PoliPundit.com

The Note on President Bush’s upcoming Saturday visits to Mississippi and Kentucky:
With strong Republican candidates poised to snatch Democrat gubernatorial seats away, tomorrow, GOP strategists kick off their final push by wheeling out their biggest artillery piece.
President Bush’s visits to Kentucky and Mississippi are sure to dominate all local media in the final days, [...]

A new SurveyUSA poll in Kentucky shows Republican gubernatorial candidate Ernie Fletcher hanging on to a 51-44 lead over Democrat Ben Chandler. So much for Chandler’s much-touted stategy of running against the “Bush-Fletcher economy.”

There are dozens of GDP-helps-Bush stories today. But I take particular delight from the one in the Old York Times:
Businesses were broadly unprepared for the recovery. The government guesses that inventories fell during the quarter, but there is a good chance that it is underestimating the decline. If so, the third-quarter growth rate will be [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve noted a John Kerry hypocrisy (Weasel Clark keeps me pretty busy with his jaw-droppingly naked flip-flopping.) But I can’t resist pointing out the latest Kerry opus.
From Kerry’s closing statement at Sunday’s nine dwarfs debate:
There’s a front-page story in today’s Washington Post that says that Democrats are going to try [...]

A new poll shows Republican candidate Haley Barbour leading Mississippi’s incumbent Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove by 4 points. That’s about the same as the last poll, which showed this race as close, with a slight GOP partisan edge.
President Bush will campaign with Barbour in Mississippi on Saturday.
He’ll also campaign with Ernie Fletcher, the Republican gubernatorial [...]

“Roughly 40,000 poor people have been dropped from the Oregon Health Plan this year because of their failure to make monthly premium payments, some as low as $6 a month,” the Associated Press reports from Eugene.
“Advocates for the poor” are outraged. “It’s an enormous barrier,” said Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action [...]

The latest independent poll from Louisiana shows 32-year-old Indian-American conservative Republican Bobby Jindal leading his “moderate” Democrat opponent, Lt. Governor Kathleen Blanco, by 11 points. This is a tremendous leap for Jindal and shows that the GOP has a good chance of sweeping all three remaining governorships up this year – Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi [...]

Max Boot wonders how the lying liberal media would have covered D-Day:
“More than 8,000 Allied servicemen were wounded, 3,000 of them fatally, during an assault on Normandy beaches yesterday. Despite those heavy casualties, almost all of France remains under Nazi occupation. The supreme Allied commander, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, claimed that everything had gone according [...]

I predicted the strong economic growth in the third quarter when the quarter had just begun:
Like most conservatives, I’m an optimist. I wouldn’t bet against America. The economy will likely come roaring back and the situation in Iraq will improve remarkably as the weeks and months go by. Have faith.
As regular readers know, I’m not [...]

The Note on the impact of the GDP numbers:
It’s not just the economic numbers, it’s boy oh boy look at the economic numbers.
ABC News’ Ramona Schindleheim reports that this morning’s economic growth number — 7.2% in the third quarter, was the best showing for the Gross Domestic Product since the first quarter of 1984 and [...]

The US economy is growing at the fastest pace since 1984:
Powered by tax cuts and low interest rates, the U.S. economy expanded at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the fastest growth in more than 19 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The first estimate of real gross domestic product was considerably [...]

The Old York Times’ Tom Friedman says that Iraq is no Vietnam:
There is this notion being peddled by Europeans, the Arab press and the antiwar left that “Iraq” is just Arabic for Vietnam, and we should expect these kinds of attacks from Iraqis wanting to “liberate” their country from “U.S. occupation.” These attackers are the [...]

George Stephanopoulos is predicting a Bush victory in 2004:
“It looks like we are coming out of the recession,” Stephanopoulos said. “Wages are starting to go up. Productivity is starting to go up. Generally if you look at polls across the country people respect President Bush even when people don’t agree with his policies. He has [...]

PoliticsUS.com has posted a copy of RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie’s recent memo on GOP strategy.

Wherever George W. Bush campaigns for a candidate, he brings victory.
Wherever Bill Clinton campaigns, he seems to bring the stench of failure along with him. Deborah Orin notes this remarkable string of Clinton failures:
Clinton helped launch [Weasel] Clark in a wave of media buzz by talking up the retired general as one of the Democrats’ [...]