Friday miscellaneous (10/19)

The President showed life in last Tuesday’s debate (unlike the first one). However, the momentum seems to still be shifting toward Romney. Gallup has found a 7 point lead for Romney nationally. Romney leads among Jewish voters in Florida and leads in Pennsylvania. Although some of these polls may be outliers, Real Clear Politics currently classifies the traditionally blue Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan as toss up states. There is also speculation that the Obama campaign is redirecting resources away from Virginia and North Carolina and into Minnesota. Something also worth remembering: during the primary Romney erased large Santorum leads in both Michigan and Ohio in the weeks before the vote (he did the same with the brief Gingrich lead in Florida).

And despite Obama being considered the “winner” of Tuesday’s debate (winner, that is, stylistically in the “American Idol” sense), undecided voters came away with the impression that Romney was the more trustworthy candidate on multiple important issues.

And it doesn’t help that although moderator Candy Crowley intervened verified the President’s version of the Libya fallout, she later admitted that Romney was correct in substance. CNN appears to be defending Crowley against accusations that she gave the President more time than Romney by claiming such adjustment is necessary because the President speaks slower. Although for those interested in the rules, Slate determined that the entire debate was one large rule violation.

Also, in Tuesday’s debate, President Obama criticized Romney for wanting to cut funding to Planned Parenthood: “there are millions of women all across the country, who rely on Planned Parenthood for, not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings.” However, Planned Parenthood has since issued a statement confirming that it does not provide mammograms: “Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses refer patients to other facilities for mammograms...” This was a result of the pro-life effort to swamp PP with mammogram requests after the President’s statement.

Switching away from politics for a moment, National Review calls homeschoolers “the last radicals” (and quotes this blog’s co-author Jeremiah in the process):

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.

And then there’s Thomas Kidd’s article on what he calls the “Paleo Evangelicals:”

The paleo evangelicals are not liberal in any sense. They come from diverse backgrounds and perspectives: some are deeply conversant with the ancient history of the church, and with the Reformation; some are sympathetic to Roman Catholic social doctrines and traditions (if not all Catholic theology and ecclesiology); some are deeply conscious of the church’s mission outside of America; some gravitate toward outlets such as The American Conservative or the Front Porch Republic, publications and blogs focused on the conservative themes of local culture, limited government, and ordered liberty.

And finally, in case you ever thought that national bureaus were favorable to democracy: