Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour jumped down the Confederate rabbit hole on Sunday. Barbour said on CNN that he agreed with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's initial decision to name April Confederate History Month, even though the proclamation made no mention of slavery.

Barbour is chairman of the Republican Governors Association. He is one of the most influential Republicans in the country. In fact, on Saturday, The Fix named him the most influential Republican in the country. By Sunday, Barbour gave his prominence a black eye (and perhaps his party as well).

Barbour has attached himself to McDonnell's Confederate mistake. That decision shocks few in Mississippi but plays out badly on the national stage. My recent column on the subject put one of the issues this way:

The Confederacy cannot be divorced from its consequence. If the South won, blacks would have remained enslaved as "property." Because the Union won, blacks were liberated as people and Americans.

Barbour made the same mistake. He divorced the Confederacy from its consequence. This is one reason why Barbour's stature will likely not carry him to the contenders circle in 2012, for the GOP nomination that is.

At best, Barbour's comment illustrates insensitivity to the most scarring American racial issue. It is also rather unhinged from history. Barbour tries to make the point that Southern Democrats and Republicans share this view. That is truest in his region, the Deep South. But that's a point that is beside the point.

On the national stage, we can now count two prominent Republican governors who have taken this Confederate stand. At some point, these mistakes create an image problem not only for individual politicians but re-substantiate a stereotype that has long dogged the Republican Party. That indeed becomes a GOP problem. And it is a problem Republicans better quickly handle.

Should both Republican Pat Toomey and Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter win their respective primaries on May 18, Toomey would have a 7-point advantage heading into the November general election matchup in Pennsylvania, a new Morning Call/Muhlenberg College poll finds (March 29-April 7, 402 LV, MoE +/- 5%).

Matched up against Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), Toomey leads by 11 points but receives just 33% suppport. Like Sestak, Toomey is a former congressman and the result shows that much of the state still knows little about either.

Obama's approval rating is just 45%, and Republicans hold a 41%-40% edge in the generic congressional ballo test.

Toomey 47
Specter 40
Und 9

Toomey 33
Sestak 22
Und 34

In the governor's race, Attorney General Tom Corbett (R) holds big leads over the top Democratic candidates -- Dan Onorato, Jack Wagner and Joe Hoeffel -- all of whom still are mostly unknown statewide.

Corbett 42 - Onorato 18 - Und 40

Corbett 44 - Wagner 16 - Und 49

Corbett 45 - Hoeffel 11 - Und 44

A couple of recent news items from America's institutions of higher learning:

Item One: Drake University, a $35,000 per year private school in Des Moines, Iowa, that bills itself as providing a "thriving intellectual environment," is set to host David Ray Griffin as a speaker on April 23. Griffin will explain to Drake's students why 9/11 was not an attack led by a group of murderous radical Islamist thugs but was instead "an inside job led by Dick Cheney." I'm not joking.

Item Two: On Friday we learned about the story of Professor Ricardo Dominguez at UC San Diego. Dominguez, who is said to be a "scholar in the emerging field of electronic civil disobedience," led an "online sit in" protest on the President of the University of California's web site. In somewhat less flowery, 1960's parlance, he had 400 students launch something resembling a DOS attack that crashed the President's web site for an hour and a half. This is, the story noted, a violation of the University's rules and quite possibly a criminal act:

Joe Nalven, who worked as a private attorney in the 1990s and represented a UCSD professor facing dismissal, said he believes the university has a case against Dominguez.

“If he has done the things I've read that he's claimed, I would say it's actionable,” said Nalven, who lectures at San Diego City College. “There are limits to academic freedom.”

Tenured professors enjoy a certain level of academic freedom but have to comply with campus policies. UCSD's faculty code of conduct says unacceptable conduct includes “intentional disruption of functions or activities sponsored or authorized by the university,” and “unauthorized use of university resources or facilities on a significant scale for … political reasons.”

For his part, Professor Dominguez has come up with a somewhat bemusing defense: “A new form of art is not a crime,” he said to cheers from his fellow protesters.

The New York Daily News has new deets on the foiled al-Qaeda terror plot to bomb the New York subway system:

Zazi and his two Queens friends allegedly planned to strap explosives to their bodies and split up, heading for the Grand Central and Times Square stations - the two busiest subway stations in New York City.

They would board trains on the 1, 2, 3 and 6 lines at rush hour and planned to position themselves in the middle of the packed trains to ensure the maximum carnage when they blew themselves up, sources said.

During Zazi's brief visit to Queens from his home in Denver last September, he rode the subway multiple times to the Grand Central and Wall St. stations, scouting where to best spread death and mayhem, the sources said.

Zazi has confessed that he, Medunjanin and Ahmedzay - all buddies from Flushing High School - traveled to Pakistan in August 2008 to fight with the Taliban against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

There they were recruited by Al Qaeda for the Manhattan "martyrdom" mission.

They received military training at a terror camp in the Waziristan region, and Zazi was taken aside and given special bomb-making training because of his knowledge of the subway system.

The attack was to take place on Sept. 14, 15 or 16 - as soon as the bombs had been assembled - with Sept. 14 the most likely date, sources said.

Are you sure you want to stay in the GOP primary, Gov. Crist?

Rasmussen's latest numbers in the Crist-Rubio race (500 Primary LVs, 4/8, MoE +/- 4.5%) show that the former Florida House Speaker has widened his advantage over Crist.

Senate Primary Election Matchup
Rubio 57 (+1 vs. last poll, 3/18)
Crist 28 (-6)
Und 12 (+4)

Crist held a 14 point lead in an October Rasmussen poll; the two were tied in mid-December. It's hard to imagine another turnaround happening before the August 24 primary.

Rubio is viewed favorably by 72 percent of these GOP voters, compared to 55 percent for Crist. The governor is viewed unfavorably by 44 percent.

A new Mason Dixon poll for the Las Vegas Review-Journal (625 RVs, 4/5-7, MoE +/- 4%) shows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) still faces an uphill battle for re-election, but that his numbers are boosted somewhat by the inclusion of a tea party candidate.

General Election Matchups
Lowden (R) 46
Reid (D) 38
Ashjian (TP) 5
Und 11

Tarkanian (R) 39
Reid (D) 39
Ashjian (TP) 11
Und 11

In a February survey that did not include Ashjian, Lowden led Reid 52-39, and Tarkanian led Reid 51-40.

The Mason Dixon survey also shows that Sue Lowden remains the GOP favorite.

Senate Primary Election Matchup
Lowden 45 (-2)
Tarkanian 27 (-2)
Angle 5 (-3)
Other 7 (+6)
Und 15 (unch)

After the jump, numbers in the gubernatorial primary and general election.
(more...)

It's not much of a surprise, but Sarah Palin appears to be a fan of Marco Rubio.

The Shark Tank, a pro-Rubio political blog in Florida, posts this video of the former Alaska governor responding to a shouted question about whether she'd endorse the insurgent Senate candidate.

"I love Marco Rubio!" she replied.

Asked to say hello to Rubio, Palin urges him to "keep up the good work," adding: "Call me! Can I help ya?"

Rubio and Palin, Republicans who have strongly embraced the tea party movement, have yet to cross paths. Rubio gave a keynote speech at CPAC in February, but Palin did not attend. A joint appearance in Florida would be a real barn burner if the former Florida House speaker does decide to ring Palin for a visit.

NEW ORLEANS -- Mitt Romney won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll today with 24% of the vote -- garnering 1 more vote than Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich tied for third with 18%.

There were a total of 1,806 votes cast. Romney received 439 votes, Paul 438.

The poll, meant to take the pulse of Southern GOP activists, has little meaning, but Romney -- who did not even attend the event -- will surely use it to tout his credentials. He was even able to defeat Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February and pushed his supporters to attend this event.

Romney, as David Weigel reported, received some help from Nancy French's Evangelicals for Mitt, who offered "around 200 tickets for free, for anyone who wants to come and support Mitt Romney."

Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist won the straw poll at the 2006 SRLC in Memphis, where he bused supporters in to boost his vote total. However, Frist did not end up running for president. John McCain, the frontrunner at the time, threw off the credibility of the results that year by encouraging his supporters to vote for George W. Bush.

This year's straw poll ballot did not offer a line to write-in a candidate not listed. The candidates on the ballot included: Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Gary Johnson, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Mike Pence, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

Not on the ballot were Haley Barbour, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and John Thune. (more...)

In the first quarter of 2010, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist raised less than a third of what his Senate primary opponent Marco Rubio brought in. The Crist campaign announced Friday night that it raised $1.1 million from January through March.

The news is yet another sign of the widening gap between the two candidates, with more than four months remaining until the August 24 primary.

Rubio, the former Florida House speaker, raised $3.6 million in the first quarter, but did not release his cash-on-hand total. He had $2 million at the end of December.

Crist appears to have spent as much as he raised, as he ended the quarter with about the same amount he had at the beginning -- $7.5 million.

A Research 2000 poll (600 LVs, 4/5-7, MoE +/- 4%) conducted for the Daily Kos shows both Democrats narrowly leading Rob Portman (R) in the open Senate race, while Gov. Ted Strickland (D) has an edge in his re-election bid.

Gubernatorial General Election Matchup
Strickland (D) 45 -- Kasich (R) 40 -- 15

Strickland led 44-39 in the last Kos/R2K poll of Ohio in July. He leads by 1 point in the RCP Average.

Senate General Election Matchup
Fisher 43 -- Portman 39 -- Und 18 (RCP Average: Portman +0.5)
Brunner 41 -- Portman 40 -- Und 18 (RCP Average: Portman +1.5)

In the Democratic primary (400 LVs, MoE +/- 5%), Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher leads Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner 35-26, with 39 percent undecided.

The survey found that 43 percent of Ohioans were more likely to vote for a candidate that supports the health care law and will work to improve it, while 37 percent were more likely to vote for a candidate who backed a complete repeal.