Rasmussen Tracking Poll Puts Romney up 5, Santorum Up 1 Over Obama

The liberal media will continue to serve as an advocate for the Obama administration/agenda and do whatever they can to make sure he's re-elected. Conservatives know that. But with polls showing that only 32% of the country feeling that the country is heading in the right direction, unemployment at 8.3% and the foul double standards instituted by the Left continuing to display themselves week after week, the reality that the gig is up for Barack Obama's shocking presidency keeps getting closer and closer:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19 (see trends).


Looking at Tuesday's upcoming primaries, the GOP race in Alabama is essentially a three-way tie, while Mitt Romney leads by eight in Mississippi. Nationally, Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 12 points. Regardless of who they want to win, 80% of Republican Primary Voters nationwide believe Romney will be the party's nominee.


With the perception growing that he will be the GOP nominee, Romney leads President Obama by five points in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Today's numbers show Romney at 48%, Obama at 43%. That’s Romney’s largest lead since December. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update).


If Santorum is the Republican nominee, he is up by one point over the president, 46% to 45%. This is the second time since polling began in 2011 that Santorum has had a slight lead over Obama. Romney is the only other candidate to lead the president more than one time in the polls. See tracking history for Obama vs. all four Republican candidates.

RELATED: Santorum takes Kansas; Romney wins Wyoming

Soledad O’Brien And Breitbart’s Joel Pollak Clash Over Critical Race Theory

Mediaite.com:

CNN’s Starting Point got heated Thursday as Breitbart.com’s Editor-In-Chief Joel Pollak clashed with host Soledad O’Brien about the significance of the video of President Obama hugging a Harvard professor. O’Brien didn’t quite understand why the recently publicized video was a “bombshell.”


“What part of that was the bombshell? Because I missed it. I don’t get it,” O’Brien exclaimed. “What was a bombshell?”


“Well, the bombshell is the revelation of the relationship between Obama and Derrick Bell,” Pollak pointed out.


“Okay, so he’s a Harvard Law student and a Harvard Law Professor, yeah.” O’Brien added.


“Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia,” Pollak stated. “He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory, which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.”


“So that is a complete misreading,” O’Brien interrupted. “I’ll stop you there for a second — then I’ll let you continue. That is a complete misreading of critical race theory. That’s an actual theory. You could Google it and some would give you a good definition. So that’s not correct. But keep going.”


“In what way is it a critical misreading?” Pollak countered. “Can you explain to me? Explain to your readers (sic) what it is,”


“I’m going to ask you to continue on,” O’Brien quickly replied. “I’m just going to point out that that is inaccurate. Keep going. Tell me what the bombshell is. I haven’t seen it yet.”


“Well, wait a minute!” Pollak interjected. “You’ve made a claim that my characterization of critical race theory as the opposite of Martin Luther King is inaccurate. You’re telling your viewers that, but you’re not telling them what it is.”


“Critical race theory looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law and as a legal academic who would study this and write about it, he would advance the theory about what exactly happened when the law was examined in terms of racial politics,” O’Brien explained. “There is no white supremacy in that. It is a theory. It’s an academic theory and as one of the leading academics at Harvard Law School, he was one of the people as part of that conversation. So that is a short definition.”


“I’m glad we’ve got you saying that on tape because that’s a complete misrepresentation,” Pollak hit back. “Critical race theory is all about white supremacy. Critical race theory holds that civil rights laws are ineffective, that racial equality is impossible, because the legal and Constitutional in America is white supremacist.”


The two argued over the relevancy of critical race theory to the conversation, with O’Brien trying to move things back to the “bombshell” and Pollak saying, “You can’t derail this, Soledad.” O’Brien eventually concluded that Pollak wanted to make the connection between Obama and the “radical” Bell. Pollak accused O’Brien of obfuscating the real issue, which was the media sweeping things under the rug, and O’Brien began to accuse Pollak of still not understanding critical race theory.


Then Panelist Jay Thomas interjected. He asked if Pollak was afraid that a secret black movement was going to rise up and murder him. Pollak responded by saying he was just accused of being a racist and afraid of black people, but answered Thomas’ query anyway.


“At every point in his life when he could have followed the path of Martin Luther King, he threw in his lot with the Jeremiah Wrights and the Derrick Bells of the world,” Pollak said.


GBTV’s Amy Holmes then chimed in, wondering why the raw video didn’t surface in 2008.


“Of what?!” O’Brien exclaimed. “Of hugging Derrick Bell, the renowned Harvard Law Professor?”


Holmes countered by saying that it should have been something, “for the public to decide, not the media to decide,” and that the media, “did not allow this to be put into the public square.” She then made a stellar observation that she was a vegetarian in college and now enjoys prime rib. It’s not about digging something up on Obama, Holmes explained, it’s about the media not putting it out there.

What a lying, condescending prick that Soledad is. Anyone who ever prescribed to critical race theory in college knows full damn well that it heavily involved white supremacy semantics.

RELATED: Video: CNN beclowns itself painting Breitbart editor-in-chief as racist

Steve Doocy: If Sarah Palin Was Going To Tell Everyone She Voted For Gingrich, ‘Why Didn’t She Endorse Him A Week Ago?’

Pretty valid question if you ask me. And why conservatives let Palin get away with continuing to footsy around running for President is also another point that needs to be made:

During the news rundown on Wednesday’s Fox & Friends, the show played a clip of Sarah Palin revealing to Fox Business Network that she voted for Newt Gingrich in Tuesday night’s Alaska primary, saying that she went for the candidate who could best bust through the “Orwellian Obama rhetoric.”


“If Palin really wants to help, she’s got to get down here,” Brian Kilmeade said. “She’s got to sit by his side and really help him out, because it could be too late.”


Steve Doocy then came through with the one question that most people will probably be wondering about today.


“If she’s going to go ahead and announce that she voted for Newt Gingrich,” he asked, “why didn’t she endorse him a week ago?!”


Doocy noted that Mitt Romney wound up winning Alaska, while Gingrich finished fourth.

Both Rick Santorum And Newt Gingrich Can't Reach 1144 Delegates

This pretty much confirms that it's going to be Romney vs. Obama for the next presidency:

FHQ has been saying since our Very Rough Estimate of the delegate counts a couple of weeks ago that Romney is the only candidate who has a chance to get there. But, of course, I have not yet shown my work. No, it isn't mathematically impossible, but it would take either Gingrich or Santorum over-performing their established level of support in the contests already in the history books to such an extent that it is all but mathematically impossible. Santorum, for instance, has averaged 24.2% of the vote in all the contests. Since (and including) his February 7 sweep, he is averaging 34.7% of the vote. That is an improvement, but it is not nearly enough to get the former Pennsylvania senator within range of the 1144 delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination.


FHQ has modified that original model and put together a spreadsheet that not only better captures the rules in each state, but also allows for a constant level of support across all upcoming contests to be to be plugged in. Let's begin by assuming that Santorum enters with 19 delegates and project a 50% level of support across all the remaining contests with bound delegates. This 50% would apply to not only the statewide vote but the congressional district votes as well. In other words, this would trigger a winner-take-all allocation of delegates in most states that have the conditional winner-take-all/proportional rules hinging on a candidate receiving a majority of the vote.


This is extremely generous. It assumes that candidate X would win nearly all the delegates in states that were not already directly proportional. Less generously, this does not count, like the previous version of this exercise, caucus states with unbound delegates (see Iowa, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, etc.) nor automatic delegates who have yet to endorse.


Where does that leave Santorum? 1075 delegates.


But hold on. What if we add another layer to this by accounting for the thresholds for receiving delegates in the various states (typically 15% or 20%)? This would have the impact of reallocating delegates of those under the threshold in proportional environments to those candidates over the threshold. That would mean more delegates. If we set the number of candidates over the threshold to its lowest value -- 2 candidates in 20% threshold states and 3 in 15% threshold states1 -- that maximizes the number of reallocated delegates.


Where does that leave Santorum? Again, this is assuming winner-take-all rules have been triggered in all the conditional states. It assumes that the likely bare minimum of candidates has crossed the thresholds to receive reallocated delegates. This is very generous.


1162 delegates. That's cutting it awfully close.


Surely the automatic delegates or the unbound caucus delegates would keep Santorum over 1144. Yeah, they could potentially serve as kingmaker until you remember that we just very unrealistically gave Santorum winner-take-all allocation where is was conditionally possible. We gave him a consistent 50% of the vote -- over 15% better than he has performed during his best stretch. Also, Santorum -- given the polls we have access to for today's races -- is very unlikely to reach that level of support across all of the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. That means that after today -- a day with over 400 delegates at stake -- Santorum will not be able to get to 1144.


...and neither will Newt Gingrich.


--
Well just a darn minute there, FHQ. Your cooking the books, right? What if you put Mitt Romney in the same model(s) under the same circumstances? Ah, I'm glad you asked.


In the first model where Romney would be at 50% support statewide and in each congressional district, the former Massachusetts governor would net 1254 delegates.
In the second model that accounts for a likely bare minimum of candidates over the threshold, Romney would surpass 1300 delegates at 1341.


Even if we simulate a scenario where Romney continues to only win half of the congressional districts, he still gets to 1152 delegates in the second more realistic model and .2


--
The bottom line here is that Romney has enough of a delegate advantage right now and especially coming out of today's contests that it is very unlikely that anyone will catch him, much less catch him and get to 1144. The latter seems particularly far-fetched given the above scenarios. And that is a problem in this race. Well, a problem for Gingrich and Santorum anyway. If all either of them can take to voters is an argument that all they can do is prevent Romney from getting to 1144, then neither has a winning strategy

RELATED: Romney, Santorum all tied up in latest poll

Kirsten Powers on Rush and Sandra Fluke: Where’s The Outrage At Misogynistic Liberal Men?

HotAir.com:

If you missed her widely linked Daily Beast item this weekend, read it now. Then read Treacher’s long look back at Our Moral Superiors’ most morally superior moments. The most interesting bit here is when Megyn Kelly asks whether she thinks liberals are genuinely offended by Rush but debilitated by a blind spot about their own side or whether they’re affecting outrageous outrage to put points on the partisan scoreboard. KP thinks it’s the former; I think the truth is in between. They are genuinely offended — not by the rhetoric, though, but by conservative opposition to abortion and support for prioritizing religious conscience above contraception coverage. That’s what makes Rush “anti-woman”; the “slut” name-calling is, supposedly, a window onto that deeper animus. Because Maher and Olbermann and Taibbi are, ahem, “pro-woman” on policy, they can be as personally nasty as they want and it’s not a window onto anything. The quintessential example of this is of course Ted Kennedy, whose career stands for the proposition that you can allegedly assault women and even leave a woman to die and be reelected for eternity so long as you vote the right way.


That is to say, for all of the left’s bleeding-heart smugness about “good intentions,” they’re remarkably bottom-line on this: So long as you support abortion and the rest of their packet on social issues, your actual intent when calling a woman a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick” is irrelevant. It’s an irrebuttable presumption of feminism, a de facto “get out of misogyny free” card. As a thought experiment, imagine, say, Maher suddenly declaring himself pro-life (that’s a mighty tough experiment, I know) and then calling a woman a “c*nt.” Think there’d be a response from the left then? I wonder, in fact, to what extent KP’s sensitivity to this is shaped by the fact that she’s pro-life herself. Must get tiresome for her to be accused of being a “self-hating woman” or whatever while left-wing heroes go around accusing their female critics of looking like pre-op transsexuals.


Apropos of nothing, my favorite comment on the endless Rush/Fluke saga comes from the Political Math guy, who points to this petition at the White House website calling on Panetta to drop Rush from Armed Forces Radio and quips, “Liberals have ‘moral objection’ to Rush, don’t want tax money paying him #SelfAwarenessFail”. Exit question via Guy Benson: Since we’re now all about organizations distancing themselves from media types who use “slut” rhetoric, when does Obama’s Super PAC plan on forfeiting Bill Maher’s $1 million donation?

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh not the only culprit, left guilty of misogyny too

Politiks As Usual: 3/5/12

Mitt Romney Rides High Toward Super Tuesday

U.S. To Offer Legal Backing For 'Targeted Killing' Of Americans Overseas

The Liberal Pursuit Of A Redistributionist Agenda: It's Not The Poor Who Are Benefiting

How Stimulating: Unemployment Benefits For Murderers

Breitbart's Final Message To The Left

Top U.S. Bishop To All Bishops: ‘We Did Not Ask For This Fight, But We Will Not Run From It’

Soros-Funded Lefty Groups Want Religion Out Of Politics

Attention Media: Walmart And Target Have Been Offering $9 Birth Control Since 2007

Obama Warns Against ‘Loose Talk of War’ With Iran

Youngster's Marriage Testimony Earns Death Threats

‘Now They Tell Us’

Gingrich Scolds David Gregory: Why Is Rush Limbaugh ‘The Great National Crisis Of This Week’?

Kirsten Powers Takes On Male Liberal Misogynists In The Media

TheDailyBeast.com:

Did you know there is a war on women?


Yes, it’s true. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, and Ed Schultz have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts. There have been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait. Sorry, that never happened.


Boycotts are reserved for people on the right like Rush Limbaugh, who finally apologized Saturday for calling a 30-year-old Georgetown Law student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” after she testified before congress about contraception. Limbaugh’s apology was likely extracted to stop the departure of any more advertisers, who were rightly under pressure from liberal groups outraged by the comments.


Let it be shouted from the rooftops that Rush Limbaugh should not have called Ms. Fluke a slut or, as he added later, a “prostitute” who should post her sex tapes. It’s unlikely that his apology will assuage the people on a warpath for his scalp, and after all, why should it? He spent days attacking a woman as a slut and prostitute and refused to relent. Now because he doesn’t want to lose advertisers, he apologizes. What’s in order is something more like groveling—and of course a phone call to Ms. Fluke—if you ask me.


But if Limbaugh’s actions demand a boycott—and they do—then what about the army of swine on the left?


During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” (He later apologized.) He once even took to his blog to call yours truly a “bimbo” for the offense of quoting him accurately in a New York Post column.


Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, apparently because he finds her having opinions offensive. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show. His solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton, who he thought should drop out of the presidential race, was to find “somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” Olbermann now works for über-leftist and former Democratic vice president Al Gore at Current TV.


Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.” In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.” When feminist writer Erica Jong criticized him for it, he responded by referring to Jong as an “800-year old sex novelist.” (Jong is almost 70, which apparently makes her an irrelevant human being.) In Taibbi’s profile of Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann he labeled her “batshit crazy.” (Oh, those “crazy” women with their hormones and all.)


Chris Matthews’s sickening misogyny was made famous in 2008, when he obsessively tore down Hillary Clinton for standing between Barack Obama and the presidency, something that Matthews could not abide. Over the years he has referred to the former first lady, senator and presidential candidate and current secretary of state as a “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratched,” and “Madame Defarge.” Matthews has also called Clinton “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity” and once claimed she won her Senate seat only because her “husband messed around.” He asked a guest if “being surrounded by women” makes “a case for commander in chief—or does it make a case against it?” At some point Matthews was shamed into sort of half apologizing to Clinton, but then just picked up again with his sexist ramblings.


Matthews has wondered aloud whether Sarah Palin is even “capable of thinking” and has called Bachmann a “balloon head” and said she was “lucky we still don’t have literacy tests out there.” Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, who is the former president of the Women’s Media Center, told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in 2011 that Matthews
“is a bully, and his favorite target is women.” So why does he still have a show? What if his favorite target was Jews? Or African-Americans?


But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Palin a “dumb twat” and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann “boobs” and “two bimbos.” He said of the former vice-presidential candidate, “She is not a mean girl. She is a crazy girl with mean ideas.” He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, “Don't show me your tits!” as though a woman feeding her child is trying to flash Maher. (Here’s a way to solve his problem: don’t stare at a strangers’ breasts). Then, his coup de grâce: “And by the way, there is a place where breasts and food do go together. It’s called Hooters!”


Liberals—you know, the people who say they “fight for women”—comprise Maher’s audience, and a parade of high-profile liberals make up his guest list. Yet have any of them confronted him? Nope. That was left to Ann Coulter, who actually called Maher a misogynist to his face, an opportunity that feminist icon Gloria Steinem failed to take when she appeared on his show in 2011.


This is not to suggest that liberals—or feminists—never complain about misogyny. Many feminist blogs now document attacks on women on the left and the right, including Jezebel, Shakesville, and the Women’s Media Center (which was cofounded by Steinem). But when it comes to high-profile campaigns to hold these men accountable—such as that waged against Limbaugh—the real fury seems reserved only for conservatives, while the men on the left get a wink and a nod as long as they are carrying water for the liberal cause.

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh Apologizes For Calling Sandra Fluke A ‘Slut’