem Primary. Toomey leads Specter by 2.0 points and Sestak by 3.7 points in the RCP Averages for the General Election.

California Senator Barbara Boxer isn't holding any town halls, though she is doing a series of appearances promoting her new book  - a work of fiction about a diminutive female Senator who runs up against a "power hungry, civil rights trampling Vice President" and a "right-wing radio host without principles."

Nevertheless, there were a couple of tense moments at her most recent book signing in the super friendly confines of Marin County:

Most of the Q and A time was reserved for questions specifically about her book, but Boxer did take a few general questions from the audience.  Not surprisingly, all of them--with the exception of a single rambling 9/11 conspiracy wing-nut--were about the health care debate.

The only prickly moment occurred when the Senator pointedly requested that one audience member not point at her while she asked her question.

Yes, please, whatever you do, don't point at the Senator when you speak to her. It's so rude.