Poll Reveals Just How Divided Republicans Are Over Chris Christie Running For President

By Ariel Edwards-Levy/Huffington Post

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) won reelection in a landslide last week, but he'd face a tougher challenge in the 2016 presidential race, according to an NBC News pollreleased Tuesday.

The next presidential election, of course, is still three years away, and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of early polls. But the results give a sense of how Christie might fare as a national figure.

The poll found the GOP is nearly split between Christie supporters and detractors. Asked specifically whether they'd prefer to vote for Christie or another primary candidate, 32 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners chose Christie, while 31 percent opted for someone else. His support was by far the highest in the Northeast, and lowest in the South.

“Naming just Christie divides the faithful equally into Christie, Not Christie and Don’t Know,” G. Evans Witt, the CEO of pollster Princeton Survey Research, told NBC.

In contrast, 66 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners said they'd vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a primary, while just 14 percent wanted someone else to win.

In a general election matchup against Clinton, Christie polled 10 points behind, taking 34 percent to her 44 percent, according to NBC. Fifteen other polls taken this year have all shown Clinton leading, although the margin varies greatly -- from just 1 point in a July poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, to 20 points in a March online poll by Reuters/Ipsos. HuffPost Pollster's average gives Clinton a lead of about 8 points.

For now, a more relevant question may be how Christie's ambitions will play at home. On that note, another poll released Tuesday suggests that many New Jersey residents expect Christie to run for president, and they generally don't mind.

Fifty-nine percent of voters in the state think Christie will run in 2016, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton survey, and 45 percent expect him to resign his position as governor early to run. Only 13 percent said that possibility had a negative impact on their gubernatorial vote.

The NBC poll surveyed 1,003 adults between Nov. 7 and Nov. 10. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll surveyed 804 New Jersey voters between Oct. 28 and Nov. 2. Both used live telephone calls.

Sam Wang as the Perfect Antidote for Romomentum

 By Evil Sax/Diary of a Republican Hater

It's funny because Nate Silver has gotten a reputation among conservatives as being biased towards Obama. For those of you who read Nate regularly that may be news for. Indeed, I would not call him very bullish for the President. Even now when there is plenty of data to make the case-based on his own model-that Romney's bounce has been over since October 12, the most he could say is that it seems to have stopped.

   http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

   I think it's safe to say that he's been very conservative this cycle as other poll analysts argue:

   "From this perspective, it’s a bit odd to see commentary out there suggesting that Romney should be favored, or that quantitative, poll-based analyses showing Obama ahead are somehow flawed, or biased, or not to be believed. It’s especially amusing to see the target of this criticism be the New York Times’ Nate Silver, whose FiveThirtyEight blog has been, if anything, unusually generous to Romney’s chances all along. Right now, his model gives Romney as much as a 30% probability of winning, even if the election were held today. Nevertheless, The Daily Caller, Commentary Magazine, and especially the National Review Online have all run articles lately accusing Silver of being in the tank for the president. Of all the possible objections to Silver’s modeling approach, this certainly isn’t one that comes to my mind. I can only hope those guys don’t stumble across my little corner of the Internet."

   http://votamatic.org/into-the-home-stretch/

    For some sense of centering, or reality, you might want to give Sam Wang's Princeton Consortium-or for that matter, of course, Votomatic. Here is a great post where Wang takes on the mightiest analyst around: you guess it, David Brooks. It seems Brooks has spent hours poring over polls trying to get to what they are saying. Wang, however, is less than overwhelmed by his conclusion:

    "It was fun to learn of David Brooks’s addiction to polling data. He spends countless hours on them, looking at aggregators, examining individual polls, and sniffing poll internals. From all of this, what has he learned?

1. Today, President Obama would be a bit more likely to win.
2. There seems to be a whiff of momentum toward Mitt Romney.

    (Emphasis mine.)

     "I am having a sad. All of that effort, and his two conclusions still have two major errors. Evidently he does not read the Princeton Election Consortium."

      http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/25/do-you-understand-polls-as-well-as-david-brooks/#more-7922

       More than evidently, I suspect it's all but a surety he doesn't. Wang corrects number 1. Obama is not "a bit more likely to win"; he's actually much more likely to. See what I mean about Nate: he's actually something of an outlier among the poll geeks:

       "This is false – he’s a lot more likely to win."

       "In a race today, President Obama would win with about 90% probability. The true probability is even higher, since the Meta-Analysis does not correct for individual pollster errors. We could – but the political blowback from unskewing polls is too large."

        Next he calls out Romomentum:

        "Ro-mentum ended around October 11th, the date of the VP Biden-Ryan debate and reversed around October 16th, Debate #2. Now the median EV expectation is at a plateau around Obama 293 EV, Romney 245 EV. Viewed through the all-important Electoral College, Obama has a Popular Vote Meta-Margin lead of 1.5%. This measure is precise to within <0 .5=".5" a="a" any="any" anything="anything" better="better" bit="bit" br="br" far="far" if="if" is="is" look="look" poll.="poll." race="race" single="single" starting="starting" static.="static." than="than" the="the" to="to">
         "In President Obama’s favor, he (a) won debate #3, and (b) has had a Meta-Margin lead of +3.3+/- 1.3% this year. Movement is more likely toward this mean than away from it. The red strike zone in our history graph reflects this, and gives a re-elect probability of 89%."

          Finally, Wang finishes with this advice: Don't be like David Brooks. I'd say that if you follow that rule when you do any kind of political analysis you can't go wrong. This advice is a general principle to always keep in mind.

          "Don’t be like David Brooks. Finally, a word on examining individual polls. In the comments section, I am seeing breathless statements like how the TIME poll shows Obama +5% in Ohio, and won’t that move the Meta-Margin, and so on. Hey…relax. In case you haven’t noticed, the Meta-Margin’s not moving that much. Try to avoid caressing those individual polls too much!"

           So next time you are reading some banal post about Romentum or even tired of Nate Silver's ultra careful predictions you might want to give him a try.

Jobs, Polls And Another Right-Wing Nervous Breakdown

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters for America

Last week it was reported that the television networks and the Associated press this year will skip exit polling in 19 states. Picking states whose outcome are already considered predetermined, and therefore where polling isn't as important, the media consortium cited cost cutting as one of the key reasons behind the move. With more and more people voting early by mail (and from home), the exit pollsters have to shift their focus and spend more time and money contacting voters by phone, which is more expensive

Pretty straightforward, right?

Not this election season. Not when nearly every news cycle brings with it a new sinister conspiracy launched by the far right press, which remains desperate to explain why Obama's campaign hasn't yet completely collapsed under the weight of what they claim to be his historic domestic and international failures.

So on the same day the exit polling story was reported in the Washington Post, Breitbart.com's Big Journalismposted an item announcing that the elimination of the 19 exit polling states represented an obvious media-driven conspiracy (an "insidious plan") concocted by the "goose-stepping" networks and AP to help re-elect President Obama.

What was so evil about the cost-cutting move? Of the 19 states, 15 are red ones where Romney will win easily.

Therefore:

The real reason the consortium has cut these states is that they know that if they report fifteen states coming in for Romney early, independent voters in other states will take notice and be swayed his way.

The networks and the AP just knew that for independent voters who still hadn't voted at night on November 6, if early returns showed Romney had won Louisiana, Kentucky and Georgia, for example, that would prompt undecided voters all over the country to flock to the polls to vote for the Republican, because he'd won states he was supposed to win. (Just like they did with McCain in 2008?) Therefore, the networks and AP had to step in and cut off exit polling in key Romney states.

That's the basis for the Breitbart.com fantasy (announced as fact, of course) about how the media were conspiring yet again to aide Obama's reelection.

What's so remarkable is that that wasn't even the most delusional theory that was launched last week by the far-right press, which has transformed itself during the closing weeks of the campaign into a full-time, partisan fun house.  

As imaginative as Breitbart's exit poll scheme was, there's no way it could compete with last Friday's epic job truthers push by Fox News and the rest of the off-kilter far-right media. Without the slightest bit of evidence, Obama's media detractors suggested a truly vast conspiracy had taken hold inside the federal government in an effort to doctor the unemployment numbers and boost Obama's re-election run.

Why Obama allowed the supposedly malleable economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to run up the unemployment rate to 10 percent in 2009 when all he had to do, apparently, was demand that they fudge the books, we may never know. But the far-fetched nonsense was thoroughly embraced by Fox News andthroughout the fevered swamps.  

Last week also featured the right-wing spectacle of a media movement throwing itself into a mini convulsion because the Drudge Report and The Daily Caller and Fox News decided to randomly hype a five-year-old speech Obama gave; a speech that was widely reported on at the time. Stepping hard on the race-baiting pedal ("Barack Obama Plays Race Card Against Whitey"), the GOP Noise Machine reveled, however briefly, in the fantasy that millions of voters would finally view Obama the way they have for four years, as a vengeful race hustler.

All of this comes in the immediate wake of the skewed polling nonsense, in which Obama's foes convinced themselves that basically all election polls were deliberately and improperly weighted in order to boost Obama's chances by projecting the false perception he was pulling ahead of Romney. In fact, they claimed, pollsters, like BLS economists, were purposefully skewing the numbers in order to suppress Romney's chances. Theory: If enough phony, skewed polls showed Romney trailing, fewer Republicans would bother to vote on Election Day.

For a movement that has spent four years sporadically clinging to the completely discredit claim that Obama wasn't born in America, this type of farcical behavior probably should not come as a surprise. And yet, lots of jaws dropped late last week when supposedly serious people (or at least people who take themselves seriously on TV), claimed an insidious plot of collusion had driven the unemployment rate down. ("Madness" was how New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described it.) This, just weeks after announcing all polls that showed Romney trailing the president were bogus and needed to be ignored.

I mean, who does that?

The bigger question is why is there a need for such elaborate schemes and conspiracies. Every four years a losing side emerges in the president campaign, but that losing side has never taken it upon itself to just make stuff up, connect invisible dots, and in general act like paranoid maniacs in effort to explain away their frustration.

The right-wing press, locked inside its airtight bubble, remains incapable of introspection or self-doubt. Instead,denial reigns.

That's because many of the media players who insist pollsters are working in tandem with the White House to juice Obama's numbers, or that the nation's unemployment rate is now fabricated, are the same ones who have spent the last four years deriding Obama's presidency as an unmitigated disaster. But if Obama remains in good position to win re-election, what does that tell us about the hysterical anti-Obama cries that have filled the air since 2009?

Unwilling to face those uncomfortable truths, the Fox-led brigade just keeps manufacturing one truly unbelievable explanation after another. (Pollsters are preemptively suppressing the vote!) Who knows what kind of absurd claims will be made during next four weeks of the campaign.

One thing is for sure though, this is what a collective nervous breakdown looks like.

Romney trails Obama in latest poll

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Obama Has Equaled His Biggest Gallup Lead Yet Over Mitt Romney

Brett LoGiurato/Business Insider

President Barack Obama's lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney ticked up a point Wednesday in Gallup's daily tracking poll, equaling his biggest lead yet in the Gallup survey. 

Obama leads Romney, 50 percent to 43 percent. That matches his lead from the April 21-26 period, right after the general election began as Romney virtually locked up the Republican nomination. 

Obama's 7-point lead is up from 6 points on Tuesday. Romney dropped a point day to day. 

Obama's approval rating is also up in the latest daily tracking numbers. His approval rating hit 51 percent, above the 50-percent threshold that usually ensures re-election for incumbents. His disapproval rating is also down a point to 42 percent.

Poll:Obama has double digit lead over GOP challengers

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POLL: 99 PERCENT MESSAGE NEARLY TWICE AS POPULAR AS TEA PARTY GOP MESSAGE

From Think Progress

A new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll out last night found that a whopping 60 percent of Americans strongly agree with the basic sentiment of the 99 Percent Movement, as expressed in the statement below:

The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.  America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency.  The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.

Just 33 percent of those polled strongly agreed with a Tea Party GOP message focused on austerity, reducing the size of government, and keeping taxes low for everyone. The poll also found that Occupy Wall Street is viewed more favorably than the Tea Party, the Republican Party, and any of the Republican presidential contenders. The results comport with another poll out yesterday showing that Occupy Wall Street is more popular than both Wall Street itself and Washington, DC.

Poll: Huge majority of Americans support taxing the rich

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story

As the U.S. Senate prepares to vote down legislation that would raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to pay for a jobs plan that most economists believe would stop the recession, a new poll has surfaced showing just how out of touch those Senators are with mainstream America.

According to figures released by Bloomberg and The Washington Post on Tuesday, eight in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year. A full 81 percent of Democrats were behind the plan, along with 67 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

That’s a huge leap in support from December 2010, when a Bloomberg poll found that just 59 percent favored extending the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy Americans. President Obama has since vowed to normalize tax rates between the upper and middle classes, highlighting the dispairity in the percentage paid by lower income people as compared to the top earners.

Similarly large majorities also supported major reductions in defense spending, which is far and away the largest discretionary spending the government is engaged in today. Sixty percent of Democrats were in favor of cutting defense, along with 58 percent of independents. Just 34 percent of Republicans favored this course of action.

Overall, 81 percent of American adults said they believe that even the middle class will be forced to make sacrifices to reduce the nation’s deficit. However, 83 percent of Americans agreed that cutting Social Security should not be an option. Another 82 percent said cutting Medicare should be off the table.

The majority’s views are largely in-line with President Barack Obama’s proposals, which are likely be under-cut by the “super committee” Congress agreed to form in the midst of a budget standoff earlier this year. The committee of 12 will be tasked with finding at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next 10 years: a feat nearly impossible without raising government revenues or making massive cuts to social safety nets.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Americans are evenly divided on whether re-electing President Obama, or replacing him with any of the Republican candidates, will even make a difference.

Just 24 percent said their families finances would be better if Obama wins the 2012 election, versus 24 percent who believe things will improve with a Republican in office. Nearly half, 44 percent, said either outcome would “not make much difference,” according to the poll.

Read the full results here.

Poll: Americans favor unions over GOP governors in labor disputes

By David Edwards

More Americans back unions over governors who are trying to curb collective bargaining rights, according to a recent poll.

The polling organization Gallup found that 48 percent, or nearly half of Americans agree more with state employee labor unions. Only 39 percent favored governors in those states.

An additional 13 percent agreed with neither or had no opinion.

The results were split along party lines. In all, 65 percent of Republicans supported governors, while 70 percent of Democrats chose unions.

Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and several other states have all proposed stripping union rights.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed into law Thursday a bill that bans strikes and curbs collective bargaining rights.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a similar bill into law last month, after weeks of protests by public workers.

The Wisconsin governor agreed Thursday to honor a judge's order to temporarily halt implementation of the law.

The Gallup survey of 1,027 adults was conducted March 25-27.

Obama the most polarizing president in decades

By David Edwards

No president in recent decades had polarized the American public in their second year as much as President Barack Obama, according to polling organization Gallup.

During his second year in office, an average of 81 percent of Democrats approved of the job Obama was doing. But only 13 percent of Republicans expressed approval. That left a 68 point approval gap between the two parties.

At 56 points, President Ronald Reagan's second year had the next highest approval gap. Clinton had a 54 point gap during his second year.

In fact, no president in the last 50 years, since President Dwight Eisenhower, had a more polarizing second year than Obama.

Overall, Obama's first and second years in office both ranked in the top ten most polarizing years of any recent president. His second year was ranked fourth, while his first year was ranked sixth.

Though Obama holds the record with the most polarized second year, President George W. Bush holds the record for the most polarized year of any year, and the most years in the top ten.

Ranked at number one, Bush had a 76 point party approval gap during his fourth year in office. Bush's eighth year ranked eighth, with an approval gap of 61 points. Only six percent of Democrats and 67 percent of Republicans approved of Bush that year.

Obama enjoyed a bump in overall approval during the last month of his second year. In early December, 48 percent disapproved of the job he was doing and 43 percent approved. By late January, 50 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved.

M.C.L Comment: The slime that resides in the right wing media should pat themselves on the back for being one of the factors of this poll, thanks to their 2 year campaign of misinformation. And the second factor is race look at the tea party. I have a hard time believing there would have been a tea party if Hillary Clinton or any other white Democrat was the president, sure there would be still hate for that president on the right but I doubt the tea party would be around.

Poll: Just 26% think Sarah Palin would be an effective president

By David Edwards Professor says Huffington Post more fair to former Alaska governor than CNN or Time When asked about a Beck/Palin ticket, Glenn Beck said he wasn't electable and "there are far too many people that are far smarter than me to be president."

According to a new poll from Vanity Fair and CBS News' 60 Minutes, the former Alaska governor might not be electable either.

The poll asks, "Do you think SARAH PALIN would have the ability to be an EFFECTIVE PRESIDENT?"

59 percent of respondents agree that the former Alaska governor would not be effective while 26 percent think she would.

A press release sent to RAW STORY announced:

Sarah Palin would not be an effective president say 6 in 10 Americans. Seventy-five percent of Democrats, 40 percent of Republicans, and 63 percent of independents all agreed that Sarah Palin would not be an effective president. Twenty-six percent overall did think she could navigate the Oval Office, including 47 percent of Republicans, 12 percent of Democrats, and 21 percent of independents.

Most notably, self-described conservatives were almost evenly split on the question. 40 percent said that Palin would not be effective while 41 percent said she would.

Palin has made a number of gaffes over the years which may inhibit her electability should she decide to run. During an interview with CBS' Katie Couric in 2008, Palin couldn't name a Supreme Court decision -- beyond Roe v. Wade -- she disagreed with and wouldn't name any newspaper or magazine that she read.

In an earlier interview, she suggested to ABC News' Charles Gibson that the US may need to go to war with Russia over their attack on Georgia. Palin was also widely ridiculed for saying that part of her national security experience was that parts of Russia could be seen from land in Alaska.

In a blog cross-posted at the conservative blog HotAir, Cornell associate law professor William Jacobson blasted news outlets like Time and CNN for reporting that the poll was about Palin's qualifications for office.

CNN reported:

Two days after Sarah Palin fired up a large crowd at Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally in Washington, a newly released survey suggests a clear majority of Americans don't think the former vice presidential nominee has the right credentials to be president.

According to the new survey from Vanity Fair and CBS News' 60 Minutes, only 1 in 4 of all adults thinks Palin is qualified to be commander-in-chief while 60 percent say she is not.

"This description of the poll is an outright fabrication. The actual poll question had nothing to do with credentials, qualifications, or even electability," wrote Jacobson.

The associate clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School also noted called out Time Magazine's description of the poll.

"Again, there is no truth to the characterization that the poll concerned qualifications or election prospects," he said.

But Jacobson praised Huffington Post because they put the poll in context:

While the 2012 election is a long way off and poll numbers are difficult to interpret, in one recent poll of potential 2012 matchups, conducted Aug. 6-9 by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 43% of registered voters said they would support Palin to 49% for Obama.

"HuffPo more fair than CNN and Time Magazine. It has come to this," lamented Jacobson.

Behind Obama Muslim myth stands the right wing

From media matters research:

Two recently released polls show that an increasing number of Americans believe the falsehood that President Obama is a Muslim. According to the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of people who believe this false claim cite the media as the source of that information -- and, indeed, the right-wing media have incessantly promoted this lie.

Pew, Time polls find that an increasing number of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim

Pew: Nearly "one-in-five Americans" now say Obama is a Muslim. On August 18, the Pew Research Center released a survey on Obama and religion, conducted in early August. The poll found that "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009," while "[o]nly about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009." The survey also found that "43% say they do not know what Obama's religion is." Pew went on to state: "The view that Obama is a Muslim is more widespread among his political opponents than among his backers." It also added:

When asked how they learned about Obama's religion in an open-ended question, 60% of those who say Obama is a Muslim cite the media. Among specific media sources, television (at 16%) is mentioned most frequently. About one-in-ten (11%) of those who say Obama is a Muslim say they learned of this through Obama's own words and behavior.

Time: 24 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. In a poll also released on August 18, Time magazine, in conjunction with polling firm ABT/SRBI, found that 24 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Time stated that "just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim."

Right wing media relentlessly drive Obama-Muslim falsehood

Right-wing media have relentlessly pushed the myth that Obama is a Muslim. In the past two years, the conservative media has continued to lie about Obama's personal history, dishonestly distorting his faith to claim that he is in fact a Muslim and not a Christian. Those untruths have run the gamut -- from outright claiming that Obama is a Muslim to alleging that he "is a Christian that Christians don't recognize"; from using his family and upbringing in Indonesia to portray him as an "Islamist" to claiming he has an agenda that shows he has a "preference of Islam over Christianity"; and from distorting comments Obama or his administration has made to picking out symbols associated with his administration to perpetuate the lie about his faith. Conservatives have even used the Pew and Time polls today to further rehash these falsehoods.

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama is a Muslim

Limbaugh: "There might be reasons why some people think" Obama is a Muslim. On his August 19 radio show, Rush Limbaugh, who lately has taken to calling Obama "Imam Obama", said: "Has Obama ever called Muslims 'bitter clingers'? Well, he's called Christians 'bitter clingers.' He did that in San Francisco. I'm just throwing these things out here, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity. Some think he's a Muslim. I'm just saying there might be reasons why some people think this." Limbaugh also said during the same show, "If it was OK, and even laudatory, to call Bill Clinton America's first black president, why can't we call Imam Obama America's first Muslim president?"

Right-wing runs with dubious claim that Obama admitted "I am a Muslim." Conservatives pushed an unsubstantiated claim that Obama admitted to Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit that he is a Muslim, with G. Gordon Liddy stating that it comes under the heading "suspicions confirmed." Right-wing commentator Pamela Geller went even further and put the words "I am a Muslim" in quotation marks and attributed the statement to Obama in the title of a blog post hyping the rumor.

Wash. Times' Kuhner: Obama is a "cultural Muslim." In a July 8 Washington Times op-ed, Jeffrey Kuhner wrote that Obama is "betraying the Jews" and that he "is a cultural Muslim whose sympathies lie with the Islamic world in its life-death struggle against Israel."

Geller: Obama's Pearl comments were "spoken like an" "antisemitic Muslim terrorist." In a May 18 post, Geller wrote of Obama's comments on the signing of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act: "The Daniel Pearl beheading 'captured the world's imagination' -- spoken like an ..........antisemitic Muslim terrorist. Pearl was beheaded (GRAPHIC VIDEO) because of Islamic anti-semitism and violent jihadi doctrine. Freedom of the press had nothing to do with it. And this coming from a plant who is attempting to restrict these freedoms ..............press and speech." In fact, Obama was honoring Pearl in his comments.

Quinn on Obama: "I think he's a Muslim." Seizing on reports that Obama had gone golfing on Christmas Day 2009, Jim Quinn said on his radio show: "I know that it's very impolitic to bring this up but I think he's a Muslim. Sorry, I do." Quinn, who has also repeatedly suggested Obama is Muslim, said of Obama on his February 26 radio show, "You've got a nexus here of angry black nationalism" and "whose entire family is Muslim."

Geller calls Obama "the Muslim president." Geller's blog contains 267 posts tagged, "Muslim in the White House?" In a June 2, 2009, post, Geller called Obama "The Muslim president." Calling it a "critical issue," Geller wrote in January 2008 that "Obama went to a madrassa in Jakarta," that "he practiced Islam," and that "if Obama makes it to the big house, Israel is screwed. Finished." On May 30, 2009, Geller wrote that with his Cairo speech, Obama "proved everything I said to be true." In fact, CNN debunked the "madrassa" falsehood in January of 2007, and as Newsweek stated, "Barack Obama has never been Muslim and never practiced Islam."

Fox News' Special Report asks of Obama: "Islam or Isn't He?" During a June 4, 2009, segment, Fox News' Special Report aired a quote by Obama national security official Denis McDonough, in which he talked about how Obama "experienced Islam on three continents" and grew up in Indonesia with a Muslim father, and asked: "Islam or Isn't He?"

Savage: Obama is "an unknown stealth candidate" who "in fact, was a Muslim." Michael Savage falsely asserted that Obama was a Muslim and attended a madrassa, saying: "Look who we inherited in this country, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Hussein Obama, in one generation. A war hero to -- a war hero who commanded the Allied operations against Nazi Germany was running for the presidency then. Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim."

KSFO's Rodgers: Obama "admits in one of his own books" that he would "stand with the Muslims" against "the Western world." Repeating a false allegation from a chain email, Lee Rodgers falsely claimed Obama "admits in one of his own books" that "in case of a confrontation between the Western world and the Islamic world, he will stand with the Muslims." In fact, what Obama wrote in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, according to FactCheck.org, "is that he would stand with American immigrants from Pakistan or Arab countries should they be faced with something like the forced detention of Japanese-American families in World War II."

Conservative radio hosts seize on Obama comment to revive false rumors about his faith. During the 2008 campaign, numerous conservative talk-radio hosts selectively highlighted Obama's assertion, which he immediately clarified, that "John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith" to revive rumors that he is a Muslim, not a Christian. For example, Chris Baker claimed that Obama's comment was "obviously a Freudian slip" and stated, "He confessed. It's over." Savage described Obama as a "Muslim stealth candidate" and stated: "I have nothing against moderate Muslims. ... The question is, why is he covering up his Muslim faith?"

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama's Christian faith is not Christianity

Limbaugh: "Obama says he's a Christian but where's the evidence?" On his August 19 radio show, Limbaugh used Pew's findings to repeat the claim that NASA administrator Charles Bolden's recent comments on Muslim outreach show Obama "turned NASA over to a Muslim outreach program." Limbaugh went on to say: "The guy holds an Easter egg roll -- the White House website promoting the Easter egg roll does not mention Jesus or Christ. It talks about environmentalism. Obama says he's a Christian but where's the evidence?" Limbaugh also brought up Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church to cast doubt on Obama's Christian faith, saying, "Reverend Wright's church is a weird brand of Christianity. The Reverend Wright's church -- black theology is what comes out of that pulpit, which is not exactly mainstream Christianity."

Beck on Obama: "I think he is a Christian that Christians don't recognize." On his August 19 radio show, Glenn Beck addressed the findings of the Time poll, saying, "Here's the problem with this. I find that a disturbing poll because I don't think -- I think that is the easy answer for people who are like, 'Well, it doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense.' And I think the easy thing is to say, 'I think he's a Muslim.' I don't -- I really don't. I think he is a Christian that Christians don't recognize." Beck went on to claim that because "social justice activists" in the media have so distorted Christianity, "no one is explaining why Barack Obama doesn't feel right." Beck also used the fact that Obama attended Wright's church to further confuse the issue, saying of Obama: "When he did get Jesus, he got it from Jeremiah Wright. This is liberation theology. ... So the story of Jesus takes on a whole different light."

Beck: Obama's comments show "contempt for the Scriptures." On his August 19 show, Beck and his co-hosts attacked Obama for comments he made about the Bible that they said show "a lack of understanding" and that are "not Christianity." Beck went on to claim that Obama's comments are "such a distortion" and "shows contempt for the Scriptures." Beck added that Obama's Christianity "is again liberation theology," and his comments were "his understanding of distorted Christianity."

Tennent: "You can't vote for [Obama] and be a Christian. ... You're going to be held accountable for this vote." On the radio show she co-hosts with Jim Quinn, Rose Tennent read an email from a listener who criticized her statement that "I don't think you can be a Christian and vote for Barack Obama," replying: "I've said it on this show, too. I really don't believe you can be. You can't vote for him and be a Christian at the same time. You can't." Tennent went on to say: "I'm not judging; I'm laying out the facts. ... You know, you're going to be held accountable for this vote. If you voted for Barack Obama and you call yourself a person of faith, you will be held accountable for that vote. I believe that with all of my heart."

Quinn: Obama "says he's a Christian but I've never seen him in a Christian church." After saying that he believed Obama is a Muslim, Quinn stated: "What am I to think when he says to George Stephanopoulos, 'Nobody has criticized my Muslim faith,' and Stephanopoulos says, 'You mean, Christian.' And he, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, Christian faith.' What am I to make of a guy who says he's a Christian but I've never seen him in a Christian church?" Quinn continued: "And don't give me the Reverend Wright, because the Reverend Wright's church isn't Christian. The Reverend Wright's church is black liberation theology and that is a conveyor belt for Marxism. And by the way, wasn't the Reverend Wright a follower of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam?" He concluded: "I mean, if I got questions here, does that make me a bad guy?"

Right-wing rhetoric: Obama is an "Islamist" and prefers Islam over Christianity

McCarthy's book a collection of recycled Obama "Islamist" smears. In his book The Grand Jihad, Andrew McCarthy invokes numerous smears, myths, and falsehoods to portray Obama as an "Islamist." Among the claims included were that Obama is not a Muslim, but has "Islamist sympathies," which "run deep"; that Obama "seem[s] ... disposed" to "advance the cause of Islam in the world"; that he does not like "America as it is"; and that his agenda "jibes perfectly with the Islamist scheme to destroy America from within."

WorldNetDaily" Obama has a "fealty toward Islam." In a WorldNetDaily.com column, contributor Pieder Beeli purported to do "an inferential or forensic analysis" of Obama by analyzing "what is implied rather than what is explicitly stated." Using a litany of lies and attacks, including the claim that "I have not heard Obama affirm the central Christian tenet, 'The love of God was revealed to us on the cross of Jesus Christ.' " Beeli came to the conclusion that Obama has a "preference of Islam over Christianity," adding that "his fealty toward Islam and multiculturalism far exceed his fealty toward Christianity.

Geller: Obama "wants jihad to win. That's what he is doing." In an April 1 blog post titled, "President Jihad: Obama Encouraged Violent Palestinian Muslim protests against Israel," Geller claimed Obama "is agitating Muslims against Jews" and stated, "The President of the United States is advancing jihad against the oath of office that he took." Geller also stated in an April 11 post, "President Sarkozy called [Obama] 'a madman,' 'a lunatic.' Perhaps, I don't know -- but one thing is for sure: Hussein is a muhammadan. He's not insane ...........he wants jihad to win. That's what he is doing. Of course, to the western mind, the rational mind, the logical mind, the American mind, that is insane." Responding to reports that Guantánamo Bay detainees may be housed at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, Geller wrote: "Obama is bringing his jihad to Illinois."

Gaffney in Wash. Times: "[I]t increasingly appears" Obama "will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood." In a Washington Times column, Frank Gaffney criticized Obama's "Respect Islam" campaign, writing: "President Obama on Friday reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a 'new relationship' with the Muslim world. On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood -- an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of 'destroying Western civilization from within.' "

Hinderaker on Obama: "We're not sure who he is, exactly, but he certainly isn't one of us." In an August 19 post on his Powerline blog, John Hinderaker criticized the Associated Press for its article on the Pew poll, which stated that "Americans increasingly are convinced -- incorrectly -- that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion." Hinderaker suggested the AP was editorializing in pointing out Obama is not a Muslim, writing: "I love that 'incorrectly.' The AP has evolved into an opinion machine, so it's rare and a little startling to see it stand up so boldly for a 'fact.' He's not a Muslim, dammit!" He added: "We're not sure who he is, exactly, but he certainly isn't one of us. Given the currents that swirl through world events these days, being a Muslim is one interpretation of Obama's exoticism."

Right-wing rhetoric: Symbols associated with Obama admin look "Islamic"

Conservatives see Islamic symbols in Obama administration logos. Fox News and the conservative media seized on the official logo of the Nuclear Security Summit to claim its image "looks like" an Islamic crescent. However, as Comedy Central's Jon Stewart noted, "the inspiration for the logo is actually the Rutherford-Bohr Model of the atom that we all learned about in high school."

NY Post's Goodwin: "[N]ot a coincidence" nuclear summit logo features "[t]he kind of crescent moon you see on the flags of Muslim countries." In his April 14 New York Post column, Michael Goodwin wrote that the logo "reminded" him of "a crescent moon," the "kind of crescent moon you see on the flags of Muslim countries." He added: "Indeed, the crescent, often with a single or multiple stars, is the main symbol of Islam. So now there is something like it at an official presidential event, prominently displayed in photographs being beamed around the world." While Goodwin claimed that he was "not suggesting President Obama is a secret Muslim," he wrote: "But I am certain the crescent-like design of the logo is not a coincidence, especially at an event where Iran's nuclear ambition and al Qaeda's search for a bomb are prime topics."

Fox & Friends sees "Muslim image" in summit logo. On the April 14 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Gretchen Carlson discussed Goodwin's column, with Kilmeade saying: "When I first saw this logo, I wasn't really thinking this, but upon further review, perhaps I should have been. And that is, if you look at the Nuclear Security Summit logo, what does that have in common with all those other flags there representing Muslim nations?" Showing images of flags, Carlson replied: "That's the same thing that you see on the flags of Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, and Pakistan, and what do they all have in common? They're all Muslim nations." Carlson then stated that Goodwin's claim is that Obama "deliberately put this as a logo to try and continue his outreach to Muslim nations in a positive way," adding that at "the same time, he points out in his article that we're not going to say terms like 'Jihad' anymore or 'Islamic extremists' anymore. So you be the judge." During the segment, Fox featured text that read: "Curious Crescent Logo: Summit Symbol Similar to Muslim Image" and "Islamic Image? Summit Design Looks Like Crescent Moon."

Jim Hoft: "That's weird?... Obama's nuclear summit logo is an Islamic crest." In an April 14 post on his Gateway Pundit blog titled, "That's Weird?... Obama's Nuclear Summit Logo Is an Islamic Crest," Jim Hoft repeatedly asserted that it's "weird" that "Obama's nuclear summit logo is an Islamic crest." Other right-wing blogs, including Evil Conservative and Right Side News, also claimed that "the Nuclear Security Summit logo looks an awful lot like an Islamic crescent."

Error Theory: "Nuclear Summit logo uses an Islamic-shaped crescent." In an April 13 post on the Error Theory blog, also featured at Free Republic, Alec Rawls claimed that it "is hard to believe that the State Department" could use "an Islamic-shaped crescent" for the Nuclear Security Summit "by accident," asserting: "Maybe our State Department really is this ignorant, but more likely, as in the case of Fort Hood mass murderer Nidal Hasan, nobody was willing to make an issue of anything connected to Islam, no matter how disturbing, for fear of committing. career suicide. After all, Obama has commanded all of his underlings to be as oblivious to Islam as possible."

Gaffney: "Can This Possibly Be True? New Obama Missile Defense Logo Includes A Crescent." In February, after the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) redesigned its logo, media conservatives compared the new design to the Islamic crescent. In a February 24 BigGovernment post, Frank Gaffney called the "symbolic action" "nefarious," writing that "the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo," and that "Team Obama is behaving in a way that -- as the new MDA logo suggests -- is all about accommodating that 'Islamic Republic' and its ever-more aggressive stance." Gaffney concluded: "Watch this space as we identify and consider various, ominous and far more clear-cut acts of submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team." Gaffney later issued a correction.

FoxNews.com: "Others have noted that [missile defense logo] has a crescent and star design, evoking a common symbol for Islam." In a February 24 article, FoxNews.com acknowledged that the MDA logo "first appeared" on the MDA website "in the fall," nonetheless reported claims that the logo was "strikingly" and "scarily" similar to Obama's 2008 campaign logo, adding that "[o]thers have noted that it has a crescent and star design, evoking a common symbol for Islam." In a Special Report segment, anchor Bret Baier cited an MDA statement calling the claims "ridiculous," and that the new logo is "for recruiting in the public website and was developed almost three years ago" and "has no link to any political campaign." Baier also noted: "The Washington Times points out that the red, white, and blue symbol looks strangely similar to Barack Obama's campaign 'O' from 2008."