Hola! Me llamo Tomas Tancredo. Soy de Colorado.
In a previous post, dated July 24, 2010, Yours Truly predicted that Scott McInnis would be Colorado’s Republican candidate for governor, despite charges of plagiarism. I also predicted that Tom Tancredo would not end up running as a third-party candidate and that, ultimately, Colorado would be saddled with another liberty-killing, job-killing, tax-and-spend, regulating liberal, current Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Months later, it turns out that I was wrong on just about every count. And, my final prediction about Hickenlooper’s ascension to the governor’s mansion is increasingly coming into doubt. A recent poll shows Tancredo only four points behind Hickenlooper, which is within the margin of error, especially considering that six percent said they were undecided.
Meanwhile, Dan Maes, who won the Republican primary, is dropping into oblivion, fighting his own round of ethics problems. What those are, I’m not sure, but it is certain that Republicans are having buyer’s remorse and are moving in droves back to Tancredo.
In late August, the same Rasmussen poll had Maes at 31 percent and Tancredo at 18 percent. Now, Tancredo’s at 38 and Maes is down to 12, which shows that just about anything can and will happen in this election. Therefore, I apologize for my earlier post, which simply repeated the conventional wisdom.
Tancredo is well known as practically a one-issue candidate. Whatever the policy issue being debated, Tancredo is almost certain to bring it back around to illegal immigration. He’s been laser-focused on this issue for as long as I can remember, before, during and after his time as a U.S. Congressman.
Ironically, what has been Tancredo’s Achilles heel may actually be a boon in 2010. The Obama administration and the left in general have been so transparently dishonest about immigration that even Hispanics are starting to question the motives behind framing illegal immigration as a racial issue. It may not be a great idea to tell Hispanics who are playing by the rules to essentially step to the back of the citizenship line since we have tons of people breaking the law who are more deserving. And why are they more deserving? My guess is that they represent a gigantic and uneducated voting bloc that is less likely to starve the oxygen that feeds the fire of today’s Democratic Party: dependency and grievance mongering. Ignorance is the political elixir that keeps progressive/leftist ideology from completely falling out of favor in America.
Like me, a lot of people are exhausted by the constant racially-divisive demagoguery. Look around you; it’s 50 years after Jim Crow! Can we please move on and judge people by the content of their character, rather than this childish insistence on defining people by their ethnicity, sex or whatever the identity du jour might be? Progressives are wearing the ideological equivalent of plaid polyester as they, with dramatic irony, refuse to progress past 1972.
As usual, I digress, and will continue to digress in upcoming posts that officially endorse other candidates across our great land. Next time we’ll discuss the race in the 37th Congressional District in Los Angeles County where Star Parker is poised to help break the shackles of those toiling under the yoke of Uncle Sam’s Plantation…
How dire is the political landscape for Democrats? Well, now they’re turning their ire toward Rasmussen Reports. Rasmussen, which polls likely voters, typically runs about five points different than mainstream news polls. It should also be noted that Rasmussen is the most accurate of all the polls in predicting outcomes. Rasmussen was one of the few pollsters that accurately predicted the last election and the generic voter turnout as well.
During the last election Rasmussen didn’t show the the wild swings that Zogby and other showed in the last days. At the time some Republicans complained about Rasmussen. This is the textbook example of kill the messenger.
“He polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who studies polling. “It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”
On Saturday, Dec. 26, for example, Rasmussen’s daily tracking had Obama’s approval at 44 percent, with a disapproval figure of 56 percent. A Real Clear Politics compilation of other pollsters, meanwhile, showed Obama with an average approval figure of 49.5 percent and disapproval of 45.1 percent.
In the 2004 election the Real Clear Politics compilation of other pollsters showed Bush’s approval rating at 49%. On election day Rasmussen had Bush’s approval rating at the correct number of 52%. What many on the left fail to see is that most mainstream polling agencies almost always poll kindly for Democrats. I don’t think that anything sinister is going on; it’s just poor polling. Here’s an example from CNN in April 2004.
The survey, conducted Friday through Sunday, found that among all adults — not just likely voters — only 46 percent approved of Bush’s performance in office — the lowest rating of his presidency in this poll. [emphasis added]
Polls that measure a “survey of adults” are almost always 3-5 points biased toward Democrats. I doubt many Democrats were concerned by CNN’s headline: “Bush Approval Hits New Low in Poll.” Basically the only crime Rasmussen is committing is that he’s accurate and he polls every day. If you don’t like the message, kill the messenger.
The President is spending enormous political capital on health care reform. The rush strategy that worked so well with the so-called stimulus bill isn’t working with health care. The rush to pass any kind of health care reform makes sense to the White House. Obama wants to cash in his popularity, but it’s probably too late. None of Obama’s major policies have been popular. Even his pick for the Supreme Court is decisively unpopular. The price of change is finally taking its toll on the White House. Obama’s approval ratings are taking a beating and the Democrats are trailing Republicans on the generic ballot. All those Democrats who ran under the flag of fiscal conservatism in 2006 could be gone in 2010 if they blindly support the White House. Now that the president’s popularity is under 50% his ability to bully Congress is diminished.
No one ever said being president was easy. The stock market is starting to surge and housing market appears to have bottomed a few months ago. These are the silver linings to the dark clouds over the White House. While Obama’s hope for enacting major reform may be ending the future still looks bright.
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