Today's Washington Post/ABC poll puts Paul in third place again, despite what we were told yesterday by the PPP poll.
Gingrich and Romney are each favored by 30 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Running behind them is Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), whose libertarian philosophy has attracted a strong following. He stands at 15 percent, about double his tally in an early November poll. All other active candidates are in the single digits. ...WaPo
The latest poll also shows a significant rise in approval for President Obama.
Although most Americans continue to disapprove of the president’s performance on the economy, the number who disapprove of his overall performance has dipped below 50 percent for the first time this fall. ...WaPo
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It's not just the media or mean Democrats. The truth is, there may not be a Republican candidate in the whole group that can stand up to scrutiny. Whoever is in the lead at any given moment will be "outed" for some sin or other.
The one candidate the GOP seems to want to settle on, Mitt Romney, has closets full of trouble. Greg Sargent, yesterday, had this:
Politico reports today that enough stories have now emerged about Romney’s years at Bain to suggest that the scrutiny of that episode in his life is taking on a more serious cast.
There’s that big Times story from this morning reporting that Romney is still profiting from the retirement deal he made with the company — meaning he could still be profiting partly from layoffs. Then there’s this new revelation from WPRI in Rhode Island:
Sensata Technologies, the former sensors-and-controls division of Texas Instruments spun off in 2006 by Mitt Romney’s old company, will freeze its pension plan and scale back 401k contributions next month, WPRI.com has learned.
Romney left Bain seven years before the restructuring deal involving this company, but as Politico notes, the Times story had the effect of bringing the time frame of Romney’s vulnerability on Bain up to the present day.
As I noted last week, both sides are moving aggressively to define the real meaning of Romney’s Bain years, and the view the public takes of those years could figure heavily in 2012. ...Greg Sargent, WaPo
Then there's the problem that Romney's personal life -- his neighbors and others -- have stories to tell. One of them is packed full of details about Romney's New England years. More on that later...
