Wake up call to what I do

Campaign Tip

Online Opinion Surveys

By Nancy Guthrie

Email addresses are almost as prevalent these days as residential addresses. But so far in political and issue campaigns, online email surveys and polling are largely untapped. Measuring the court of public opinion through online email surveys and polls is affordable, fast, easy and effective. It is an immediate way to take the pulse of the public and gather intelligence that can be used to develop a winning campaign strategy.

Unlike typical response rates of 10-15 percent, email surveys and polls are experiencing response rates between 40-50 percent. The email results are collected over one week compared to the month or longer it takes to collect mail surveys. And case studies suggest that the majority of email surveys and polls are completed and returned within the first 72 hours. Results can be viewed in real time via an online tracking report, and a summary analysis of survey results can be turned over within a day. (Read more about online surveys at Political Resources)

From Kennedy to Romney: 47 Years of Judicial War Against American Freedom of Religion

On Sunday, I appeared on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" to comment on what I am calling a bureaucratic coup d'etat, that is the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran released earlier this week. I'll give you my take on it in a minute, but first, I wanted to share with you that while I was getting ready to appear, it occurred to me that all the historical comparisons being made between presidential candidate Mitt Romney's speech last week and President John Kennedy's speech in 1960 are wrong in a fundamental way.
After my appearance, I listened to some of the program's political analysts criticize former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Romney for pointing out the current, judicially-driven effort to drive faith and God from America's public square -- something Kennedy didn't do.
The Kennedy-Romney comparisons are fundamentally false because President Kennedy spoke at a time when Americans had a fundamentally different understanding of faith in the public square. He gave his speech almost two years before the Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale outlawed school prayer in 1962.

Kennedy spoke 11 years before the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, in which the court devised its most stringent standard of legal secularism.
Kennedy spoke 20 years before the 1980 Supreme Court decision in Stone v. Graham, which found that the state of Kentucky could not post copies of the 10 commandments in public school classrooms.
Kennedy spoke 32 years before the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Lee v. Weisman, which held that non-sectarian invocations and benedictions at public school graduation ceremonies were unconstitutional.
Kennedy spoke 40 years before the 2000 Supreme Court decision in Santa Fe School District v. Doe, in which the court found that brief, nonsectarian, student-led prayer before football games (which no one is forced to attend, and where no one is forced to pray) is unconstitutional.
In the forty-seven years since Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy delivered his historic speech, the courts have been increasingly hostile toward public religious expression and increasingly tolerant of anti-religious bigots and their agenda to remove all references to and acknowledgement of God from public life.

Huckabee behind anti-Mormon push Poll?

Huckabee, Romney go another round

By Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor December 11, 2007 01:02 PM

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee continued tussling in Iowa today on the eve of the last Republican debate before the Jan. 3 caucuses.

In response to a new Romney TV ad that hits him on illegal immigration, Huckabee introduced a new supporter -- Jim Gilchrist, the leader and founder of the Minuteman Project, a controversial group that has sent members to the borders of both Mexico and Canada to watch for illegal immigrants.

Huckabee also told reporters that the Romney ad is a sign of "desperation" by the former Massachusetts governor, who has fallen behind Huckabee in the polls.

The Romney campaign repeated that Huckabee's record on illegal immigration is fair game, and an issue on which voters deserve to know the differences among the candidates.

Romney, Huckabee, and the other Republicans will debate Wednesday afternoon in a forum sponsored by The Des Moines Register.

A new poll out this afternoon from Rasmussen Reports gives Huckabee a 39 percent-23 percent lead over Romney among Iowa Republicans, not quite as large as the 22-percentage-point lead that a Newsweek poll released Friday gave Huckabee.