67%

Of Americans say President Obama and Congress are doing a poor job of dealing with the most important U.S. problems. In addition, 52% say the current president and Congress are doing a worse job of dealing with these problems than prior presidents and Congresses did.

O, the endless stream of political pap
Is enough to make one feel completely sapped.
But while Republican fervor is rising,
The Democrats seem to be falling
Into the yawning maw of the Enthusiasm Gap.

Why am I in it? It’s not the next step of my career, by the way. I don’t have a political career.

— Mitt Romney, in an appearance on Morning Joe, which led Jonathan Chait to note that it’s not for lack of trying.

Attention, Chris Christie fans. If you are looking for a Republican nominee who could actually do the job of president, who does not repel independent voters, who can survive a 90-minute debate without saying anything foolish, why the hell not Mitt Romney?

David Frum, writing in The Week.

At this moment of inflection, two people hold the keys to the GOP primaries. First, Sarah Palin: if she enters, Perry will have far more trouble on his right and Romney will become much more likely to enter Iowa to win… The second is Perry’s debate coach. If the governor of Texas cannot dramatically improve his performance in his next showdown with his GOP rivals, he may not even make it to Iowa.

— Mike Murphy, writing in Time Magazine.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the difference in the “liberal” media’s wall-to-wall coverage of the rise of the tea party mobs in 2009 and its failure to cover the Occupy Wall Street movement today.
There are several reason for this, including the fact that tea partyists signaled that they were on the verge [...]

Some Republicans really do wish he
Would say Yes, then they’d all go all misty.
But he’s a truculent beau,
And his answer’s still No —
No matter how much they beg or cajole Chris Christie.

While I don’t believe that Barack Obama used racial issues to get elected, I do believe that many of his supporters selectively use race to cover up some of his failures. Whenever President Obama is criticized over policy mistakes, his surrogates tend to play the race card, as if there’s supposed to be something inherently morally wrong in such criticism.

— Herman Cain, writing in his new book coming out next week, “This is Herman Cain!,” charging that President Obama’s surrogates often use the race card to cover for the president’s failings.

Some people want to say I’m the none-of-the-above candidate. Some people want to say there’s still unhappiness with the field. That is bullfeathers!

— Herman Cain, in an interview with the Daily Beast, expressing anger through colorful language that his presidential campaign isn’t being taken seriously.

15%

Of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what’s right just about always or most of the time, according to a new CNN/ORC International Poll.

The previous all-time low was 17 percent, set in the summer of 1994. Before the Watergate scandal, a majority of Americans said they trusted the government always or most of the time, but since 1974 that has happened only during a brief period in 2001 immediately after the 9/11 terrorism attacks.