Tea Party Cruz?

According to much of the press coverage of the Republican Senate primary in Texas, Ted Cruz is just a creature of the Tea Party.  Really?  With his degrees from Princeton and Harvard Law, his background as a Supreme Court clerk and state solicitor general, he hardly fits the media stereotype of a peasant with a pitchfork. And it's not as if he's the first statewide figure in Texas with roots in the conservative or libertarian intellectual worlds:  Phil Gramm leaps to mind.  At his blog, Zachary Courser shrewdly observes:

Given the Republican bona fides of both candidates, their nearly equal hard money totals, and the fact that it was independent expenditures by traditional conservative interests that made the difference for Cruz, describing his victory as a Tea Party success seems overstated. It seems more a recipe for a very traditional, very conservative Republican Senator.

State-Level Presidential Approval

Gallup reports:

A majority of residents in 13 states and the District of Columbia approved of the job Barack Obama did as president during the first six months of 2012. His highest ratings by state were in Hawaii (63%) and Rhode Island (58%), in addition to the 83% approval from District of Columbia residents. In 16 states, his approval rating averaged below 40%, with residents of Utah, Wyoming, and Alaska least approving.
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The list of states in which Obama had majority approval during the first half of the year includes three of the largest states -- California, New York, and Illinois. This helps boost the combined Electoral College vote of states with majority approval of Obama to a total of 185. All of these states have voted reliably for Democratic presidential candidates in recent elections.

Most of the 16 states in which Obama's approval rating is below 40% tend to be smaller in population and thus have fewer electoral votes. The largest of these are Tennessee and Indiana with 11 electoral votes each. The 16 states with approval ratings lower than 40% total 93 electoral votes, and typically have supported Republican presidential candidates in recent elections.

That leaves 21 states in which Obama's approval rating is between 40% and 50%, including some of the largest "swing states" such as Florida (46%), Pennsylvania (46%), and Ohio (44%).

For a Change, Good Numbers for POTUS

Overall, economic numbers have not been huge assets for the president.  But personal income may be a bright spot. Nate Silver writes:

President Obama’s chances of winning the Electoral College improved slightly on Tuesday, to 69.0 percent from 66.9 percent one day earlier, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast model. The change was because of new government data showing faster growth in personal income, one of the seven economic data series that our forecast model uses.

The sluggish growth in personal income — it was previously reported as having increased essentially no faster than the growth rate in the population for much of Mr. Obama’s term — had been one of the better reasons to conclude that his re-election bid was in a great deal of trouble. Measures of personal income are popular in the forecast models of elections produced by political scientists and economists — in part because they potentially do a good job of measuring the economy as it is experienced by voters, and in part because the correlation between personal income and election outcomes has been reasonably high in the past.

There are also reasons to be wary of the personal income data. It is extremely noisy, for instance — with large fluctuations from month to month and from quarter to quarter — and it frequently undergoes significant revisions.

On Tuesday, however, those revisions worked to Mr. Obama’s benefit. Data from recent previous months was revised upward to show more income growth. And the latest print of the data, describing the income growth in June, was also fairly strong.

Democrats Probably Won't Win the House

As previous posts have suggested (here, here, and here), Democrats will have a tough time retaking the House. Joshua Miller writes at Roll Call:

In California, GOP recruitment successes and Democratic missteps have lowered expectations for gains, once considered as high as a half-dozen seats. Democrats lost a potential pickup opportunity in the 31st district when two Republicans advanced in the June “jungle” primary, and there is little hope the party can hold the open 21st district after a series of recruitment missteps. In Florida, a court challenge to the GOP-led redistricting fell flat, leaving Democrats with a likely gain of only one to three seats, less than the six they had hoped for. And in New York, a federal judge drew a map that makes for a lot of competitive races that a Democratic gerrymander would have left comfortably in the party’s column.

Democrats also suffered some bad breaks in the South. A new seat in South Carolina fell out of play when the only Democrat with a real shot was arrested. Three seats in Arkansas — those of retiring Rep. Mike Ross (D) and freshman GOP Reps. Rick Crawford and Tim Griffin — all appeared to be potentially competitive earlier in the cycle. Now, it looks as if a Republican will represent all of them come January.

Referring to Griffin’s 2nd district, which is anchored by Little Rock, influential Democratic pollster John Anzalone said it represented “huge missed opportunities” for his party. “The South is just not the place where you’re going to make a lot of gains this cycle,” he said.

“The South, when you lose seats like you did in 2010, it takes many, many more cycles for that to regenerate back to Democratic opportunity,” Anzalone continued. “The pendulum just swings a hell of a lot slower down there, like it’s going through the humidity.”

Crossroads GPS "News"

Reporters aren't happy when their work appears in political ads, but  Crossroads GPS makes use of a Scott Pelley lead-in to criticize the president's record on jobs.

 

Romney's Trip

Mitt Romney offended Brits by saying that they might not be ready to handle the Olympics.  In Israel, he pleased supporters of Netanyahu but angered Palestinians.  The Polish leg of the trip went best:  he got an endorsement of sorts from Lech Walesa.  Overall, though, it was not exactly a victory tour.  Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write:

It’s hard to imagine that Romney did himself any favors in answering lingering questions about his foreign policy acumen during this trip.

On the other hand, there is an argument to be made that nothing — literally, nothing — other than than the economy at home matters to undecided voters. And that goes double for foreign policy, which is a bottom-of-mind issue (is that a thing?) for most voters.

In a late May Washington Post-ABC News poll, 1 — yes, one — percent of people said that foreign policy was the most important issue of the 2012 campaign. One!

Moreover, the trip happened when Americans were focusing far more on the Olympics than politics.

TV and Republicans

Mediaite reports on CNN coverage of Sarah Palin, which began with the song "Mean Stupid Girls": 

CNN anchor Randi Kaye teased the segment by saying, “Sarah Palin is apparently hungry for chicken and controversy.” Palin stopped at Chick-fil-A to show her support in the midst of national attention on its founder’s anti-gay stance and the chain’s donations to anti-gay groups.
NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard highlighted the musical choice earlier today, saying there would be “outrage” if a similar song was used to “introduce any female Democrat.” HotAir adds that the song selection is generally the job of the production staff, so if there was any “malice aforethought,” it was from one or more individuals on the crew, not Kaye herself.

UPDATE: A CNN spokesperson gives this statement to Mediaite.
“The music selection was a poor choice and was not intended to be linked to any news story. We regret any perception that they were planned together.

The Wrap reports:

The song choice comes eight months after "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" apologized for Fallon's house band, The Roots, playing Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch" as Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann walked onstage.

Also read: NBC Apologizes for Bachmann for Roots' Song

And in the "pure coincidence" department, note the text that CNN repeatedly ran during an interview with RNC communications director Sean Spicer on July 25: