XXX Won the Iowa Straw Poll

The Ames, Iowa Straw Poll is essentially a fundraiser. But the media, with nothing better to do, have turned it into an event of such significance that it caused one plausible hopeful who didn't do well -- Tim Pawlenty -- to drop out of the race.

The media breathlessly reported the results of the straw poll live. Well, not breathlessly exactly; the Fox "News" team couldn't figure them out:

But they did make much of the fact that Michele Bachmann won the straw poll. Had Rick Perry not rained on her parade by announcing his candidacy the same day as the straw poll, Bachmann would have been the star of the day. As it was, she made the rounds of all five Sunday morning "news" talk shows.

For 152 or a differences of .90 percent; i.e., less than one percent. Well, sez you, a win is a win. Is it?

Bachmann got a commanding 80 percent of the votes she paid for. -- Stephen Colbert

As usual, I get my news from Comedy Central. But occasionally I follow up with other media, like that ever-reliable hard news right-wing Daily Caller. Alex Pappas of said caller writes,

Bachmann ... gave away far more admission tickets than [Rep. Ron Paul] did. Paul’s campaign gave out 4,750 tickets to straw poll voters, his campaign chairman, Jesse Benton, told The Daily Caller. A ... spokeswoman for Bachmann, wouldn’t disclose the number of tickets her campaign distributed. But Ben Smith of Politico reported that Bachmann’s campaign gave away 6,000 tickets. That would mean Paul gave out about 1,250 fewer tickets than Bachmann.

Yet Bachmann won by only 152 votes.

If Pappas' & Smith's reporting is correct, Paul's base is a lot more loyal than Bachmann's. Bachmann paid for 1,177 more tickets than she got votes. Paul paid for only 79 more votes than he garnered. And why, exactly, did Pawlenty drop out? Did he hand out 6,000 tickets? Or even 4,700? I doubt it. The tickets, BTW, cost $30 each. (I don't know whether or not candidates or others get a bulk discount.)

Funny, the MSM has barely mentioned Paul. As Colbert pointed out, Paul was identified as "XXX" in an AP story. When the MSM deign to mention his name, they describe him as a "niche" candidate. Well, yeah, so is Bachmann -- the fundamentalist Christian, anti-government, fairly confused & really angry niche.  Here's Jon Stewart on Paul's near-win:

I told you I rely on Comedy Central for the news. (To be fair and balanced, Steve Kornacki of Salon defends the MSM's inattention to Paul.)

So who was the real winner of the Iowa Straw Poll? I'd say it was Mr. XXX a/k/a Ron Paul. The losers, of course, are we the people, who sheepishly allow money and the media to determine political outcomes.

The Commentariat -- August 17

Maureen Dowd: "In dueling buses crisscrossing cornfields, a temperate president and intemperate governor check out the political temperature."

I've posted a page for comments on Dowd's column on Off Times Square.

... Marc Ambinder & George Condon of the National Journal: "The White House, burned by failed efforts to work with Republicans and dismayed by a growing perception that President Obama is a weak leader, has made the decision to put more pressure – and blame – on Congress when Obama returns to Washington after his family vacation." ...

     ... More video & story here.

Most Obnoxious MSM Headline of the Day: "Obama Aims to Keep White Voters on Board." The article itself, by Laura Meckler & Carol Lee of the Wall Street Journal is actually a serious analysis of voting patterns.

Profs. David Campell & Robert Putnam, in a New York Times op-ed: "On everything but the size of government, Tea Party supporters are increasingly out of step with most Americans, even many Republicans."

"What Would Hillary Have Done?" Hillary Clinton supporter Rebecca Traister, in a New York Times Magazine article, has the answer. She presents various possibilities, but in the end concludes,

Hillary Clinton’s presidency would probably not have looked so different from Obama’s. She was, after all, a senator who, for a variety of structural and strategic reasons, often crossed party lines to co-sponsor legislation with Republicans, who voted to go to war in Iraq, who moved to the center on everything from Israel to violent video games. You think Obama’s advisers are bad? Hillary Clinton hired, and then took far too long to get rid of, Mark Penn. And her economic team probably would have looked an awful lot like Obama’s. 

Joshua Miller of Roll Call: "Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren is preparing for her likely bid to unseat Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) by attending house parties in the Boston area...." ...

... The Democratic political establishment is ... so obsessed with winning this seat back that Washington elitists are trying to push aside local Democrat candidates in favor of Professor Warren from Oklahoma. -- Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass), in a fundraising letter [emphasis added]

Right Wing World *

Excuse me. The "Texas Miracle" just fell off the page:

Graph by Felix Salmon of Reuters.... Felix Salmon of Reuters: "Perry’s [employment] record is pretty bad, here: he inherited a ratio of more than 47% in Texas from George W Bush, and has presided over a steady decline ever since — including every year of the Bush presidency bar 2005." ...

... ** NEW. Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "Rick Perry’s Texas is Ross Perot’s Mexico come north. Through a range of enticements we more commonly associate with Third World nations — low wages, no benefits, high rates of poverty, scant taxes, few regulations and generous corporate subsidies — the state has produced its own 'giant sucking sound,' attracting businesses from other states to a place where workers come cheap.... He is the 21st-century, homegrown version of the Manchurian candidate." ...

... Michael Scherer of Time: on Hypocrisy Watch: Rick Perry has aggressively lobbied (and won) federal deficit spending dedicated to his own projects, including one huge grant that went to a group of Perry's favorite oil and gas industry buddies. The programs for which Perry's lobbied are the very ones (or worse than the very ones) he is now attacking as "wasteful spending of our children's inheritance." ...

... Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal: twice this weekend Rick Perry railed against an Obama Administration "rule" that doesn't exist and never did. 

... "Perrymania Is Overrated." Ed Kilgore of The New Republic: "Until Perry’s popularity in Iowa can be verified by polls of likely Caucus-goers, the most plausible scenario is a Bachmann win in the Caucuses, followed by Romney victories in Nevada and New Hampshire, and then a Perry breakthrough in South Carolina. This scenario would take the GOP into uncharted territory, since there’s never been a presidential nominating contest where the first three big states were won by three different candidates."

Perry’s rant is a particularly low moment in American political debate. -- Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post, on Rick Perry's remarks about Ben Bernanke

The guy who threatened secession is now calling someone else treasonous? Hello, pot, it’s me, kettle. -- Republican "Insider"

When you’re president or you’re running for president you have to think about what you’re saying because your words have greater impact. President Obama and we take the independence of the Federal Reserve very seriously and certainly think threatening the Fed chairman is probably not a good idea. -- White House Press Secretary Jay Carney  ...

... Steve Benen: The White House is framing a new narrative. "The question for voters is whether someone like Obama, the grown-up who solves problems, or someone like Perry, the buffoon who accuses Ben Bernanke of treason, can be trusted to help make politics work again." ...

* Where the sleaziest, meanest most prolific liar wins the day.

Local News

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "The Florida Supreme Court concluded that [Florida Gov. Rick] Scott 'overstepped his constitutional authority' and 'violated the separation of powers' when he suspended all proposed rules until he could review and approve them. It was the governor’s first executive order. A majority of judges stated that Mr. Scott encroached on the State Legislature’s authority when he opted to unilaterally freeze rule-making." Meanwhile, "teachers, prison workers, food stamp recipients, doctors — are plastering him with [more] lawsuits." The ruling is here (pdf). St. Pete Times story here.: "Scott attorney Charles Trippe had argued that the 'supreme executive power' granted the governor by the state Constitution is among the reasons he has final say over rules developed by state agencies under his control." CW: so much for our Supreme Leader. Jerk.

News Ledes

AP: "... President Barack Obama will give a major speech in early September to unveil new ideas for speeding up job growth and helping the struggling poor and middle class.... The president's plan is likely to contain tax cuts, jobs-boosting infrastructure ideas and steps that would specifically help the long-term unemployed.... All of Obama's proposals would be fresh ones, not a rehash of plans he has pitched for many weeks and still supports, including his 'infrastructure bank' idea to finance construction jobs.... Obama will also present a specific plan to cut the suffocating long-term national debt and to pay for the cost of his new short-term economic ideas."

AP: "Global stocks fell Wednesday in a downbeat appraisal of a Franco-German summit that failed to persuade investors that a convincing fix to the eurozone's spiraling debt crisis was imminent."

Reuters: "Libyan rebels launched an assault on an oil refinery on Wednesday to drive the last remaining troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi out of a city on Tripoli's outskirts and consolidate a siege of the capital.... Gaddafi is looking isolated, with reinvigorated rebel forces closing in on the capital from the west and south and cutting off its road links to the outside." ...

     ... Al Jazeera: "Libyan rebels say they now control most of the strategic western town of Az-Zawiyah, as they continue an offensive aimed at isolating Tripoli, the country's capital."

AP: "Chinese commentators are marking a visit by Vice President Joseph Biden by offering a struggling United States advice: Stop flooding your economy with cheap credit. The prescriptions awaiting Biden, who arrived Wednesday in Beijing, range from cutting government budget deficits to fighting poverty."

The Commentariat -- August 16

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square.

The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was the Eightieth Congress. -- Harry Truman ...

... Norm Ornstein in The New Republic: what Barack Obama can learn from Harry Truman. "Truman seized upon [Congressional] conservative over-reaching and openly fought against what he dubbed the 'Do-Nothing Eightieth Congress.' ... But, unlike Truman, Obama has constantly sought common ground with Congress.... The absence of an energized and angry president demanding better of the do-nothings in Congress can only lead to something worse." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "It looks like President Obama really has found his inner Harry Truman, at least for the moment." CW: a good overview of tea leaves that suggest Obama may finally start ratcheting up his rhetoric. Obama still won't say "Republican," a calculated decision, Cohn surmises, of focus-group testing. ...

... Peter Nicholas of the Los Angeles Times: "As he sets out on a three-day bus tour of the Midwest focused on the economy, President Obama is coming under growing pressure from fellow Democrats to put forward a more aggressive strategy to create jobs than the one he has been touting for months. Obama has offered a jobs package crafted to win Republican support in a divided Congress. But he faces two distinct problems: Republicans say they won't vote for several pieces of the plan. And Democrats contend the program, even if enacted in full, would fall short of what's needed to boost job growth or revive Obama's political prospects.

One Democratic congressman ... said he told White House officials at a recent meeting that they seemed to have Stockholm syndrome — embracing the Republican view that deficit reduction should be a major national priority.

This Is Not 2008. Roger Lowenstein of the Daily Beast: actually, this time, the fundamentals of are economy are strong. The biggest problem: those Bush-era tax cuts, which President Obama should have let expire in 2010 and must allow to expire in 2012.

Anna Palmer of Politico: "Now that the members of the supercommittee have been named, lobbyists have begun strategizing in earnest. And they’ve got their sights set beyond just the elite 12." CW: so predictable it's hardly a story.

Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "President Obama has directed a small team of advisers to develop a proposal that would keep the government playing a major role in the nation’s mortgage market, extending a federal loan subsidy for most home buyers.... The decision follows the advice of his senior economic and housing advisers, who favor maintaining the government’s role as an insurer of mortgages for most borrowers."

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Friday’s federal court ruling against a key provision of the health care reform law makes it almost certain the Supreme Court will decide the law’s constitutionality in the 2012 term.... The high court ... probably won’t rule until June — ensuring that President Barack Obama’s signature law will be the center of another very public debate just five months before the election."

CW: Cenk Uygar is an annoying, perennially pissed-off screamer, but he's right about the beltway crowd, exemplified here in the person of Fareed Zakaria. I used to think Zakaria was a genius, and maybe he is, but some while back he took a ride on the Conventional Wisdom express, & like Charlie on the MTA, he has never returned:

AND Democrats thinking whacking the Tea Party will work this time, now that Americans have seen something of what a Tea Party government looks like:

Right Wing World *

Look, I know there are some who say 'let’s just tax the rich.' ... So if we raise taxes on wealthy people, that means businesses see their taxes go up. I don’t want to raise taxes on employers. -- Mitt Romney, responding to Warren Buffett's op-ed urging Congress to raise taxes on the super-rich ...

... Raising taxes on the rich will have little effect on small businesses. Fewer than 2 percent of small businesses owners make more than $250,000, never mind the $1 million level, at which Buffett is advocating a tax increase. Far more small businesses (14 percent) claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is only available to low-income workers. -- Pat Garofalo of Think Progress

Steven Rattner in the New York Times: "... the leading Republican presidential candidates have ... a philosophy oriented around shrinking the role of the federal government in every imaginable way, by slashing spending, cutting taxes and halting or rescinding regulations. Their mantra is repeal and retrenchment, devoid of new initiatives or a positive agenda. Some of these views are to the right even of the Tea Party; they amount to the most radically conservative positions of any set of candidates at least since Barry M. Goldwater in 1964."

** Matea Gold & Melanie Mason of the Los Angeles Times: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry has powered his political career on the largesse of donors ... [who] have found the rewards to be mutual, reaping benefits from Texas during Perry's tenure.... Nearly half of those mega-donors received hefty business contracts, tax breaks or appointments under Perry, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis."

... If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion. -- Gov. Rick Perry, on Fed Chair Ben Bernanke ...

... Let's Rough up Ben Bernanke (Alternate Title: Texas Governor Is Dangerously Crazy & Ignorant). Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Perry’s comments drew a sharp rebuke by some commentators online." ...

... Conservative columnist John Podhoretz: Perry is "trying to be the next president, and he needs to be judged on that standard. What Perry did was make a thoughtless blunder, an unforced error; we’re now going to spend a couple of days discussing whether he was summoning violence on Ben Bernanke’s head or not, which is of absolutely no use to Perry." ...

... See also conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru, who argues, contra Perry, in favor of the Feds loosening the purse strings. ...

... Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: nonpartisan economists and academicians argue that Rick Perry is not responsible for the "Texas Miracle," which isn't so miraculous anyway and cannot be duplicated at a national level.

If this shirt has a few wrinkles in it, it's not my wife's fault. -- Gov. Rick Perry

The line rang a bell, but I couldn't place it until this morning: It was what the overtly sexist talk-radio kids who stood up in a New Hampshire town hall meeting yelled at Hillary Clinton, helping to feed a sympathetic surge toward her in the state. They were chanting, 'Iron my shirt.' -- Ben Smith of Politico

Psst. Bud. Want to ask Paul Ryan a question? That will be $15 please. And it's a deal. Prince Ben Quayle Son of Dan is charging $35. Reid Epstein of Politico: "It’s no secret why members of Congress would shy away from holding open town hall meetings – it’s no fun getting yelled at by angry constituents or having an uncomfortable question become an unfortunate YouTube moment. By outsourcing the events to third parties that charge an entry fee to raise money, members of Congress can eliminate most of the riffraff while still – in some cases – allowing in reporters and TV cameras for a positive local news story."

* Where the Tea Party is the liberal wing and women know their place.

News Ledes

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "The six-month saga that was Wisconsin's state Senate recall movement ended Tuesday with Democrats retaining two seats -- and Republicans still in possession of a week-old, razor-thin 17-16 majority."

President Obama spoke at a White House Rural Economic Forum this afternoon. Reuters: "President Barack Obama will on Tuesday announce fresh steps to boost rural hiring on the second day of a bus tour through the U.S. heartland to explain his economic and job policies to anxious voters."

New York Times: "A high-profile parliamentary panel investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid released embarrassing new evidence Tuesday that the practice of intercepting voice mail had been widely discussed at the newspaper, contradicting assertions by its owners and editors." Facsimilies of documents are here.

New York Times: "United Nations officials said Tuesday that as many as 10,000 residents of a Palestinian refugee neighborhood in the Syrian port city of Latakia had fled during a four-day assault, as security forces carried out more arrests and intimidation in what residents said was a government attempt to rebuild a wall of fear in one of Syria’s largest cities." Al Jazeera story here, with video.

Reuters: "The leaders of France and Germany meet for high-pressure talks on Tuesday to discuss what further measures they can take to shore up investor confidence in the euro zone following a dramatic market sell-off last week. President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are under pressure to show financial markets they are in agreement on doing more to shore up the embattled currency union -- or risk watching the euro zone unravel." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Tuesday called for closer coordination of economic policy among the 17 countries that share the euro currency and proposed that they enshrine in their constitutions an obligation to balance their national budgets.

AP: "Gunmen wearing military uniforms pulled seven people from a Sunni mosque south of Baghdad and then shot and killed them execution-style, officials said Tuesday, raising the death toll to 70 in Iraq's deadliest day this year."

New York Times: Indiana state investigators are examining structural issues & the actions of state fair officials preceding the storm that caused the collapse of a stage killed five people & injured many more. ...

... AP: Sugarland tour manager Hellen Rollens may have saved the lives of the group & crew when she decided at the last minute to hold the band backstage because of weather.