Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Wright and wrong, Beltway style

_{Visual source: Newseum}

Kathleen Parker defends Romney as an unfair victim of Joe Ricketts and Fred Davis,

born of a sense among Republicans that Obama's relationship to Wright was never sufficiently vetted.

That explains and excuses everything, you see. And don't miss this tortuous explanation:

Davis, whose creativity is widely acknowledged, was obviously aware of the possible racial sensitivity, which is why he also hoped to include prominent African Americans, such as radio host Larry Elder, questioning Obama's character. Whites cannot do this without suffering the consequences now in play.

In other words, Wright is fair game, but unfairly off the table for whites. But it's not racist. Ah, if only a black Republican had commissioned this proposal...

Charles Blow:

It called for using Wright to 'increase the unease' and 'inflame the questions' among independents using the episode 'that's never been properly exploited.' How I love the use of sinister verbs.

There was one description of the president that truly seized me:

'The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician with more than a bit of the trimmer in him.'

This sentence is just so deliciously ridiculous, insulting and incendiary ' perfect Republican fodder.

Let's dissect it, shall we? Scalpel!

Meanwhile, back to reality from Chris Cillizza:

Who had the worst week in Washington? GOP strategist Fred Davis.

WaPo:

Conservative interest groups have dumped well over $20 million into congressional races so far this year, outspending their liberal opponents by 4 to 1 and setting off a growing panic among Democrats struggling to regain the House and hold on to their slim majority in the Senate.

The surge suggests that big-spending super PACs and nonprofit groups, which have become dominant players in the presidential race, will also play a pivotal role in House and Senate contests that will determine the balance of power in Washington in 2013.

Thank you, Supreme Court.

Hey, did you know the CBS/NY Times poll that had Romney slightly ahead was called into question? Well it was, by some pretty respected sources. Erik Wemple has all the poop.

The CBS News/New York Times poll had one moment of glory. For a short stretch there, it was rounded up in the Real Clear Politics poll aggregation machine. But then the Real Clear Politics people pulled it when they realized it was a call-back poll, which isn't allowed to mingle with fresh national polling. John McIntyre, a founder of Real Clear Politics, says, 'Some of the write-ups didn't make that as clear as they might have.'

Fun read by Henry Farrell, taking down the hapless Amity Shlaes.

It's rather startling to realize that Shlaes was, until recently, a Senior Fellow for economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. I hope they feel proud. In the piece, Shlaes cites Arthur Laffer, who notoriously is supposed to have wrote the Laffer curve on a paper napkin. This reads instead like something found scrawled in crayon on the back of a crumpled Chuck-e-Cheese menu. Really terrible stuff.

Andrew Rosenthal:

But ultimately the election may come down to a more ephemeral sense of how voters assess each candidate's philosophy. Mr. Hart said the recent NCB/WSJ survey showed that voters, by a margin of 10 percentage points, say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who will 'fight for balance and fairness' and help the middle class than a candidate who 'wants to restore the values of economic freedom, opportunity and small government.' The poll said those voters identify Mr. Obama as the 'fairness' candidate, also by a margin of almost 10 percentage points.

So I'll go way out on a limb and predict that we're going to hear 'fairness' and 'balance' a lot from Mr. Obama between now and November.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are back, writing about ideas to fix our current broken government. They reject dumb third party ideas like Americans Elect but consider fixing the filibuster, IRV voting and mandatory vote laws (show up or be fined.)