Romney is talking with advisers, consulting with his family, keeping a close eye on the emerging '16 Republican field, and carefully weighing the pluses and minuses of another run. That doesn't mean he will decide to do it, but it does mean that Mitt 2016 is a real possibility.

Nearly all of Romney's 2012 circle of advisers, finance people, and close aides remains intact. Many developed an extraordinary loyalty to Romney, who, in turn, has kept in close touch with them. Romney talks to some of them quite frequently in conversations that cover daily news, foreign and domestic policy, Hillary Clinton, the Republican field -- everything that might touch on a 2016 campaign. "Virtually the entire advisory group that surrounded Mitt in 2012 are eager for him to run, almost to a man and a woman," says one plugged-in member of Romneyland.

Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!Please!

House Speaker John Boehner will file a lawsuit against the Obama administration for its use of executive actions to change laws, he formally announced Wednesday.

Thom Tillis, Republican Senate candidate from NC:

The traditional population of North Carolina and the United States is more or less stable. It's not growing. The African American population is roughly growing but the Hispanic population and the other immigrant populations are growing in significant numbers. We've got to resonate with those future voters.

I imagine African Americans will probably be pretty skeptical of the notion that they are not part of the 'traditional' population of NC.

His team pathetically tried to smooth this over, later, by saying:

""Traditional" North Carolinians refers to North Carolinians who have been here for a few generations. A lot of the state's recent population growth is from people who move from other states to live, work, and settle down in North Carolina. Thom Tillis for example."

Oh, I see! When Tillis initially divided the population into "traditional", African American and Hispanic, he really meant natives and newcomers! I'll buy that.

We'll probably elect this asshat, too.

Quoth Hillary Clinton.

I can haz second choice, for April 2015 NC primary?

At this point (aka "still more than two years from the election"), nobody knows anything about the state of the 2014 Presidential election.

Even as late as June 2006 Obama wasn't even polling above zero. He didn't even make the list. Everyone knew the race was going to be Hillary Clinton v Rudy Giuliani - and Giuliani was being called "The American Churchill". In Feb 2006, the idea that Obama would win the nomination, let alone the election, was absurd.

How'd it work out, pundits? All your predictions were wildly inaccurate? Yes, they were.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? Yes, there is.

I despise making predictions about elections years before the voting starts, but I somehow can't help getting sucked into it...

In the wake of his NJ win, there's been a lot of talk in political outlets of all stripes about Chris Christie's Presidential aspirations. It looks like he's gearing up for a run. Suh.Prize. And subsequently, there's been a lot of talk in lefty circles about how the GOP base would never accept him because he said nice things about Obama, and that people outside NY/NJ/PA wouldn't take kindly to his brusque, confrontational, and often rude personality.

I think that's mistaken. I think there's a big market for brusque, confrontational, and rude, so long as people know that the abuse will be directed towards the right people.

For evidence, look at the way so much of the liberal base adores Hillary Clinton. Even though there's little evidence that any of her positions are significantly to the left of Obama (and some evidence that she's to his right on some issues), a lot of the lefty base thinks she'd be a better President. Why? because "she's a fighter, and she won't take any of the GOP's crap!"

To many, it truly doesn't matter that the results she'd be likely to get are pretty much the same as what Obama's been able to get; that's more than balanced because it's assumed that she'd get those same results with a feisty stick-it-to-em attitude. She'd stand at the podium and wave the bloody shirt, call out those who needed calling out, point fingers, fight fire with fire, etc.. Given a choice between a fighter and an intellectual with the same basic policy preferences, they'll take the fighter.

But this love of someone with a stick-it-to-em attitude is certainly not limited to the left. There are a lot of "conservatives" who would be OK with a less-than-Pure President as long as he pissed-off enough liberals along the way. And that's Christie. As long as he can make a convincing case that he's going to fight for the right things, his blunt and assertive personality would be an asset to those people who think the GOP needs a fighter.

In other words: Christie or Hillary make for good entertainment. And that matters to a lot of people. Enough to get him through the primaries? I don't know. We'll figure that out between now and spring 2016.

So, it seems that the media has grown completely bored with Obama in the past few weeks. All they want to talk about is the 2016 election.

From MSNBC's front page:
2016 presidential campaign off to (too) early of a start, GOP, Democrats storm into Iowa to get 2016 race started, In Iowa, Trump warns GOP about Hillary, immigration, Cruz denounces state of affairs in Washington at Iowa summit, Santorum takes on GOP establishment, and a video from their morning show "And it begins: GOP, Dems get 2016 started in Iowa".

Assholes.

Public Policy Polling:

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Beautiful.

I often think it would be hard for me to be even more cynical about our species, but I think working in public polling could get me there.

The 39% of Americans with an opinion about Bowles/Simpson is only slightly higher than the 25% with one about Panetta/Burns, a mythical Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo we conceived of to test how many people would say they had an opinion even about something that doesn't exist.

Bowles/Simpson does have bipartisan support from the small swath of Americans with an opinion about it. Republicans support it 26/18, Democrats favor it 21/14, and independents are for it by a 24/18 margin. Panetta/Burns doesn't fare as well with 8% support and 17% opposition.

Odds are good that approximately nobody, not the politicians talking about it, not the pundits talking about it, not the public talking about it knows what's actually in the Bowles/Simpson plan. Certainly what the B/S plan actually recommends is light years from what John Boehner is going to be able to convince his "conservative" caucus to support.

href

[I]t's a changing country, the demographics are changing, it's not a traditional America anymore. And there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and he ran on it.

--Bill O'Reilly

via Slate

Hey, check it out: in person voter fraud is real!

Nobody could ever predict, not even Nate Silver with a sample size of 110 million, the party affiliation of the criminals. So don't even try guessing. you'll just have to read the article.