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With five months until Election Day, Barack Obama faces a grim new reality: Republicans now believe Mitt Romney can win, and Democrats believe Obama can lose ... Last week's anemic job-creation and economic-growth data was sandwiched between two Bill Clinton specials: in one television interview, the 42nd President lauded Romney's business record as "sterling"; in another, he veered from the Obama line on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts ... The failure to unseat Wisconsin's Republican governor Scott Walker in a recall election was another bad sign for Democrats since it will rev up conservatives nationwide, including the kind of...

The American left as we have come to know it suffered a devastating blow in Wisconsin last night. The organized heart of the left gave everything it had to the fight against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: heart, shoe leather, wallet and soul. The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgement was fatally flawed; it is part of a larger failure to grasp the nature of American politics and the times in which we live. The left gave...

Democrats appeared to have assumed control of the state Senate with results posted early Wednesday showing former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) defeating incumbent Van Wanggaard in a tight race. Republicans held on to three other state Senate seats in Tuesday's recall voting. Democratic challengers lost recalls bids against Sens. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls.). Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R-Stettin) was elected to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), who resigned earlier this year after opponents gathered enough signatures to initiate a recall election. All eyes Wednesday will be on the 21st District. Results posted early...

Searching for an excuse to explain what went wrong for Democrats in Wisconsin, the broadcast networks blamed "a record-shattering $64 million poured into" the recall election by "conservative out-of-state groups" supporting Republican Governor Scott Walker.   On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Bill Plante promoted Obama campaign talking points on the major Democratic loss: "...what it called the 'massive spending gap'. Governor Walker's supporters raised $31 million to $4 million for the challenger, Tom Barrett....with most of that money coming from out of state – a huge chunk of it from the super-PACs." On Tuesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Dean...

Those warm, loving, kind-hearted leftists will turn on you so fast: last night an enraged supporter of Tom Barrett slapped him for conceding the race. (HT: The Hope for America.) I don’t recall – no pun intended – this sort of thing ever happening on an Election Night before. I wonder how Democratic officeholders and their professional class feel about having a grassroots base that is, at least in some parts, psychotic enough to resort to physical violence upon their own candidates for acknowledging reality. At the time, Barrett trailed by about 10 percentage points or 200,000 votes; as of...

If you pause and listen carefully, you might be able to hear the despair coming from Jim Messina, President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, and David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist and communications director, as the meaning of Wisconsin’s recall election becomes clear. In the final hours before Governor Scott Walker’s victory, with the writing on the wall, President Obama and his campaign could only muster a tweet and a last-minute video for challenger Tom Barrett. But do not let that tepid support fool you: Democrats and their union allies spent an astronomical amount on a judicial election, four state legislative recalls...

Public sector unions have reached their high water mark. Let the cleanup begin as the red ink recedes. Despite a last-minute smear campaign accusing Scott Walker of fathering an illegitimate love child, the governor’s recall election victory sends a clear message that should resonate around the nation: The fiscal cancer devouring state budgets has a cure, and he has found it. The costly defeat for the entrenched union interests that tried to oust Walker in retribution for challenging their power was marked by President Obama’s refusal to lend his weight to the campaign for fear of being stained by defeat....

Karl Rove was talking about the Repub blow-out tonight. We already know people lied to the exit poll-takers. Rove mentioned that in one traditionally Dem county, Walker had, so far, tens of thousands more votes than expected. Walker is about to make his victory speech.

Wisconsin count as of 11:30pm EST , Walker 54%, Barrett 45%. NBC calls it for Walker back at about 10pm. It was a classic. I watched MSNBC all night flipping to FNC only briefly from time to time. Over at ‘MSNBC/Destroy Walker-BC’ they were predicting such a close election that they said it would probably require a recall. 'Be prepared for a long night' they repeated. Dem are knocking on a million doors today, boots on the ground', they were calling those who didn't vote in 2010 to shame them to get out and vote. Then with 1% counted Walker...

...what we should be worried about is the democrat/union retaliation for this blow they were just dealt. I don't know how, when, or where, but there will be a retaliation. My guess would be that they will try to do something at the federal level to limit state's ability to stand up to unions. All unions, not just public sector.

Attached is a theatrical reenactment of tonights recall vote in Wisconsin. Spencer Tracy plays Scott Walker. Ernest Borgnine plays the unions, Robert Ryan plays Barack Obama. Tom Barrett is played by a bar stoll. Enjoy!

Should Romney pick Scott Walker for VP? With such a move, Romney could put WI in his column, and help him in other working class states like Ohio and Penn. Not to mention that it will make the prospect of voting for Romney more palatable for conservatives! I cannot see any downsides. What am I missing here?

The early draft of the exit polls this morning showed a 50-50 tie in the Wisconsin recall race. It's still early, but the best bet is that Scott Walker meets or exceeds his margins relative to 2010, which points to a 5-point win or better. This suggests that the early draft of the exit polls were biased toward the Democrats. Nevertheless, channel surfing across CNN and MSNBC just now, I notice talking head after talking head citing the exit polls in some way. Stop it. Clearly, they were wrong and they need to be updated. Until then, stick to the...

Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R-Stettin) defeated Rep. Donna Seidel (R-Wausau) for an open Senate seat, according to The Associated Press.

A “blue-collar” voter took the news of Scott Walker's victory a little too hard.

It doesn't mean Obama is going to lose, but the failed attempt to recall Scott Walker gives Democrats and organized labor reason to fear an emboldened conservative agenda. It's important to remember, as Democrats cope with their failure to topple Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Tuesday's recall, that this was a fight they chose. Unlike the vast majority of elections, which occur on a regular schedule, the recall was a fight the left picked on purpose. They picked it because they thought they could win. And they were wrong. It wasn't even close. With two-thirds of the votes reported late...

Ed Schultz concluded the segment by making a wild assertion. "Scott Walker could very well be indicted in the coming days," the MSNBC host said.

Well if exit polls showed 50/50 race for Walker and ends up say 58/42, then a 53/42 exit polling for Obama could potentially be 50/45 Romney, based on how badly they missed real results

By the time you read this post, we can hope that pro-life Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will have rebuffed a recall election. Gov. Walker is a long-time hero for the pro-life cause, having begun his advocacy as the student pro-life leader at Marquette University, the same entity which conducted the poll. His opponent, Tom Barrett, has an extensive voting history in favor of abortion, having voted for taxpayer funding of abortion and for partial-birth abortion when he was a member of Congress. But either way, not so long ago it would have been heresy to think that Wisconsin was “in...

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch survived a recall attempt Tuesday, June 5th, defeating her Democratic challenger Mahlon Mitchell and avoiding becoming the first lieutenant governor in the nation to be recalled. Kleefisch, a Republican, was the only lieutenant governor in the U.S. to face a recall election. Now she’s also the first to survive one. She faced a recall along with her boss, Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Democrats and unions had been angered after Walker and the GOP-led Legislature took on public-sector union rights last year.