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President Barack Obama had a pretty good month in the polls last month, as he saw his approval take a big step up and his disapproval take a tiny step down. Obama exited the summer doldrums earlier than usual this year, and chalked up a positive month all around. Let's take a look at the new chart.
The Republican field of candidates for president has now entered a winnowing phase where the party's voters are clearly indicating that there are only six viable candidates in the race. From an initial field of 17 candidates, two have dropped out, five are on life support (politically), and four are in stable but critical condition. This has left only Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz with any meaningful chance of winning the party's nomination.
It's been a week since the second Republican presidential debates, and the polling data is finally in from multiple sources. So it's time once again to look at who is up and who is down in the horserace numbers (all polling data comes from the Real Clear Politics Republican nomination poll-tracking page).
So we're down to the paltry number of "only" 15 Republican candidates for president, as Scott Walker has now joined Rick Perry on the sidelines of the race. I must admit, I'm doing a pretty horrible job of picking who will exit the race in what order, as when I wrote about the subject last month, neither man was on my list of the first five candidates I thought would drop out earliest. Both Perry and Walker had substantial support from the billionaire class, which meant both had plenty of funds pouring in to super PACs to support their candidacy. The problem for both men, in the end, turned out not to be lack of funds to air television ads, but rather lack of funds to keep the lights on and pay their official campaign staff. Before their respective exits, Perry put almost all his campaign staff on a volunteer basis (because he couldn't afford the payroll) and Walker announced he was pulling back everywhere but Iowa, and shrinking his campaign staff accordingly. So even with millions sitting in super PAC coffers, what killed their campaigns in the end was lack of financial support for the campaign itself.
For the past few days, the presidential election has focused on religion -- in specific, the Islamic religion. This started with Donald Trump failing to challenge a questioner's assertion that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and then shifted to asking Republican candidates whether they could hypothetically support a Muslim to become America's president. This time it was Ben Carson who stumbled, not Trump. Other Republican presidential candidates have -- to their credit -- condemned Carson's remarks, most notably Ted Cruz (on constitutional grounds: "the Constitution specifies there shall be no religious test for public office and I am a constitutionalist") and Lindsey Graham (on historical grounds: "America is an idea, not owned by a particular religion"). Bobby Jindal tried to win the gotcha battle in his own unique way:
This was one of those weeks when one event overshadowed pretty much everything else that was going on in the political world. The event, of course, was the second round of Republican presidential debates, which lasted for a grueling five-plus hours.
It may not have been the first time that marijuana legal reform came up in a televised presidential debate, but last night's discussion between Rand Paul, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush was certainly the most in-depth and serious handling of the subject I've ever seen. This is something of a milestone, especially since it happened in a Republican debate (all of the quotes below come from a transcript of the debate provided by the Washington Post, I should mention).
After having just sat through over five hours (!) of Republicans debating each other, I have to say my brain is somewhat numb. So I'm not going to try to do any high-level analysis of the 25 pages of notes I took, but instead rely on just snap reactions to what I've just witnessed at the Shrine of Saint Ronald of Reagan's Magic Airplane. I write these snap reactions for a reason, and the reason is to see how differently I saw the debates from all the professional pundits out there. Come tomorrow, I'll read what everyone else has to say, and if the past is any measure, I'll be astonished at what settles in as conventional inside-the-Beltway wisdom. All quotes are transcribed by me hastily, and may not be exact, I should mention in passing, too.
The second debate of the Republican nomination race is fast approaching, so in preparation I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the entire GOP field once again. First, though, a word about the debates themselves.
Breaking news! Rick Perry drops out of presidential race!