A new Public Policy Polling survey in Connecticut finds Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) just ahead of Linda McMahon (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 48% to 44%.

The poll confirms results of a Quinnipiac poll yesterday that also found this race unexpectedly close.

Meanwhile, President Obama leads Mitt Romney in the presidential race by 13 points, 53% to 40%.

CNN reports that two people were removed from the Republican National Convention yesterday after they threw nuts at an African-American CNN camera operator and said, “This is how we feed animals.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will accept the Republican party’s vice presidential nomination tonight.

First Read: “Already a full-fledged star in the Republican Party, Ryan has the potential to rock the crowd here in Tampa. After all, he can do it with biography (his family, the loss of his father, his love of hunting) as well as policy (the Ryan budget). And it will be the biggest speech of his political career so far. But let’s also not get too carried away about the VP nominee speech; Palin’s was the exception. (Beyond her, name another impactful VP nominee speech. The memorable convo speeches are almost all keynotes, spouses and top of tickets, not the VP.)”

Matt Taibbi: “But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

“By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place…”

“If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It’s almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House.”

McKay Coppins: “Since Romney announced his second presidential campaign 15 months ago, his strategy in dealing with questions about his Mormon faith could be boiled down to three steps: duck, dodge, and weave. But the past two weeks, the candidate and his team of advisers have made a dramatic about-face in their approach to the religion question… an unexpected series of moves that comprise, as one campaign adviser conceded, ‘a total 180.'”

“The official explanation for the sudden shift in strategy is that the campaign was always waiting for Tampa — where they would have tight control over the choreography and the narrative — to start telling Mitt’s Mormon story… But the decision to start owning his religion on the campaign trail was more complicated — and personal — than a mere convention course correction.”

Ross Douthat: “One useful way to think about Mormon culture is to envision an outpost
of old-fashioned Yankees dropped down in the Mountain West.”

A new CBS News poll finds that 45% of voters are paying a lot of attention to the campaign, 34% say they are at least paying some attention, but 20% say they are tuning out the election almost entirely.

Huffington Post: “Among all the rhetoric and exultant language on the first day of the 2012 Republican Convention, one phrase was notably absent: Bain Capital.”

“Not a single speaker was heard mentioning the name of the private equity firm founded by the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney… It shows how toxic Bain has become for the former Massachusetts governor after sustaining attacks both from fellow Republicans during a vicious primary race and more recently from President Barack Obama’s campaign, which highlighted Bain’s investment in companies that sent American jobs overseas.”

As Rep. Paul Ryan prepares to introduce himself to the nation in a prime-time speech at the Republican convention tonight, the Obama campaign offers their own take on Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.

Politico: “The video harkens back to the newsreel days of old, using grainy, black-and-white footage to try and portray the GOP vice presidential nominee as a throwback to a bygone era.”

[Read more…]

“A well-placed Republican source tells Townhall that Oscar-winning director and actor Clint Eastwood will travel to Tampa, Florida to attend Mitt Romney’s nominating convention this week… Our source — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — could not confirm if Eastwood is, in fact, the intriguing ‘to-be-announced’ speaker, but stated unequivocally that the Dirty Harry star will arrive in Florida late on Wednesday or early on Thursday, and will return to southern California on Friday.”

With the Republican convention seemingly crafted around President Obama’s infamous “you didn’t build that,” the Washington Post fact-checkers reevaluated their take on the line which they say was merely a grammatical error by the president.

“We originally gave Romney’s use of the phrase Three Pinocchios… However, in light of the GOP’s repeated misuse of this Obama quote in speech after speech, we feel compelled to increase the Pinocchio rating to Four. (Warning to Democrats: You will get the same scrutiny of out-of-context Romney quotes next week. It’s really a silly thing on which to base a campaign.)”

The AP obtained an early copy of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, a firsthand account of the Navy SEAL raid that killed the terrorist leader and notes it “contradicts previous accounts by administration officials, raising questions as to whether the terror mastermind presented a clear threat when SEALs first fired upon him.”

The author “also writes disparagingly that none of the SEALs were fans of U.S. President Barack Obama and knew that his administration would take credit for ordering the May 2011 raid. One of the SEALs said after the mission that they had just gotten Obama re-elected by carrying out the raid.”

Many Democrats believe Mitt Romney’s “decision to inject welfare into the campaign — with a factually inaccurate ad claiming Obama had reversed Clinton-era work requirements — was an unmistakable, if coded, effort to imply that the first black president stands for handouts for lazy people,” Politico reports.

“Combined with a recent lead-balloon joke by Romney about controversy over Obama’s birthplace, Democrats have concluded that Romney is making deliberate appeals to prejudiced whites.”

“Many Republicans — with years of resentment over how they believe Democrats and the media seek to throw them on the defensive on racial issues — howled that Vice President Joe Biden was exploiting racial fears when he told a majority-black audience in Virginia that the GOP’s Wall Street allies want to ‘put you all back in chains.'”

“I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours. Tonight I want to talk to you about love.”

— Ann Romney, at the GOP convention last night.

“I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.”

— New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, giving the keynote address last night.

[Read more…]

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) sent fellow Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) packing in the closely watched battle that pitted the freshmen Republicans against each other, the Arizona Republic reports.

“As ballots rolled in, Quayle campaign volunteer Paul Gorman attributed the loss to fallout from a recent story about Congress members partying in Israel, including one who stripped naked to swim. Quayle was on the trip but said he only took a brief, reverent dip in the Sea of Galilee.”

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) handily won the Republican primary in the race to replace retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), setting up a general-election race with former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D) that is expected to be much more competitive, the Arizona Republic reports.

“Some polls earlier in the summer indicated Carmona in a tight race with Flake and with a slight advantage in campaign funds headed into the general election.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is pulling back its ads in New Mexico and Missouri and investing heavily in North Dakota, where the GOP is facing an unexpectedly difficult fight to pick up an open Senate seat, Politico reports.

The campaign arm of the Senate GOP is “canceling its ads in New Mexico, where Democrat Martin Heinrich appears to be pulling ahead of Republican Heather Wilson, and Missouri, where Rep. Todd Akin’s comments about abortion and rape have damaged his campaign and caused national Republicans to flee the state.”