Free Republic

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

Obama hits a rough spot Published: 25/11/2009 at 12:00 AM Newspaper section: News President Barack Obama of the United States has hit the one-year political wall hard, and it especially showed during his recent trip to Asia. In the year since Mr Obama was elected, both the excitement of the polls and the expectations have worn off. As with all democratic leaders, election hullabaloo has been replaced by reality. Not all promises can be achieved quickly, or in the way they were presented in a free-wheeling election. In some ways, Mr Obama has been brought down to Earth, and his...

"Like it or not, if Sarah Palin decides to seek our nation's highest office, she has a shot," Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign, writes in today's Washington Post, before offering Palin a list of advice on how to get there. Dowd draws a parallel between Palin and Obama, in that each are beloved by members of their own party, and not liked so much by members of the other: Polls show that Palin's favorability numbers are a mirror image of those of Obama. She is respected and loved by the Republican base, while Democrats despise...

Not that it matters politically because obviously she's a female Republican dunce and he's obviously a male Democratic genius. But Sarah Palin's poll numbers are strengthening. And President Obama's are sliding. Guess what? They're about to meet in the 40s. Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461 the 44th president's approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic. Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her...

Frum points to the polls: I was interviewed on PBS last week about Palin’s book release. I said that Palin had an especially serious problem with women voters. This is just fact, again recorded in every survey...And yet this attested statistical fact is shrugged off with comments like, “when I saw her campaign in N.H., I was surrounded by moms with strollers”(continued)

With her popularity on the rise and a number one book, Sarah Palin is coming out on top! As the L.A. Times points out, at this point in time before the 2008 election, Barack Obama was a relative unknown who rose to political fame. Given the same timeframe -- and her fanitical supporters snapping up 300,000 copies of her book in a single day -- could she be headed towards the White House? Could Palin take down President Obama in 2012? Give us your thoughts in the comments below, then take our poll to tell us: What side are you...

Not even Gallup can help boost The Ones numbers. DeMint was right, Health Care will be his Waterloo.

The conventional wisdom on Sarah Palin is that she's a divisive figure, and, from what polls tell us, that's true: according to Pollster.com's average, 38 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of her, while 49.2 percent view her unfavorably. So she's in minus territory--11.2 percent more Americans view her negatively than positively--which is bad for any politician running for office (if indeed she is). That's worse than other top-tier 2012 contenders, too, whose favorable/unfavorable splits, according to the same average, are 36.9 / 27.3 for Mitt Romney and 44.6 / 23/9 for Mike Huckabee. But among Republicans, she does...

Obama’s overall job approval slipped to 49 percent from 53percent in September. Iowans’ approval is down 19 percentage points since an Iowa Poll in January, about the time he was inaugurated. A majority of Iowans now say the Democrat’s performance in key economic areas is inadequate, including health care, his top domestic priority… Fifty-five percent of Iowans disapprove of how Obama is handling health care, up from not quite half in September.

At first, Matthew Hoh didn’t think he was doing anything that consequential — maybe he’d attract some attention for the first day or two before becoming, as he puts it, a “footnote.” But since news broke, a little less than a month ago, of his resignation from the State Department over the US war in Afghanistan — he is the first US official to publicly quit in protest — Hoh has swiftly become an influential voice, both within and outside the government. The timing of his resignation, dated Sept. 10, 2009, was fortuitous, he says: “People want to understand this.”...

[V]oters have consistently believed that tax cuts would do more than increased government spending to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now that the nation’s unemployment rate has reached 10.2%, voters continue to hold that view. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 62% believe tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool. Earlier this year, as the first stimulus package was being debated in Congress, 62% of voters wanted the plan to have more tax cuts and less spending. Given a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Gallup poll will announce -- they effectively have announced it -- the Gallup poll will announce that for the first time in their poll Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50%. In fact, a little story about this. This from Ben Smith at The Politico: "His approval numbers have bounced down to the 50% mark several times, driven by weaker support from independents and Republicans, but hadn't crossed it. The slide is worrying for the White House, but it's probably not yet panic time. Ronald Reagan's approval numbers dropped well below 40% during the depths...

When it comes to paying for a health care overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich. That finding from a new Associated Press poll will be welcome news for House Democrats, who proposed doing just that in their sweeping remake of the U.S. medical system, which passed earlier this month and would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. The poll found participants sour on other ways of paying for the health overhaul that is being considered in Congress, including taxing insurers on high-value coverage packages derided by President Barack Obama and Democrats as "Cadillac plans."...

No force on Earth can stop Sarah Palin from becoming our very own "lite" version of Eva Perón -- a glamorous and tragic legend, minus the tragedy. Eventually, some clever composer will write a blockbuster musical about her life and times. Stage directions will include: "SARAH fires gun. MOOSE dies." It's futile to try to ignore Palin, however noble the effort may be. She's a phenomenon, and it hardly matters that so many people believe she augurs the final dissolution of American politics into a big, frothy bowl of mush. The republic will survive even her. Anyway, she's unlikely ever...

After the New England Patriots disasterous decision Sunday night not to punt on fourth down with the ball on the Indianapolis Colts' 28-yard line, former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, had every right to be ticked off. Especially considering that the Pats had the lead with little more than 2 minutes left in the game. Is it possible that the team's supposedly brilliant coach, Bill Belichick, got confused and thought the Manning brother waiting patiently on the opposing sidelines was Eli and not Peyton? Whatever the case, the Colts went on to win the game with 13 seconds left in the...

The self-described 'rogue' is anathema to the party establishment but manna from heaven to the grass roots. In a Republican Party hoping to rebound in 2010 on the strength of a newly energized and ideologically aroused conservative grass roots, Sarah Palin's influence is now unparalleled. She was the one who popularized the notion that Democrats advocated "death panels" as part of their healthcare plan, a charge that helped ignite conservative opposition to reform. More recently, in a special congressional election in upstate New York, Palin's endorsement of Doug Hoffman, an unknown, far-right third-party candidate, helped force a popular moderate Republican...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9...

This week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, told reporters the GOP offers a "back-of-the-hand treatment to women." Later she said two conservative female representatives only serve to further "repulse women." You see, Schultz said on MSNBC, Republicans "don't really get very many women when it comes to elections." The week before, in Virginia, the Republican gubernatorial candidate won women. And in blue New Jersey, the Republican lost women but won white women by 18 percentage points. Last year, John McCain won a majority of the white female vote. They sum to more than 25 million women. Democrats, so...

The results of races for the governorship of Virginia and New Jersey were ominous for Democrats. The most alarming development for them should be that independents voted for the GOP candidates by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. This was a sea change, and it took place in only a year. There are several reasons Democrats are faltering at this juncture. But one explanation, I think, is more relevant than all others: President Obama is pushing a hugely expensive and ambitious domestic agenda the public simply does not want. Many Americans also believe that what Obama is doing is a diversion from...

A new poll by AP-GfK has Obama’s approval rating at 54 percent. I reported a few weeks back on how the poll might be engineered to favor Obama. Today, I have some shocking news as to how the AP-GfK poll was framed when Bush was president. With regard to the new Obama poll, the question immediately preceding Obama’s approval question reads as follows: When you think about how things are going in your life in general, would you say you are very happy, somewhat happy, neither happy nor unhappy, somewhat unhappy, or very unhappy? The results from that question: “Total...

The victories by Republicans in two Governors races last Tuesday appear to have lifted the party's prospects in 2010 and in 2012 in the minds of voters with 58% of those surveyed by Rasmussen now believe the next President will be Republican Both Gallup and Rasmussen now show solid leads for the GOP in the generic Congressional ballot for 2010 - 4% in Gallup and 6% in Rasmussen. For Gallup, this is a 6% shift in one month, and a 10% shift in two months away from the Democrats. Nate Silver show more Democratic held Senate seats at risk in...

Dan Calabrese notices a scolding tone coming from the Associated Press in reporting its latest polling. It headlines the report by noting that “a grouchy public [is] sticking with Obama,” having seen a 54% job approval rating in its survey — but some bad numbers on the issues. Does the AP report those falling levels of support as a consequence of Barack Obama doing a poor job? No, as emphases from Dan and myself show: The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has...

Matthew Continetti has a piece in this weekend’s Weekly Standard hailing Sarah Palin as the ideal leader of a new populist uprising. One obvious objection to his thesis: The populist Sarah is in fact one of the most unpopular figures in American life. According to Gallup, 63% of Americans say they would never consider voting for her. By a margin of 62%-31% Americans rate Palin “unqualified” to serve as president – by far the worst score for any leading Republican. In comparison, only 51% of Americans say they would never consider voting for Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee – and...

NPR is wringing its hands . . . with good reason. Let's look at their list of Senate races and see how much good news is there for the Dems. Democratic leader Harry Reid is woefully unpopular in Nevada. Six Republicans are competing for the chance to topple him the way GOP Sen. John Thune of South Dakota did to then-Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004. RCP has both Republicans Lowden and Tarkanian beating Reid. Let's keep track. So far we are R-1, D-0.

LINKNot too hard to figure out, folks!

Psst. Don't tell anybody, but Republicans would win control of Congress if the election were now, instead of next year. It's sure to remain the biggest political secret not in the news. Naturally, the media will ignore it; the polling company that produced the survey, Gallup, even buried it under a misleading headline. Maybe, to get some coverage, the Republicans could claim to have hidden somebody in a weather balloon, or something. The congressional election prediction is part of a one-two punch Gallup delivered Barack Obama's Chicago mob on Tuesday, albeit reluctantly.

Americans are a little less enthusiastic about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama this time around. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of adults say they would be at least somewhat likely to vote for Obama if he was up for reelection right now. Forty-nine percent (49%) say they would be unlikely to vote for the president’s reelection. Thirty-four percent (34%) would be very likely to support Obama, while 40% say they would be not at all likely to do so. The question did not specify whom the president would be running against and also was...

President Obama's overall approval rating is still at a healthy 54 percent, but a new poll suggests some weakness on major issues. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this morning shows his approval rating down from 58 percent in the same poll in mid-September. More worrisome for the White House, the poll numbers have flipped from majority approval to majority disapproval on the economy (54 percent disapproval now, 54 percent approval in September), health care policy (57 percent disapproval now, 51 percent approval then), and the war in Afghanistan (56 percent disapproval now, 49 percent approval in August.)

It has been one year since The One became our president. Most polls today put his approval rating right about at his margin of victory of a year ago. But when people are asked about his policies, rather than his personality, well, even CNN can't spin these numbers.

Is There Late Movement to Republican Christie in NJ? Or is the World Series Affecting Who Pollsters Reach? On Election Eve in New Jersey, with a New York City team and a Philadelphia team in the World Series, Republican Chris Christie may have slight late momentum in his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, according to a SurveyUSA tracking poll conducted for WABC-TV. The candidates remain today within the theoretical margin of sampling error, as they have been in each of SurveyUSA's 5 tracking NJ polls. At the wire, Christie 45%, Corzine 42%. Interviews were conducted Friday 10/30/09 through...

With one day to go before the closely watched New Jersey governor’s race, Republican challenger Chris Christie has taken a slight lead over Gov. Jon Corzine in two new polls released this morning. Christie, a former US attorney, led Corzine by six points, 47 percent to the Democrat’s 41 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey of almost 1000 Garden State voters. Independent candidate Chris Dagger racks up 11 percent of the vote in the PPP survey. The Quinnipiac poll shows a much tighter race, with Christie leading by a mere two points, which is within the poll’s 2.5...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13 (see trends). Following release of the House health care plan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 42% of voters now support the Congressional effort while 54% are opposed. In October, 37.8% of American adults considered themselves to be Democrats while 31.9% are Republicans. The number of Democrats has been inching up steadily since July. The Presidential Approval Index...

Democratic Polling Outfit Public Policy Polling (PPP) is out with new polls today for the three main races slated for tomorrow, and they show strong movement toward Republican / Conservative candidates in all three! In New Jersey, PPP now has the GOP's Chris Christie leading Democrat Jon Corzine 47% - 41%, with Daggett at 11%. In New York's 23rd District Congressional Race, PPP now has Conservative Doug Hoffman leading Democrat Bill Owens 51% - 34%, with now dropped-out Dede Scozzafava at 13% (her name is still on the ballot). In the Virginia Governor's race, PPP now shows Republican Bob McDonnell...

Chris Christie leads Jon Corzine 47-41 in PPP's final poll of the New Jersey Governor's race, with Chris Daggett at 11%. Corzine had pulled to within a point of Christie on our poll three weeks ago after trailing by as many as 14 points over the summer, but his momentum has stalled since then and Christie's built his lead back up to 4 points last week and now 6. Christie's advantage is due largely to his support from independents and because he has Republicans more unified around him than the Democrats are around Corzine. Christie leads Corzine 52-29 with indies,...

Comments about 5182824250 number: Rating: 0 none - 24 Oct 2007 Myer Associates. They're a Telemarketer. Called and hung up. I called the number and they said they make calls for political campaigns and other stuff (products. etc.). I complained about the call and hang-up. The rep said he would remove me from their list within 24 hrs. Caller Type: Telemarketer Reply Rating: 0 upstateny - 27 Nov 2007 I get phone calls from this number too. They are calling on behalf of the Obama campaign, to which I had made a donation to about a year ago. They are...

A Mason-Dixon poll reported today in our local newsrag shows Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell maintaining a strong lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds. The poll results have McDonnell up by 12 points, with only 6 per cent of voters undecided. These numbers are almost exactly the same as the aggregate of eight earlier polls analyzed in Friday's report, Virginia Election -- A Hammer And Tongs Finish.

(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

A poll released Friday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research confirms the Republican ticket’s lead in the statewide Virginia races. Focusing on the two down-ticket slots -- Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General -- Mason-Dixon found the GOP candidates leading in almost all areas of the state

Republican Chris Christie continues to hold a three-point advantage over incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine in New Jersey's down-to-the-wire race for governor. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state, conducted Thursday night, shows Christie with 46% of the vote and Corzine with 43%. Those numbers are unchanged from earlier in the week and little changed from polling conducted the week before. The last four Rasmussen Reports polls have shown Christie with a very slight advantage ranging from two to four percentage points each time.

As Virginia's off-year election nears the finish, the statewide Republican ticket has jumped out to a huge lead in the final week of the contest. What is remarkable about this contest is the hammer-and-tongs finishing push by the Republicans, which may signify the return of the Republican killer instinct -- the will to win overcoming the internecine bickering that has marked the GOP's poor performances in recent years.

Just how dumb are Obama voters? Well...dumb enough to have elected a man to the highest office based upon the same credentials that "earned" him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. So what's their excuse today, now that they are witnessing President Obama's executive leadership in action? Well, for one, more Americans are discovering their inner conservative. If 8 years of President Bush in no small measure lost us the '08 election and set the conservative movement one step back, President Obama in one year's worth of governance will most likely cost the Democrats 2010 (actually, Dems in Congress who choose...

Could a dynasty of Reids, Harry and son Rory, both get elected to high office in Nevada a year from now? Of course, Harry Reid is the highest-ranking Mormon in political office. His son, not as well-known outside of Nevada, is also running for governor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is looking at a tough battle in his home state. More than half of likely Nevada voters think Harry Reid is a "weak" leader -- with 84 percent of Reid's Democratic base supporting a public option for health care reform, according to a poll sponsored by a progressive group...

I'm supporting: The White House on this one; Fox News isn't "fair and balanced." Fox News on this one; it asks questions others don't and the White House should be able to handle them. Neither side. They're both trying to play this "feud" to their advantage.

PRINCETON, NJ -- After peaking at 59% last November, Vice President Joe Biden's favorable rating continues to decline and now stands at 42%. That barely exceeds his 40% unfavorable rating, and is easily his worst evaluation since last year's Democratic National Convention. Independents' opinions of Biden have declined more steadily since the post-election high mark, and now 32% of independents view the vice president favorably.

During the Bush years, we heard often from the Left that Bush divided the country. To me this statement didn’t make sense, because for example in 1996, President Clinton got barely half of the popular vote during his reelection campaign, while the other half voted against him. What is that if not a divided country? Besides, if “the system” is that it is the president, and not his critics that divide the country, we should assume that President Obama is at fault for dividing the country following his unifying win of last year November. Don’t you agree? If Obama will...

Even as Obama’s proposals for healthcare changes attracted two key swing votes in the Senate Finance Committee (Republican Olympia Snowe and Democrat Blanche Lincoln), public opinion is turning ever more hostile to the proposed changes. Inside the Beltway, the plan looks unstoppable. Outside it, the legislation looks DOA. Which version of reality is the correct one?

"It ain't over till it's over," said the philosopher Yogi Berra. As every sports fan knows, momentum can change in a hurry. The opponent can make a costly mistake that opens the door, a key play can give your team the edge, or you may simply catch a lucky break that changes the course of the game. In what has become the defining issue of the moment, President Obama and the Democrats are attempting to paint passage of ObamaCare as inevitable, and survey ratings that many Americans expect some form of ObamaCare to pass. There are many hurdles to be...

In the brief age of Obama, we have had "truthers," "birthers," Tea Party activists and town-hall dissenters. Comes now, the "Oath Keepers." And who might they be? Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers, depending on where one stands, are "either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia." Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath Keepers will not obey. "The whole point of...

We were always told Barack Obama would do something spectacular, that he would shatter previous presidential records – and now he has. The One has recorded the sharpest slump in popularity rating of any US president at this stage in office for 50 years. Nor is that figure just a snapshot of a bad week: it reflects his average daily approval rating for the past quarter of the year – running at 53 per cent. Considering it stood at 78 per cent last January, that is impressive work. So, a 25 per cent fall in electoral support over nine months...

A majority of gun owners think President Obama wants to ban gun sales. A new Gallup poll shows 55 percent of those who own a gun, 53 percent who have a gun in the household, and 41 percent of all Americans believe he will attempt to ban the sale of guns while he is president. This concern is greater among Republicans and people living in the South and Midwest than among Democrats or those living on either coast. It also helps explain the sharp increases in sales of guns and ammunition. There are reports that U.S. bullet-makers are working around...