Coleman continues to slide in polls

Norm Coleman, the incumbent Republican Senator for Minnesota and extraordinary political chameleon, is again riding low in the polls. A little over four years ago, Coleman was at a 52% favourablity level. Since then, he's been struggling to keep his head above the crucial 50% mark. The latest poll puts him at 49%.

The results fall pretty much along partisan lines: 70% of those who feel terrorism is the top issue support Coleman, 69% of Republicans like him, 67% of evangelicals give him the thumbs-up, and he wins over 72% of those who call themselves conservative. Those would be nice numbers for a Republican primary, but for a general election it looks less sunny. Norm never won a majority in the 2002 election that brought him to power, only a plurality. He has weak support (44%) from Independents and those who call themselves moderates (46%).

At first the classic Bush Team crony, Coleman voted with the Administration 98% of the time in his first year. As the shine began to come off Bush later on, Coleman struck poses to show some space between himself and Bush. He voted against the surge, but has completely fallen into line with the GOP on every vote to change the policies on Iraq. Formerly a pot-smoking, anti-war liberal Democrat, Coleman changed his stripes and jumped ship in 1996. Since then, his positions have shifted with the political wind. He endorsed Giuliani and bought in to all of the crazy, hyper-fear, eternal war, Muslim-hating rhetoric of that campaign. Then the breeze shifted, and he was all about McCain. He is now irrevocably tied to the Bush agenda, and as McCain increasingly embraces Bush in order to manufacture some kind of GOP consensus, Coleman will be forced to return to his role as a Bush crony with all of the attendant unpopularity that such a designation brings. Norm isn't an idiot; he knows that the tide has turned against him. He now has no choice, however, but to make another shift into a diehard GOP stalwart.

Meanwhile, the more-recently (2006) elected Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar, enjoys a strong 61% approval rating. She has strong support from moderates (71%) and wins over 58% of Independents. She also has strong support in outstate Minnesota, while Norm has barely a majority there. The message to take away from this is that the senator who rejects the Bush agenda is considerably more popular than the senator that has bound himself, hand and foot, to that GOP agenda. So while Norm is not exactly reviled, he is pushing a weaker message than the Democrats.

As I said before, Coleman gets his strong support from Republicans and those that call themselves conservatives. However, Republicans are only 27% of the state and conservatives are only 26%. Evangelicals are only one-third of the state, and those who consider terrorism as the most important issue are only 7% of those polled. Coleman's strong support comes from the margins of the electorate. Any sane candidate in Coleman's position would make a sharp shift to the centre, but instead conditions have forced Coleman to move even farther to the right. This also does not bode well for this seat to remain in Reublican hands.

The Sunday Eel Pout

In a completely obvious hat tip to The Desert Beacon, it is with reluctance and a sinister dread that I announce the need to launch the Minnesota version of The Sunday Deck Bass. The week's outrages, idiocies, and facile indignations will be compiled, and the most unworthy candidates will be awarded The Sunday Eel Pout. Your candidates are as follows:

• John McCain's advisor, Charlie Black, called Bush a "political asset" to the McCain campaign. Former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber was slightly more honest when he said, "I don’t think it does us any good to try to pretend Bush doesn’t exist. I just don’t think that is a strategy that works. " Translation: we're stuck with him, so let's swim with this anchor or drown.
• Mitt Romney, who bowed out of the Republican race this week not because he was thoroughly rejected by his Party, or because it had already cost him $14 million of his own money, or because his designation as the last great hope for the right-wing of the GOP was the kiss of death in a general election, but rather because that by staying in the race he would only "forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I'd be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."
• Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, who endorsed John McCain after endorsing Rudy Giuliani earlier. Coleman, the consummate political chameleon, was voted in as part of the Bush Team. He then distanced himself from Bush before Petraeus' September report. Then he became an ardent proponent of Giuliani's war against radical Islam, embracing torture. Detecting a shift in the breeze, he backed McCain two days before the primary when polls showed McCain leading at 41%. Romney got that that 41% and won, and Coleman ended up backing the guy that got 22%. If Romney hadn't backed out, it seems certain that Coleman's dubious allegiance would have shifted to him immediately.
• Arizona Senator John McCain, who laid out his "diplomatic offensive" to get the NATO allies to expand their role in Afghanistan. This plan is exactly what the Bush Administration has been doing for the past year (at least), only now McCain will do it with "straight talk" instead. McCain brilliantly proposes to "bang heads" with our reluctant allies, who apparently simply don't understand that their militaries are at our disposal. A good shout is all that is needed to bring them 'round. I don't know why Bush never thought of this.

The winner of Minnesota's absolutely unwanted, utterly uncoveted, dismally appropriate, decidedly dubious, and completely ignominious Sunday Eel Pout is John McCain for recycling the tired arrogance of the Bush Administration towards NATO as something completely new and vaguely promising. No, you can't throw it back. It's against the law in Minnesota to throw a rough fish back in the water. You're stuck with it, like every other angler in the North Star State. Feed it to the dog, or eat it or something, but get it the hell away from me.

All of the idiots in this week's race were unquestionably deserving of the Sunday Eel Pout, but There Can Be Only One.
Well kids, the hissing of the eel pout can only mean one thing: this Sunday's Eel Pout award is over.