CBS' Ambinder: Palin Was 'Presidential-Esque'

"Sarah Palin, in a sense has thrown a gauntlet"
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On "Washington Unplugged" Wednesday, CBS News chief political consultant Marc Ambinder commented on Sarah Palin's "America's Enduring Strength" video statement:

"It's a remarkable video for several reasons," Ambinder said. "If you look at the video, and you look at the scope of what she says, it's almost presidential-esque."

Ambinder noted to CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante that her response before President Obama's scheduled remarks Wednesday evening elevates her status as a prominent Republican, "I think it makes her the most prominent Republican, in a sense, to respond or to 'prespond' to what President Obama is going to say tonight."

We have two comments of our own. First, Gov. Palin's video statement was not "almost presidential-esque"; it was presidential, very presidential. Second, you have to wade through several of the remarks on this "Washington Unplugged" segment, but it is See-BS, after all.

- JP

Elevating Sarah

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Marc Ambinder's Friday column has generated some blogosphere buzz. Basically, Ambinder believes that the Obama Administration should play the Palin Card so that the usual suspects will go all Alinsky on her. But wait, we thought they were doing that already. Oh, he must mean that they should go all Alinsky on her openly, instead of quasi-surreptitiously, as they have been doing since August, 2008. But we digress... Ambinder says the Obamunists should not worry that the White House, by focusing on Gov. Palin, will elevate her to even greater national prominence than she already enjoys.

Two bloggers who have posted their takes on Ambinder's take are Doctor Zero and MacRanger.

First the good doctor:

I hope the White House takes Ambinder’s advice, because it would be suicidal. His crack about Palin’s 'reveling in the culture wars' betrays his ignorance. He is confused by the details of her biography, and the sincere affection she earns from her admirers. His Palin Card is drawn from the wrong suit. She’s the Queen of Diamonds, not the Queen of Hearts. Her most impressive statements over the last two years have been on matters of economics, policy, and politics. She has shredded the Administration over health care, the Gulf oil spill, and unrestrained government spending. She’s endorsed dozens of primary candidates, with something like a 70% success rate. Her most notable clashes with 'culture' have involved asking it to stop making rape jokes about her daughters.

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Obama would be making a deadly mistake by calling out Sarah Palin for a political cage match. Let me put this bluntly: virtually no one in America gives a damn what Barack Obama says about anything at this point. What could be more predictable, and less interesting, than Obama’s opinion on any given subject? Who wants to contemplate the economic wisdom of a guy who looted the Treasury for a trillion dollars, with less benefit than we could have achieved by stuffing hundred dollar bills into random cereal boxes? Who’s excited to hear about the next plan to convert taxpayer dollars into Democrat campaign funds? Who’s hungry for another hour of tedious excuses about permanently broken markets and the titanic dead hand of George W. Bush? Who wants a lecture on ethical business practices from the titular head of the party that gave us Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters? What use is another hollow foreign-policy speech from a man who sees no global adversary to rival the menace of Arizona? Even Obama’s supporters don’t hear anything he says any more. There’s nothing left to hear.

Palin, on the other hand, commands attention. Lots of it comes from people who dislike her, of course, but she definitely gets people talking. Many of her detractors have a surprising ability to quote her verbatim, stretching back for weeks. Obama’s critics need Google searches to remember what he said yesterday. They can only recall that it was boring, and expensive.

(More)

And from Macsmind:

Yes [everyone knows who Sarah Palin is] and it’s why the popularity is increasing. Why this is happening is a matter of object confusion for liberals like Ambinder. To them Sarah should have been dead and buried back in 2008. Certainly after she left the governorship. But after writing a book that flew off the shelves, still commanding crowds and even out endorsing Barack Obama with more successes than his failures, it’s undeniable. Like the Hulk, you keep attacking she’ll get stronger.

But another thing that liberals miss about Sarah is that she IS the voice, the national glue of the Tea Party movement. Somebody had to step forward and she did. She actually birthed the movement in 2008 from her run with McCain. In fact it all provided the most convenient of opportunities to lead this country back to the right, both politically and spiritually.

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Sarah talks of America’s greatness and potential. Liberals have spent their quarter talking down America and apologizing for her. Americans don’t believe that – the vast majority don’t and they’re sick and tired of that message.

Ambinder whines that the “Fox-Rush Nexus” would respond to criticism by Barack Obama, but so would America, who now are beginning to view her in higher esteem than he. It would be utter foolishness by Obama to take that advice.

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Our own take is that we never considered Ambinder to be the sharpest harpoon on the ship, and his latest column proves that. Doc and Mac have given his chronometer a thorough cleaning.

- JP

Parsing the poll: NH Senate race (Updated: PPP numbers suspect)

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In his column Wednesday, The Atlantic's liberal-leaning politics editor Marc Ambinder dumps a cold bucket of reality on the left for getting all wee-wee'd up over the latest poll from New Hampshire. "Progressives" are using the survey by Democrat pollsters PPP to argue that GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte is somehow doomed... doomed! because Sarah Palin endorsed the Republican last week.

According to PPP, Ayotte had a seven-point lead over Democrat Paul Hodes in the survey the company conducted in April. PPP polled again over the three-day span of July 23 to July 25, and the Republican is now up by three points. Considering that PPP's methodology has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percent, the actual difference between the April and July polls could be as insignificant as six-tenths of a point. As Ambinder reasons:

I don't see the connection, or much actual movement. Logically, one cannot connect any appreciable drop in Ayotte's numbers to one thing that happened so recently; this is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. PPP covers themselves by modifiers, as in, "Palin's endorsement may well be playing a role in this." Maybe. The poll suggests that most independents -- those famous New Hampshire independents, that 50 percent of New Hampshire voters -- are less willing to vote for a candidate who gets the support of Sarah Palin. That's an interesting data point, but it screams for more information: of Republican-leaning independents, how salient is this belief? And since PPP last polled in April, why isolate Palin's endorsement as the thing that has damaged Ayotte's standing among moderates? Nothing happened for three months, and suddenly Palin makes Ayotte a Mama Grizzly, and suddenly Ayotte's ratings drop? Eh. More information is needed.

Democrats are in a tizzy about this, as anything involving Sarah Palin's interaction with a candidate is like catnip for them. Truth is, New Hampshire might be one state where Palin's endorsement hurts a Republican if you go by the conventional picture that people have in their minds of New Hampshire voters, but beyond that, there's not much to say or conclude. Truth is, Palin has endorsed some winning candidates and some losing candidates, but she's done so carefully, strategically, and more cannily that she's been given credit for. Truth is, as PPP points out, the Palin endorsement might have helped Ayotte among Republicans. It's an open primary and there's no competition on the Democratic side, so plenty of true independents can vote in the GOP contest if they want. So Palin may have an effect. She may not. We don't know, and won't know, for a while.

Ambinder's voice of reason is sure to be tuned out by hysterical Democrats who see their 2010 prospects sinking faster than the Titantic. They are desperate to find any life saver to cling to, given that the latest weekly generic congressional ballot polling by Rasmussen Research shows Republicans up by ten points over the Dems among likely voters.

In Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial primary in Oklahoma, Palin-backed Congresswoman Mary Fallin was victorious in a 25-point blowout of her nearest rival to win her party's nomination for governor. That makes Gov. Palin a record of 10-4 in her 2010 endorsements for candidates in primary, runoff and special elections. President Obama would give his golf clubs for a record like that. In fact, by Ian Lazaran's analysis:

Palin's endorsement in a state that is allegedly a bad fit for her brings just as many New Hampshire voters to a candidate endorsed by her as the number of voters that Obama brings to a candidate that he endorsed in his home state of Illinois.

- JP

First Update: The same PPP, the pollsters who planted the meme that Sarah Palin's endorsement may be playing a role in what turned out to be very little movement in Ayotte's numbers against Democrat Paul Hodes is now saying that her lead in the GOP primary is "pretty thorough."

On the PPP blog, Tom Jensen reports on some of the poll internals:

She's been able to unite the various factions of the party around her. She's up 48-12 with people who think the party's too liberal, 38-14 with people who think it's too conservative, and 53-15 with ones who think it's the fine way it is. She's the overwhelming favorite of Tea Partiers but she's also up 46-17 with folks who don't consider themselves Tea Party members and 41-10 with those who aren't sure. And she pairs a 43-16 advantage with conservatives with a 48-14 [favorability] with moderates.

Sarah Palin's endorsement has received a lot of attention of late but how important that really is to Ayotte's advantage is unclear. 38% of primary voters say they're more likely to vote for a Palin endorsed candidate to 28% who say that would turn them away from a candidate and 34% who say it doesn't make a difference either way.

Public opinion poll numbers need to be viewed with a critical eye. Most important is the pollster's methodology. What was the size of the sample? What was the margin of error? What are the demographics of the sample, i.e., how is it composed by party affiliation, age groups, and other factors? Did the polling firm weight the same by party affiliation? If so, it is using current statistics or older data? The number of voters who are registered Republicans has been rising since 2009, for example, but some polls are using years-old data which favors Democrats). Was the sample drawn from a sub-population of likely voters or just adults from the general population? Poll results are meaningless unless these questions have been answered. Don't trust any poll which tries to hide this vital information.

h/t this update: roy y

Second Update: Jim Geraghty asked those questions and a few more, and the answers explain a lot about PPP's results. It appears as though PPP should be an acronym for "Patently Phony Polling."

h/t this update: Brian F

Third Update: From a Wednesday editorial in the Concord Monitor:

Public Policy Polling released the results of a New Hampshire survey it conducted Friday through Sunday. The headline on the press release read, "Republican Chances are Good in New Hampshire Senate Race." The release emphasized the low favorability rating of U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, the only candidate who filed for the Democratic primary, and said he is "behind the most popular Republican candidates Kelly Ayotte and Bill Binnie."

But PPP, as the polling outfit is known, also has a blog. There, under the headline, "NH looking more competitive," the first paragraph read: "Kelly Ayotte's seen her appeal to moderate voters crumble in the wake of her endorsement by Sarah Palin and her lead over Paul Hodes has shrunk to its lowest level of any public polling in 2010 - she has a 45-42 advantage over him, down from 47-40 in an April PPP poll."

Look, the last thing we want to do is take these numbers seriously because they don't even purport to measure the primary campaign currently being waged. But even if you do give credence to this hypothetical match-up, it's preposterous to draw bold conclusions from numbers whose variation from April to now could just reflect statistical noise.

The kicker is, the same PPP blog post ends with this: "Numbers we'll release tomorrow on the Republican primary show that the Palin endorsement has certainly helped Ayotte on that front."

No kidding. Maybe Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent didn't read that far. He blogged yesterday under the headline "More evidence Palin should stay inside her bubble." Whereupon a web editor created a link to Sargent at the top of the Post's home page. And so for a while yesterday, one of the most prominent headlines on the website of one of the nation's largest newspapers read: "Poll: Palin endorsement backfires."

Sure it has.

- JP

Marc Ambinder: Why Palin Endorsed Fiorina

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Mark Ambinder, The Atlantic's politics editor, gives his reasons why he thinks Sarah Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina:

Well, it's kind of simple. DeVore is almost certainly going to lose. And more self-identified Tea Partiers back Fiorina, despite what one might assume from looking at the race. Fiorina's spending-cuts message resonates among these voters.

In the long-term, Palin might just have found a wealthy new friend who will be Senator from California and in a position to endorse her in a presidential primary. But there's no shortage of reasons to think that Palin simply decided to pick the person who best represented the values held by her constituency. And that, according to these folks themselves, is Carly Fiorina.

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Palin wants to a pick a winner, she wants to go where her supporters are, and she might simply just enjoy Fiorina's sparking personality.

Read Marc Ambinder's full column here.

Update: Ambinder doesn't mention the buzz about DeVore's campaign allegedly paying staff with taxpayer dollars (h/t: Adrienne Ross). Even if this is not going on, just the appearance of such a practice would be enough by itself to make Gov. Palin cross DeVore off of her endorsement list.

- JP

Marc Ambinder on the Palin Paradigm

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It's always fascinating to read what liberals write when they try to figure out Sarah Palin and explain her to other liberals, as Marc Ambinder does in his latest column for The Atlantic. Unlike his colleague Andrew Sullivan at that publication, Ambinder at least isn't completely unhinged, and he's not as clueless as most others on the left when they try to grok what those of us in flyover country are all about.  

Ambinder says not only is Sarah Palin running for president in 2012, but she is doing so by establishing her own paradigm. It was easy to pull excerpts from his piece. All we had to do was leave out most of the elitist nonsense:

"If the primaries were this year, I suspect she'd be nominated," a senior adviser to one of Sarah Palin's potential rivals confides. It's easy to see why: no one who's thinking of running beats the enthusiasm she generates among Republican activists. But there is more to the case for Palin than just the confluence of her personality and a vacuum within the Republican Party: there is a method to her management of her public image. It strongly hints that she has pretty much decided to run for president in 2012, unless something knocks her out of the race; it is more organized and structured that it appears; and it is something that Republican insiders, in particular, will ignore at their peril.

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The only presidential candidate who is able to put the boots to Obama and get away with it. What's she running for? Not the question. What's she running against? Not just Rockefeller Republicanism and the media, or pointy-headed law lecturer presidents, or Katie Couric: she wants to relitigate a bunch of issues that once were settled but now seem to be unraveling. The unrestricted embrace of immigration and the dilution of an American culture. Overweening Greenism. A complicated socially engineered tax code. A much larger role for government (embraced by the president who said that the era of Big Government Was Over and his successor, who was a Republican). The rule of experts. Even the concept of bipartisanship itself.

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Not a single other Republican presidential candidate can build a crowd like Palin, can run against something like Palin (be it Washington, the media, the McCain campaign or Obama); no one speaks to the resentment/aspirational conservatives like she does; no one's life has better exemplified the way they perceive their struggle against the elite. We like to think about presidential primaries in paradigms, but candidates who fit with the times often find ways to completely subvert established paradigms.

Read Marc Ambinder's column unabridged here.

- JP