Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Visual source: Newseum

Robert J. Geller:

As I type this at my home here, every television channel here is devoting almost all of its coverage to reports of the staggering damage caused by the earthquake that occurred Friday off the Pacific Coast of northeastern Japan. The shaking itself, and the tsunami and fires caused by the quake, have combined to cause staggering damage. Based on past experience, it will be several days before the scale of the disaster fully emerges, as communication with the most damaged areas is still cut off.

Wesley K. Clark:

Gen. Wesley Clark says Libya doesn't meet the test for U.S. military action

National Journal:  

Paul Maslin: 'VICTORY'???!!!  Pyrrhus Had Nothing on Scott Walker.

I was Gray Davis? pollster from 1993 through his two gubernatorial victories and his ultimate defeat to a recall movement and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.

Make no mistake, the union-busting strategy whose true nature was finally completely unmasked by the junta-like power play at the State Capitol in Madison last night will lead to Walker?s premature ouster from office. He has been trapped by too many lies and the punk nature of the attempted suspension of democratic principles (Lincoln had an actual war to fight when he suspended habeas corpus; Walker is trying to beat up on elementary school teachers) by him and his cronies. Whether or not we succeed in ousting enough Senators from office this year, and Wisconsin politics will be dominated for the next several months by those recall campaigns, the ultimate fate for Walker is sealed: he will be recalled from office as soon as legally possible.

The Fix:

There is no official campaign for Palin or any other major potential presidential candidate, but she is getting judged by voters as if there is. And so far she's moving in the wrong direction.

For a long time, it was accepted that, while she might not be broadly popular, she would at least have enough juice with the base to perform well in the primaries. Recent polling in Iowa and New Hampshire, though, shows her dropping in those two states -- including her ratings in Iowa, which would be a very important state for her. And Thursday's Bloomberg poll suggests we might be getting to the point where Palin is a bona fide liability - ala Pelosi - for the GOP.

So far, Palin has been a limited feature in Democratic attacks, but rest assured that Democrats are recording everything potential GOP candidates say about Palin from here on-out.

Sarah Palin has become a joke, and not a funny one. Fact is, she doesn't have the right stuff to be President. But only a handful of Republicans realized from the get-go that she never did.

Tom Jensen/PPP on swing state polling for 2012:

Why is Obama doing better? It's actually not because he's become more popular. His average approval rating in the three states was 47% in late November/early December and now it's...still 47%.

It has more to do with the unpopularity of the Republicans.

David Corn:

Before the 2010 congressional elections, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his fellow GOPers developed and implemented a simple campaign strategy: say "where are the jobs?" over and over and over. Even though the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had declared thst President Barack Obama's stimulus package had created or saved about 3 million jobs and a recovery (albeit weak) was under way, the Republicans blamed Obama for screwing up the economy (not Wall Street or the Bush-Cheney administration). In politics, an attack doesn't have to be fair or accurate to work?and this one did.

Since then, have you heard Boehner screaming about jobs? No.

Charles Blow:

Should the government have a significant role in reducing childhood obesity?

That?s the question the Pew Research Center began asking poll respondents a few weeks ago. Nearly 60 percent said yes. Only about 40 percent said no.

This is a remarkable change in public sentiment from 2005 when the Harvard School of Public Health asked a similar question and got almost the exact opposite result.

So what happened in the intervening years? One major occurrence has been the push by the president and first lady to combat the problem. Their initiatives promote commonsense approaches like increased breast-feeding, better diets and more exercise. Who could argue with that? The right, that?s who.

True to form, anything the Obamas support, no matter how innocuous or admirable, the right reflexively rejects, sometimes in malicious tones. Rush Limbaugh went so far as to comment on the first lady?s own weight as part of his criticism last month. (I have to bite my tongue and bind my fingers to keep from pointing out the obvious hypocrisy.)

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/L91TRP4081A/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

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