Who is stronger against Obama: Santorum or Romney?

Rick Santorum has overtaken Mitt Romney in several GOP primary polls — but skeptics still aren't sold on the Pennsylvanian's ability to topple Obama in November For months, Mitt Romney has insisted to Republican voters that he's the candidate best equipped to beat President Obama in the fall. The polls backed him up, too, says Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen, "at least until now." This week, a series of surveys have shown Rick Santorum catching up with Romney, or even passing him, in national and statewide polls of the Republican field. And for the first time, a new survey from PPP finds that Santorum performs slightly better against Obama than Romney does. Which of the GOP's two frontrunners actually has the best shot at the White House?

Santorum edges out Romney: The flurry of new polls "provide solid proof that Santorum and Romney are now in a statistical dead heat" for the GOP nomination, says Jonathan Tobin at Commentary. And after Romney's bruising battle with Newt Gingrich and a series of devastating gaffes, Mitt is losing his "strongest argument for the nomination" — electability — because he's "losing support among the independents who made him more electable" against Obama in the first place. Suddenly, the well-liked Santorum is arguably the stronger candidate.
"New polls give more bad news for Romney"

Romney is still a much safer bet: I'm sticking with the conventional wisdom, says John Cassidy at The New Yorker: "If Santorum were to be nominated, the odds are that Obama would win in a landslide." Romney has his flaws, but "Santorum is essentially an ultra-right-wing protest candidate." Women in particular don't trust him on social issues, and even in this political climate, Americans won't elect "a religious zealot and armchair militarist of Santorum's stripe." Once he faces Romney's attacks and the media's scrutiny, Santorum's numbers should wilt.
"The Santorum surge: How seriously should we take it?"

They're almost evenly matched: "If I were a Republican, I'd still bet on Romney," but it's a toss-up, says Jonathan Chait at New York. In the end, it's a question of whose brand of swing voters are more important. If you think the general election will be decided by "economically conservative, socially liberal swing voters," Romney's your man. But if it's a contest for Reagan Democrats, the "economically populist and socially conservative" Santorum cleans up. And remember, if the economy improves, neither Republican has a great shot at beating Obama.
"Is Romney more electable than Santorum?"

View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week

Other stories from this topic:

Like on Facebook - Follow on Twitter - Sign-up for Daily Newsletter

View the original article here

Egyptian Activists Plan to Escalate Protests Against Military Rule

Thousands of Egyptian activists marched to the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Cairo on Friday, demanding an end to military rule as the country prepares to mark the first anniversary of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation. The activists rallied outside the building and renewed calls for Egyptians to join them in a general strike, beginning on Saturday and continuing until the military council that has ruled Egypt since Feb. 11, 2011, cedes power to a civilian council.

Perhaps indicating how ad hoc the military administration of the country remains after a full year, one activist, Lilian Wagdy, recorded an interesting moment of dialogue between one of the protesters and a military police officer during the rally. Speaking across a barbed-wire barricade outside the building, the protester asked, “Do you think anyone can get their rights through the law?” In reply, the officer said simply, “I don’t know.”

As The Associated Press reports, the military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, issued a statement late Friday vowing never to “bow to threats, nor succumb to pressures, nor accept ultimatums.”

Responding online, activists mocked the statement, which was read aloud on state television hours before the anniversary.

#SCAFmessage: We do not yield to threats and we do not succumb to pressure. #Egypt #SCAF #Feb10

— Egyptocracy (@Egyptocracy) February 10, 2012

SCAF: Blah blah blah blah

— Mostafa Hussein (@moftasa) February 10, 2012

Ahram Online, a Cairo news site, reported earlier that one of the marchers was Asmaa Mahfouz, an Internet activist who helped rally support for last year’s revolution in a video message calling for Egyptians to join the first protests. As she marched, she said in an interview with Al Jazeera that just as Mr. Mubarak now “faces charges of instigating the killing of protesters during the revolution,” the military council “should also be tried for the crimes committed under its rule.”

A year after Ms. Mahfouz helped galvanize the protest movement with her viral video, other activists have posted more elaborate short films on YouTube to explain the call for a general strike. On Wednesday, The Lede featured one of those films, “Egypt’s Military, Inc.,” which examined the large chunk of the Egyptian economy under the control of the generals and was produced by Aalam Wassef.

SCAF r not in the habit of “handing” things over. Any gains in the past year have been taken not given. It’s important to accept that #feb11

— Shahira Abouellail (@fazerofzanight) February 10, 2012

Here is another film, “General Strike: No Sweat for Those Who Shed Our Blood,” in which the activists Omar Kamel and Shahira Abouellail look back at the failures of the military government and explain the planned escalation of the protests.

View the original article here

Venezuela's Capriles to run against socialist Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - Youthful state governor Henrique Capriles won Venezuela's opposition primary on Sunday, setting up a potentially close battle with socialist President Hugo Chavez in an October election.

The ballot marked a step forward in the historically fractured opposition's attempts to oust Chavez, whose 13-year rule has galvanized the poor but divided the South American OPEC nation and spooked foreign investors.

Capriles, the 39-year-old center-left governor of Miranda state, won 62 percent of the vote in Venezuela's first-ever opposition primary vote, easily beating nearest rival Pablo Perez on 30 percent.

"We've come to build a future for all Venezuelans," Capriles said at a victory rally, donning a baseball cap in Venezuelan colors and vowing to start his presidential campaign right away.

"As of tomorrow, these legs are going to walk through all the villages, all the slums, all the communities of Venezuela."

The four other opposition candidates joined him on the stage, to a backdrop of fireworks, in a symbolic display of unity meant to turn the page on past bickering inside opposition ranks.

The support of Perez, the governor of the most populous Zulia state who was backed in the primary by two large traditional parties, will help provide Capriles a formidable get-out-the vote machine.

Perhaps as important as Capriles' victory was the opposition turnout of 2.9 million voters in the poll, considerably above what the coalition had targeted in a sign that Chavez's adversaries have improved their ability to mobilize supporters.

The grandson of Polish fugitives from Nazi persecution, Capriles hopes his energetic style and decent record in Miranda can help him counter Chavez's vast government spending and popularity among Venezuela's poorest.

Capriles hails Brazil's market-friendly but socially conscious policy model as his inspiration and has said he would take a "no shocks" approach to dismantling Chavez's statist economic policies, such as currency controls.

CHAVEZ STILL STRONG

Chavez supporters were quick to dismiss the results, noting that the total turnout in Sunday's ballot was only a fraction of the country's 18 million registered voters.

They say the opposition represents an old, discredited political elite who paid scant attention to the poor majority in the past and will never beat the president. Polls show that Chavez, a former soldier who is looking robust again after recent cancer treatment, has an edge as the campaign heats up.

Information Minister Andres Izarra said via Twitter that the 2.9 million voters on Sunday were less than the number the opposition had to request a 2004 recall referendum that Chavez ultimately beat out. "Now let's hope they recognize Chavez's victory on October 7."

Chavez, 57, has won almost all of a dozen or so national votes in Venezuela since taking power in 1999, and has survived national strikes, massive street protests and even a brief military coup that toppled him for 36 hours.

Reading a newspaper in a sunny square deep in the pro-government January 23 area on hills above Chavez's presidential palace, 66-year-old retired pharmacy assistant Ramon Paraera said no one would beat the president.

"Chavez is helping the people. He's with the people, not the bourgeoisie," he said, sitting below a mural of revolutionary heroes including Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

At stake is control of the biggest crude reserves in the world and state oil company PDVSA, which despite declining output still sends more than three quarters of a million barrels a day to the United States and about half a million to China.

Chavez has nationalized almost all Venezuela's oil industry over the years, kicking out U.S. majors and putting PDVSA in charge of multibillion dollar projects. The opposition deny government allegations they plan to privatize the company.

Never out of the spotlight for long, Chavez attended a rally on Sunday to celebrate the 198th anniversary of the "Batalla de La Victoria" ("Battle of Victory") against Spanish forces.

"We cannot let Venezuela lose its independence," said Chavez, who often mocks his political foes as U.S. stooges.

The former soldier pledges "more socialism" for Venezuela if he wins re-election, while the opposition is stressing its commitment to addressing Venezuelans' non-ideological concerns - crime, unemployment and social services.

"In our assessment, assuming his health allows him to campaign, President Chavez is still the favorite to win even if facing a likely competitive challenge from Capriles," Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos said in an a research note.

However daunting the task ahead, Capriles supporters were enjoying their big night. Thousands chanted "Unity! Unity!", waved Venezuelan flags and danced outside his campaign headquarters.

"This is a historic triumph, a triumph of 3 million votes," said university student Moises Carvallo, 19. "This will motivate the undecided voters and give us victory on October 7."

(Additional reporting by Girish Gupta, Diego Ore, Daniel Wallis, Eyanir Chinea; Writing by Brian Ellsworth, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kieran Murray)

View the original article here

Santorum plans aggressive strategy against Romney

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A day after Mitt Romney regained some momentum in the Republican presidential contest, his rival Rick Santorum went on the attack, calling the front-runner "desperate" while promising to compete aggressively to win the state where Romney grew up.

Santorum said Sunday he could do "exceptionally well" in Michigan, where Romney's father served as governor. The Midwestern state and Arizona host Republican presidential nominating contests on Feb. 28.

"We're going to spend a lot of time in Michigan and Arizona, and those are up next. And that's where we've really been focusing on," Santorum told ABC's "This Week." He suggested that a strong showing in those contests would make the presidential contest "a two-man race," dismissing current rivals Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul.

Santorum shrugged off his third-place finish Saturday in caucuses in Maine, where he didn't actively compete, as well as his second-place finish in a straw poll of conservative activists.

Romney has been painting Santorum as a long-time Washington insider who pursued home-state projects. Santorum on Sunday described Romney's recent criticism as "desperate."

"You reach a point where desperate people do desperate things," said Santorum, who represented Pennsylvania during his 16 years in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate.

Maine GOP officials declared Romney the winner of Saturday's caucuses. The results ended a three-state losing streak to Santorum, who swept contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday.

With the next primaries more than two weeks away, the break seems unusually long in the rapid-fire race that's featured six contests in the last 14 days. Romney and his rivals now have 17 days to raise cash and bolster their organizations for what's shaping up to be a slog to the Republican nomination and the right to face President Barack Obama in November.

As Santorum eyes Michigan, Romney turns his attention to extending his huge cash advantage over his rivals.

The Massachusetts governor left Maine before the caucus results were announced to attend a West Coast fundraiser Saturday night. He issued a written statement to mark his victory in the low-turnout contest.

"I'm heartened to have the support of so many good people in this great state," Romney said in the statement. "The voters of Maine have sent a clear message that it is past time to send an outsider to the White House."

Romney is expected to spend much of next week courting donors, while sprinkling in a handful of campaign events. He'll be in Arizona Monday evening.

Romney won a plurality of the Maine vote just hours after winning the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington.

But questions about Romney's durability as his party's presumed front-runner persist. Fully 61 percent of Maine voters selected a candidate other than Massachusetts' former governor in a state practically in his backyard. And Romney's showing was down considerably from 2008, when he won 51 percent of the vote.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a prominent voice among some conservatives, said Romney has work to do to convince GOP voters he's moved beyond his "pretty moderate past ... even in some cases a liberal past."

"I am not convinced, and I do not think the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced," Palin said on Fox News Sunday.

Romney has focused more on social issues in recent days. He has been particularly aggressive in criticizing Obama's recent decision regarding contraception.

On Friday, after three weeks of controversy that pitted the nation's Catholic bishops against the White House, Obama revised his policy. Instead of requiring church-affiliated nonprofit employers to cover free contraception with the health insurance they offer workers, the policy now requires insurance companies to provide free birth control coverage in separate agreements with workers who want it.

White House chief of staff Jack Lew defended the decision Sunday, noting that there is no longer room for compromise.

"This is our plan," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Santorum said the president's plan doesn't resolve the issue. He says many Catholic institutions are self-insured and those organizations will still be forced to pay for women's contraception despite their religious objections.

"There's no compromise here. They are forcing religious organizations, either directly or indirectly to pay for something that they find is a deeply, morally, you know, wrong thing," Santorum, a Catholic, told NBC's "Meet the Press."

The focus on social issues plays well for Santorum, who has long been considered a staunch cultural conservative. Those credentials helped fuel his success last week.

But he wasn't a factor in Maine, where Romney captured 39 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating Paul's 36 percent, state Republican chairman Charlie Webster said. Santorum and Gingrich, who didn't actively campaign in Maine, won 18 percent and 6 percent respectively.

It was a disappointing showing for Paul, who on Sunday suggested that there was virtually no difference between his rivals.

"All three of them have represented the same system, the same status quo," Paul said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The Maine vote totals reflected about 84 percent of the state's precincts, with nearly 5,600 Republicans voting out of 258,000 registered. The contests scheduled for the coming days will not be counted, including an entire county that postponed its caucuses because of a snow storm.

"We were a little bit disappointed last night," Paul said, because he's done well in that county in the past and expected to do well Saturday.

Coming off last week's success, Santorum saw a surge in donations. His campaign reports gathering $3 million in the three days immediately following after last week's hat trick, but he's unlikely to catch Romney in the money race.

Santorum reported just $279,000 in the bank at the end of December, compared with Romney's $19.9 million. Gingrich had $2.1 million, but is still carrying substantial debt, while Paul reported $1.9 million.

Romney won 11 delegates and Paul 10, according to an analysis of the Maine results by The Associated Press. Santorum and Gingrich were shut out. That brings the delegate count to 123 for Romney, 72 for Santorum, 32 for Gingrich and 19 for Paul, with 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination.

View the original article here

Why Russia won't take a stand against Syria: 4 theories

Moscow and Beijing block a United Nations effort to condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. What is Russia hoping to gain?

Just as Syria stepped up shelling on the rebel stronghold of Homs, Russia and China outraged the West over the weekend by vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for its deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters. Russia and China called the proposal "unbalanced," arguing that it focused solely on Assad without targeting armed opposition groups. Moscow maintains that it wants to promote stability and democratic reform, and will dispatch Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to meet with Assad this week. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., says Russia is just trying to "shield a craven tyrant." Why is Moscow really standing in the way of the international effort to oust Assad? Here, four theories: 

1. Syria is key to Russia's Middle East strategy
Moscow wants to hang onto its "sole major foothold in the Arab world," say William Maclean and Steve Gutterman at Reuters. Syria was a client of the Soviet Union, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who hopes to return to the presidency in March, wants to keep it in his orbit. With good reason, says Juan Cole at Informed Comment. Syria hosts Russia's only base on the Mediterranean. Without Syria, Russia can't counter the U.S. in the Middle East.

SEE MORE: Has the Arab League failed in Syria?

2. Syria spends a fortune on Russian weapons
"The fact that Russia still supplies arms to the Syrian security forces clearly weighed heavily on the vote," says David Dayen at Firedoglake. Syria is the largest importer of Russian weapons in the Middle East. Assad's regime has signed contracts for 24 MiG-29M/M2 fighter jets and eight Buk-M2E air-defense systems. Another deal for anti-ship defenses armed with supersonic cruise missiles is in the works. Russia doesn't want to lose this lucrative relationship.

3. Russia doesn't think it's the U.N.'s job to fix Syria
"Moscow fully accepts that Syria has serious internal problems," says Charles Crawford at Britain's Telegraph, "but takes the view that those problems are for Syrians themselves to sort out." Russia is willing to wait and see whether "the opposition forces lined up against Assad are tough enough to do what it takes — including incurring casualties on a massive scale, tens of thousands of casualties more than anything seen so far — to overthrow him without sneaky Western direct military support, as was given in Libya."

SEE MORE: Is Syria's election a sham?

4. Russia fears another Libya
Russia and China "had their fingers burned" by failing to block last year's resolution on Libya, says Cole at Informed Comment, only to see the U.N.-authorized no-fly zone transformed into an instrument of regime change. They don't want to see that happen again. But the Libya solution probably wouldn't work in Syria, anyway, says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. "The Syrians don't seem to be using air power against civilians and rebelling military elements the way the Libyans did." This is urban warfare, which is far harder to fight from the air, and "I seriously doubt that there's any nation on Earth that would be willing to send ground troops into Syria at this point."

View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week

Other stories from this topic:

Like on Facebook - Follow on Twitter - Sign-up for Daily Newsletter

View the original article here