Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Waking up to Romney's evasiveness

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Joe Scarborough (via The Hill):

'Romney ' first of all, they don't understand they're losing by 3 or 4 points ' but seriously, their goal is to not let people know what he believes on one issue after another.'

Dan Balz:

Mitt Romney has had a lot to say about immigration over the past few days, but what he has said adds up to a giant question mark. Rarely has a presidential candidate had as many opportunities to clarify or recalibrate his position on a vital issue, and rarely has a candidate passed up those opportunities as consistently as the former governor.

Charlie Cook:

We still await the Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, in general, and on the individual mandate to obtain health insurance coverage, in particular. It's worth reminding ourselves that, regardless of the overheated rhetoric from both parties and over-caffeinated punditry, public attitudes on the issue of health reform and this law are already baked into the cake of this election. If President Obama were a stock, how people feel about the law would have factored into his price long ago. Sure, this decision will dominate editorial pages, talk shows, and even'briefly'supermarket-aisle and office-coffeemaker conversation. But this remains an election about the economy.

Dana Milbank:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is many things ' immigration provocateur, bete noire of Latinos, presidential irritant ' but nobody has ever accused her of being a legal scholar.

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court struck down three of four contested provisions in her state's immigration law and left the fourth in jeopardy. But Brewer decided to call it a win.

Carter Eskew:

While the presidential race is temporarily in a state of suspended animation awaiting Thursday's Supreme Court health-care decision, it's worth noting that President Obama has regained a little momentum. I have no polling evidence to support this conclusion, but I base it on several perceptions.

Now you can base it on the polls. The Q-poll has Obama up in FL, PA and OH.

FLORIDA: Obama 45 - Romney 41 OHIO: Obama 47 - Romney 38 PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 45 - Romney 39 Voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania support President Barack Obama's new immigration policy and are divided on whether the president or Gov. Mitt Romney would be better for their personal economic future, as they give Obama leads in these three critical swing states, a razor thin 4 points in Florida, a healthy 9 points in Ohio and 6 points in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today.

The NBJ /WSJ poll also has Obama up in the swing states:

Mr. Obama's advantage is more pronounced among poll respondents in 12 battleground states which, taken as a group, favor him 50% to 42%. His larger lead in those states, which include Nevada, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia, could reflect the impact of ads by his campaign that criticized Mr. Romney's record as a businessman and portrayed him as out of touch with the middle class.

Tom Perriello in the Nation reviews EJ Dionne's book Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in the Age of Discontent with this headline: E.J. Dionne's Intellectual Defense of Populism. I note his reference to a

historically rigorous explanation of how inaccurate readings of our nation's formation and development reinforce our imbalanced, factually impoverished public debate.

That historical perspective was a highlight of my own review. The factually impoverished public debate is, alas, something we seem to be stuck with.

Eugene Robinson:

By throwing out most of the anti-Latino Arizona immigration law and neutering the rest, the Supreme Court struck a rare blow for fairness and justice on Monday. Let's hope this is the beginning of a streak.

Let's also hope that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who sided with the 5 to 3 majority in this case, likes the view from the liberals' end of the bench. They could use his vote on the health-care-reform ruling, expected to be announced Thursday.

Jonathan Bernstein:

It really is worth emphasizing that this kind of thing did not happen on a regular basis when George W. Bush was president. The ideas were out there ' fringe cranks on the left regularly trotted out bizarre theories about September 11 and shadowy Saudi influence, or whatever. But it stopped there, and it stopped there because responsible Democratic leaders refused to sanction it. The key story that shows the difference? Conspiracy-spouting former Member of the House Cynthia McKinney was basically bounced from the Democratic Party, and she was only a back-bencher to begin with.

By contrast, Issa is a committee chair; Kyl is the Republican Whip in the Senate. You can be sure that there will be no pressure to remove them from these positions for embracing the crazy; quite the contrary.

HealthDay:

The pandemic H1N1 flu in 2009 may have killed more than 500,000 people around the world, 15 times more than reported, a new study suggests.

There is no such thing as a mild pandemic.