Herman Cain handily wins Florida GOP straw poll

  

Herman Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, followed a strong showing at this week's GOP debate in Orlando by joining most of his fellow Republican presidential candidates in addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Conservative Political Action Conference, in the same Florida city.

One of those meaningless straw polls followed.

But, wait. This one was different. Cain won. He took nearly 40% of the 2,567 votes cast, far outpacing the purported front-runners, Govs. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. That's a real PR setback for both losers and sets the stage for much media questioning of Perry about his stumbling campaign.

Romney had claimed he wasn't trying to win the straw poll, even though aides worked the phones, e-mails and aisles for him.

But Perry made an all-out free-breakfast-come-talk-with-me effort. And he lost, rather big-time, to a man who is the favorite of many conservatives, although a longshot to become the GOP's nominee.

Much of the GOP race attention has been focused on the Rock 'Em-Sock 'Em routine that's....

Gary Johnson added to Fox News/Google GOP debate

 

Gary Johnson has just been added to the roster for the Fox News/Google GOP presidential debate, set for Thursday, Sept. 22, in Orlando, Fla.

The event also features the eight usual participants from the last GOP debate on CNN on Sept. 12 --  Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman Jr., Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

Plus now add the former New Mexico governor, who hasn't been in a debate since the first one, a Fox News debate in South Carolina on May 5.

Johnson is included over the objections of the cosponsoring Florida Republican Party, because he fit the criterion set by Fox News. That is to have at least 1% of the vote in the most recent editions of the five national polls that included him: Fox News, CNN, McClatchy-Marist, ABC and Quinnipiac.

Still no Thaddeus McCotter, as we noted here.

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-- Kate O'Hare

Media critic Kate O’Hare is a regular Ticket contributor. She also blogs about TV at Hot Cuppa TV and is a frequent contributor at entertainment news site Zap2it. Also follow O'Hare on Twitter @KateOH.

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Photo: Gary Johnson addressing "tea party" supporters in May in South Carolina. Credit: Richard Shiro / Associated Press

Who is Thaddeus McCotter and why care?

  

If there are themes to the Republican presidential candidacy of Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter -- other than hardly anybody knows he's running, or if they do know, they're not really sure who he is -- they're the role of the government (or lack thereof) in revitalizing the economy, the revolution in communications technology, dealing with China and the rights of sovereign citizens.

Oh, and he's introduced legislation to fix Social Security. More on that in a bit.

McCotter, who announced over the July 4th weekend, is a cerebral Roman Catholic father of three who plays rock guitar in a bipartisan band called the Second Amendments.

He's been a regular guest on Fox News' latenight pop-culture/politics roundtable show "RedEye W/GregGutfeld" (fans of which probably constitute his largest group of constituents outside of his actual group of constituents).

He opposes bank bailouts and excessive government spending but has a soft spot for organized labor and the auto bailout (McCotter's 11th District does lie hard by the Motor City, and the Livonia, Mich., native attended the University of Detroit).

The Ticket attended his speeches at both the Lincoln Club's breakfast during the....

Ron Paul wins California Republican straw poll

  

This weekend, the California Republican Party had its 2011 Fall Convention at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. One presidential candidate, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, spoke at a dinner on Friday night, and Saturday morning's breakfast featured two more contenders: Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

Paul's fans were out in force both outside the hotel -- awaiting his arrival -- and inside the ticketed Lincoln Clubs Breakfast. He spoke last and was late, allowing McCotter to add a question-and-answer period to his prepared remarks (more on that later, check back).

McCotter is also on the roster of speakers for Sunday's Beverly Hills Tea Party, to be held from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Beverly Hills Park on Santa Monica Blvd.

Raucous cheers and whistles and whoops and screams -- one could be forgiven for wondering....

How Jay Leno handled Michele Bachmann's appearance on his show

As usual, there was nothing confrontational about Jay Leno's interview with his political guest, in this case, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

She was on the West Coast on Friday to speak in Orange County and at the state Republican Convention in L.A. and, who knows? Maybe to schmooze some money from the people who give California its Golden State name too. Watch out. President Obama is on his way to California too in a few days. Although, the story is, some Hollywood folks are kinda unhappy with him.

Bachmann's star soared last summer. She won the Ames Straw Poll, which means nothing in reality but sounds good in the media for a while. But that same day, Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential sweepstakes. He's a big-shot GOP governor from Texas and began sucking the air, the money and the media attention away from the only female in the contest so far.

Late-night American TV is a special breed. Some jokes. A little music. Some chatter. Maybe a movie starlet swears she got locked out of her Paris hotel room with nothing to wear but a hand towel. Nothing too complicated or controversial because regardless of the time zone, Americans are in their beds beginning to drift off to zzzzzz...

Not all Americans realize that these late-night interviews, especially with politicians, are ...

Ponzi schmonzi: Republicans not really bothered by Rick Perry's Social Security phrasing

Despite all the feigned handwringing by his GOP presidential opponents, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's favorite descriptive phrase for the troubled Social Security system as a "Ponzi scheme" isn't really bothering fellow Republicans at all.

A Ponzi scheme is an eventually doomed plan where people pay money in and then get it out with dividends. But all the money paid out is coming, not from any actual investments, but simply from more gullible people putting their money in. The scheme is eventually doomed, of course, because inevitably the latest Charles Ponzi runs out of gullible newcomers with money.

Sounds a lot like Social Security to many non-Democrats, including Perry, who's 61. Let's see, Social Security involves a dwindling number of younger Americans paying some of every paycheck into government's Social Security as a growing number of healthier Baby Boom seniors draw the money out while declining to die in time to keep the system's fiscal merry-go-round going around.

The eminent Charles Krauthammer says, in fact, the only difference between the two schemes is that Social Security is mandatory.

Mitt Romney, who seems to have enough money to run his own private Social Security system, says Perry's Ponzi scheme phrase is "over the top" of something.

And Romney worries that his stubborn Texas opponent (Did you know he might be a career politician?) could be scaring seniors sufficiently to spill their Ensure over carefully clipped grocery coupons.

But there's a problem with that convenient concern: "Ponzi scheme" is a political wash. A new Gallup Poll out this morning documents this lack of concern; outside the media it's a major non-issue among those folks who'll be picking the Republican to watch the inaugural parade on Jan. 20, 2013.

Nineteen percent of Republicans say the Ponzi hoo-hah makes them less likely to support Perry and 19% of Republicans say it makes them more likely to support the guy in boots. Nearly a quarter (24%) say it matters not. And 38% are too dumb or uninterested to have an opinion.

Now, if Perry makes it through the next 11 months of rhetorical jousting and money-raising and comes out as the party's nominee and hasn't already convinced people that Social Security is a swell thing that can be fixed, then he might have a problem.

Right now, 32% of those crucial independents say the Ponzi business makes them less likely to like Perry; 12% support his talk. And nearly a quarter (21%) say No Difference. (Another 36% are dummies.)

But, there's so much to happen in the next four months, let alone 11. And look! Even so, Perry remains the sudden GOP frontrunner talking Texas-straight. For him to trim his Ponzi sails now is like those other Texans, the  Dallas Cowboys, fretting over their Thanksgiving game scheduled for next year.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Steve Helber / Associated Press (Perry speaks in Virginia, Sept. 14).

What, Obama worry? New York House district elects first Republican since 1920

President Obama is taking his big airplane out of Dodge today, down to North Carolina.

And who can blame him for going the opposite direction from Gotham after this morning's special election results in New York 9?

There, as forecast here last week, a 70-year-old Republican businessman and political novice named Bob Turner whacked veteran Democrat David Weprin, 53-47, in a special election to replace Rep. Anthony "Look at My Junk" Weiner.

This kind of stunning upset in that area of Brooklyn and Queens happens like clockwork every 91 years. Whenever the approval of a disinterested Democratic president hovers in the mid-30s on a stagnant economy and he looks wishy-washy on rigid support for Israel.

Weprin had everything going for him in Archie Bunker's boroughs:

He's an Orthodox Jew in a district that's 40% Jewish running against a Catholic. He's a well-known political name with state legislative experience. He has the backing of big-time Dems including Chuckie Schumer, who used to represent the district and bequeathed it to his aide Weiner. This Obama guy carried the area by 11 points back in 2008. And Weprin's got a moustache.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, Weprin was off on the national debt by $10 trillion in one interview. But that presidential election win was 1,048 days ago. Obama's much better known now and that seems to work against him.

This White House has had its own agenda all along -- the healthcare heave, financial reforms. While all along polls told the Chicagoans that jobs and the economy are top priority.

If history repeats itself, this Obama crowd as it did after losing the Virginia governor's office and the New Jersey governor's office and Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, will find fault with someone else, likely the candidate.

The wise Marc Ambinder hears it already.

Remember all the White House whispers about lousy campaigner Martha Coakley when she lost to Scott Brown despite (or perhaps because of?) a last-minute campaign day with Obama?

And then there were last November's midterms when voters tossed all those House Pelosi people who obeyed Obama's pleas to pass healthcare.

Those dozens of Democrats going under the bus turned out great for the president, however. With a Republican House the Democratic president has someone else to blame now when his belated jobs bill goes nowhere.

That's what he'll be touting in Raleigh-Durham today, his doomed $447 billion jobs program.

Good thing that Air Force One, like Southwest, doesn't charge for baggage because along on Obama's Southern trip is a new Bloomberg News Poll. It shows, among other gloomy tidings, that 33% approve of his economy job, 39% like his healthcare handling and 30% are pleased with his deficit doings.

Oh, and a majority don't think his new jobs program will get the job done.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Mary Altaffer / Associated Press (Republicans Bob and Peggy Turner celebrate his election to the House from New York's Ninth District early Wednesday); Craig Ruttle / Associated Press (Defeated Democrat David Weprin concedes).

New numbers find real Perry-Romney race developing

Initial signs now of a real two-man race developing in the unfolding marathon struggle for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination.

Rick Perry, the Texas governor who strode on stage so confidently to announce his candidacy 31 days ago, still holds the numerical lead over former Gov. Mitt Romney, who hasn't not been running for years.

What the Gallup organization calls the Positive Intensity Score shows Perry holding strong at 24. However, for the first time since Perry surged to the front of the GOP field, Romney's score has increased significantly.

In a new rating just released Gallup shows that now with a month to compare the two men, Romney's score has surged from 11 just two weeks ago to 16 now.

At the same time the scores for two GOP women have faded. With Perry in the race Michele Bachmann's score has dropped from 13 to 10. And the train appears to be leaving the station for Sarah Palin's hypothetical candiacy; her score plunged from 16 to 10. The 10 for both women are new lows for 2011.

Gallup's Positive Intensity Scores are devised by subtracting the percentage of Republicans with highly unfavorable views of each candidate from the percentage with highly favorable views among those who know the candidate.

Perry's first debate performance at the Reagan Library last week was workmanlike. He held his own standing next to the ever-polite, ever-attentive Romney. no big Perry mistakes.

Monday night's CNN/Tea Party Express debate was a different affair with six of the other seven candidates attacking Perry somehow. Newt Gingrich has reserved virtually all of his ammo for President Obama -- and the media.

Bachmann was particularly aggressive on Perry's later-revoked executive order to immunize sixth grade girls against the human papilloma virus and, Bachmann suggested, possible fundraising ties between the drug's maker and the Perry campaign.

Romney zeroed in on what he called Perry's "over-the-top" description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, saying the Texan should not be frightening seniors but rather working to fix the system's problems. Perry, in turn, guaranteed current recipients their Social Security provisions would remain avaiulable.

the Gallup surbvey was taken before the Tea Party debate.

Herman Cain's intensity score of 22 remains above Romney but has fallen five points in two weeks. Rudy Giuliani, like Palin unannounced, is up one point to 18.

Others in the Republican field are Rick Santorum (down from 10 to 8), Gingrich steady at 7, Ron Paul up to 7 from 6 and Jon Huntsman down from one to minus-one.

Next debate Sept. 22.

(UPDATE: A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds Romney leading Obama, 43-40, in a head-to-head matchup.)

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Mike Carlson / Associated Press

This week's GOP debate: Rick Perry vs everyone else

As a former Air Force pilot, Rick Perry knows what happens to the leading plane in any dogfight. It's the target for the ones behind.

And so it was Monday night in Tampa as the unlikely partnership of CNN and the Tea Party Express produced another early Republican primary debate.

It was a good debate for moderator Wolf Blitzer, who kept the pace brisk and worked hard to get everyone involved with 30-second rebuttals.

It was also a good debate for beleaguered President Obama, who sent his doomed jobs bill to Congress in the morning with yet another Rose Garden photo op. Obamacare came in for the usual bashing. Just about everyone in the GOP field will repeal the legislative abomination as soon as they walk into the Oval Office after the parade on Jan. 20, 2013.

Perry wondered last week if he'd become the pinata. But this debate the forceful Mitt Romney, the game Jon Huntsman, the irascible Ron Paul, the earnest son of an Italian immigrant Rick Santorum and the increasingly aggressive Michele Bachmann aimed their fire at the tall Texan whose 30 short days in the race have changed everything and vaulted him into a substantial lead.

Which maintains the appearance of an ongoing race but means absolutely nothing this early. just ask Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, who lead at this time four years ago.

Bachmann, who rode her tea party leadership to victory in the Ames Straw Poll, was virtually invisible in last week's Reagan Library debate, rhetorically and sartorially. This time she came back in red and went after fellow tea party fave Perry at every chance, mainly over his admitted and aborted mistake of seeking to vaccinate sixth grade girls against the human papilloma virus.

Santorum hit Perry's government mandated vaccination too. And they hit Perry for championing in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants and for opposing a border fence with Mexico as not realistic.

Perry, as usual did not back down, but he needs to get smoother in his answers, whose pauses suggest uncertainty. "We were clearly sending a message to young people regardless of what the sound of their last name is that we believe in you," the governor said, adding it's the American way.

Marc Antony, oh, no, it was Mitt Romney actually, was full of praise for Perry's job creation record that grew employment just like his predecessors Democrat Ann Richards and Republican George W. Bush, only fewer, and with the help of oil reserves, Republican courts and Republican legislators.

Asked what he would bring to the White House, pizza exec Herman Cain said a sense of humor, which brought the evening's lone laughter. Along, of course, with his 9-9-9 plan--9% business, income and national sales taxes.

Newt Gingrich kept his criticism aimed at Obama, the main target in previous GOP debates.

Ron Paul again showed why his disciples love him and why he can never win this party's nomination. He is very consistent and firm in his strict constitutionalism themes and isolationism, which earned him boos from the audience of 1,000 conservatives. As he did with Giuliani last cycle, Paul lured Santorum into a fight by suggesting the United States invited the 9/11 attacks by aggression against other lands.

Romney pursued Perry like a prosecutor on Social Security, calling the Texan's Ponzi scheme comment over the top. Bachmann was relentless. She's seized on the inoculation of "little girls" as a violation of freedoms, parental rights and suggested a connection among a drug company, a former Perry aide there, campaign contributions and Perry's executive order.

It's a theme she carried into the post-debate interviews and a somewhat puzzling fundraising email immediately after titled "I'm offended."

Bachmann may also have set a modern debate record for mixed metaphors, talking about the Federal Reserve Bank:"They have got to be shrunk back down to such a tight leash that they're going to squeak."

There are some signs of desperation in the Bachmann camp since Perry's entry and her poll slump. She's cutting back South Carolina campaigning to focus on Iowa and her email solicitation asked for "a special emergency donation" without explaining what the emergency is. Money?

Earlier in the day, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal endorsed Perry and ex-candidate Tim Pawlenty endorsed Romney. Coincidentally, Romney will help pay down Pawlenty's campaign debts.

Speaking of campaign dropouts, the GOP field will winnow in coming weeks from the surviving eight. The next Republican set-to isn't for another nine days, which is about how long it will take you to read Monday's full CNN transcript over here.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images

As big jobs speech looms, 77% say Obama has nation on wrong track

It could be worse.

But not much.

With only 427 days left before Americans pass judgment on Barack Obama's presidency, nearly eight out of 10 of them say in a poll that they believe the country is seriously off on the wrong track.

That 77% is up 17 points just this year. And it's the highest since George W. Bush went back to Texas.

Here's how bad the new ABC News/Washington Post Poll is for Obama: The good news for now is that by only a 2-to-1 margin (34%-17%), respondents say the Democrat's efforts on the economy have done more harm than good.

After all, with recorded unemployment at 9.1%, no new jobs created last month and no outlook for improvement, the number could be 3-to-1. And it may well become that. No wonder Rick Perry entered the Republican race.

It's so bad that Vice President Joe Biden may want to look around for a new top of the ticket in 2012, lest he lose his job and that lucrative rent on the guest house from the Secret Service agents protecting him.

Even less-than-conservative websites like salon.com are publishing anguished articles nowadays such as "What Democrats Can Do About Obama."

The former state senator appeared Monday at a Detroit Labor Council rally.

Introducing the nation's chief executive, Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. appealed for union members to follow Obama's campaign promise to shun harsh partisanship and to reason and work together with political opponents such as the "tea party" to build a better America for everyone.

Well, no, actually Hoffa didn't do that. He said many things about the tea party. But here's the Hoffa action sentence:

"Let's take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kremer said Hoffa's "inexcusable" and "inappropriate and uncivil rhetoric" amount to "a call for violence on peaceful tea party members, which include many Teamster members."

ABC News' Jake Tapper and Mary Bruce asked for White House comment. You will be shocked to learn that presidential spokesmen declined to comment on the union president's call to take out tea party people, presumably not in a social dating sense.

This comes about two weeks after Joe Biden called tea party people "terrorists" and the same day he called them "barbarians" in a Cincinnati labor speech.

The new ABC News poll also revealed that a record 62% of respondents say they disapprove of Obama's work on the economy. In a measure of intensity that analysts called "striking," nearly half the respondents (47%) said they "strongly" disapprove of Obama's performance, while barely 15% strongly approve.

Usually when Obama gets in trouble like this, the Real Good Talker does two things: He schedules a round of fundraisers to hear the paying crowds cheer ("Thank you. Thank you. Be seated.") and he announces a "major speech" to fix things up. Oh, look! He's scheduled a major speech for Thursday night to talk about a jobs plan after 961 days in office.

Since all his other jobs speeches in recent months haven't worked, maybe one more will.

You know, how Obama inherited a huge economic hole and how he knows the recovery is insufficient (or nonexistent, depending on your employment status) and how he really wants Congress to finally get off its collective duff and do something about the problem that he and Joe said was fixed two years ago. Especially those pesky Republicans who didn't control either house back then.

In Detroit Monday, a tieless Obama warned Republicans, who were not numerous in the crowd, that if the GOP didn't accept the new job and spending ideas that he hasn't detailed yet, he is going to take his case to the American people.

Judging by the steady decline in Obama's job approval all summer and his pathetic numbers in this latest poll, Republicans can only hope that the Democrat carries through on that threat.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Upper photo: President Obama at a Labor Day rally in Detroit. Credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images

Lower photo: Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. at the Labor Day rally. Credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images