Republicans

In the Daily Beast, Michael Medved encourages Mitt Romney’s campaign to take steps to avoid the “catastrophe” that would result from “the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.”  He adds, “Mr. Obama could prevail by as much as the 7 percent margin that gave him victory last time, while still losing the Electoral College to Romney.”  This is certainly provocative, but it’s not realistic.

Florida senator Marco Rubio slammed President Barack Obama in a South Carolina speech delivered last night to a large gathering of Republicans. 

“For all the policy disagreements that we may have with the president, it is hard to understate how much he inspired people across this country four years ago, with his promises to unite America and lift it up,” Rubio said about Obama, referring to his 2004 DNC speech and 2008 presidential run.

A newly released Fox News poll includes 42 percent Democrats and only 34 percent Republicans — an 8-point Democratic edge — and shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by 7 points (46 to 39 percent).  Among independents, however, the poll shows Romney leading by 5 points (34 to 29 percent).

The White House, Democrats, and sympathetic elements of the media have been remarkably successful in establishing this idea: that President Obama, a pragmatist at heart, has sought to accommodate congressional Republicans time after time, only to be spurned by a party bent on rejecting his policies across the board. There’s a problem with this notion. It’s not true.

West Virginia's Democratic governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, is not sure who he will vote for in November.

The New York Times reports: 

It looked so easy when the bipartisan JOBS Act cleared the Senate (73-26) and the House (380-41) and was signed into law by President Obama last week. But passage of a strong bill wasn’t a snap. Only the maneuvering of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell kept the measure from being delayed, angrily debated, and then watered down.

With Democrats defending 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for election in November, the opportunities for Republican pickups abound. Although Republicans will play defense in Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada, they will almost certainly make gains in North Dakota and Nebraska. Republicans have good opportunities to take Democratic seats in Missouri, Virginia, Montana, Florida, Wisconsin, and Ohio—and then there’s the list of Democratic seats that could become competitive.

The Republican National Committee is releasing a new web ad today that contrasts Vice President Joe Biden's declaration last year that "the United States and Russia no longer have good reason not to trust one another" with news that Russia is arming Bashar al-Assad as he beats back protesters in Syria.

Today, I want to talk about a group of voters in the GOP primary process that I call the “Post Office” Republicans.

Paul Ryan explains the Republican budget in an oped in today's Wall Street Journal: 

Rasmussen’s polling shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum by 9 percentage points (41 to 32 percent) in Illinois, yet likely primary voters in the Prairie State hold almost identically favorable views of each candidate.  Romney’s net favorability ratin