A new poll released yesterday by Southern Media & Opinion Research indicates that Democrat Charlie Melancon is making little headway in his attempts to unseat Sen. David Vitter.

The poll, which asked a myriad of questions to 600 statewide voters April 19-23, was paid for by Baton Rouge businessman and conservative activist Lane Grigsby.

Vitter leads Melancon by 49 percent to 31.4 percent in a head-to-head matchup, which indicates a surge for the Senator since Southern Media & Opinion Research last polled the race back in October. In that poll six months ago, Vitter led Melancon 48-36; Vitter has gained a point and Melancon has lost five since his campaign of scummy personal assaults in lieu of substantive policy discussions directed by James Carville began to unfold.

Not only hasn’t Melancon’s campaign gained him any traction, it hasn’t knocked Vitter’s approval rating down. The Senator is sitting at 55.1 percent approval, with only 36.2 percent disapproval. In fact, Vitter’s disapproval rating is actually a little lower than Gov. Bobby Jindal, who the poll found was at 61-37 on the favorable side (a seven point drop from six months ago). Sen. Mary Landrieu is in a little worse situation; her approval rating is just 42.8 percent, with 53.5 percent disapproval.

Southern Media also polled the Lt. Governor’s race and found some interesting numbers. It included state treasurer John Kennedy and Democrat usual suspect Foster Campbell with announced candidates Jay Dardenne (Louisiana Secretary of State), Kevin Davis (St. Tammany Parish President) and Roger Villere (Louisiana GOP chairman), and found that should Kennedy enter the race he would become the leader. Kennedy polls at 21.2 percent, with Dardenne checking in at 15.4 percent. Campbell is next; as the only Democrat in the race he sits at 14.5 percent, while Davis (6 percent) and Villere (2.4 percent) don’t appear to be major factors in the race.

From a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee e-mail making the rounds on behalf of someone named Mark Critz, we have the ultimate in left-wing projection – James Carville using the word “reptile” to describe political opponents:

First there was Sarah Palin. Now we can add another Republican reptile from the past trying to help the GOP win House races this year – former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

Last weekend, Santorum whipped up a crowd of thousands of tea party extremists over the upcoming May 18th special election for the Pennsylvania House seat that was held by the late, great Congressman Jack Murtha.

Even worse, national Republicans just dropped a whopping $247,000 to spread lies and fear-mongering attack ads in this race. I need your help to fight back so we can keep this critical House seat blue. He needs just another $25,000 more for his rapid response efforts before Monday to keep pace.

Contribute $5, $10 or more to help Democrat Mark Critz win the critical special election to succeed the late Congressman Jack Murtha in PA-12.

Support Mark Critz for Congress

We need your help in the next 48 hours so Critz can fund his rapid response before it’s too late.

Ever since all those fire-breathing tea party nut jobs scored their upset win in the Massachusetts Senate election, they’ve been looking for a new race to target.

Santorum and his fellow nut jobs on the right-wing lunatic fringe know that another Republican win in a special election like this will send the media into a tizzy about how it’s all over for President Obama’s agenda and how the GOP has all the momentum this year.

We can’t let it happen.

Contribute $5, $10 or more to help Democrat Mark Critz win the critical special election to succeed the late Congressman Jack Murtha in PA-12. We need your help in the next 48 hours so Critz can fund his rapid response before it’s too late.

The DCCC knows a thing or two about winning special elections. Thanks to you, they won five big ones in a row where Republicans put up a fight. But the stakes are even higher in this one.

We can’t let the Republicans elect another big-bank protecting, millionaire-supporting, tea-party loving member of Congress to help them bring back the failed agenda of George W. Bush.

Jack Murtha stood with us when we took back the House in 2006. Let’s not let those tea party extremists take his seat here in 2010.

Contribute in the next 48 hours so we can respond to their latest round of attacks and win this fight for Jack.

Thanks,
James Carville

P.S. Rick Santorum and the rest of the tea-party extremists are trying to help the Republicans repeat what they did in the Massachusetts Senate election so they can claim the momentum this year. We can’t let it happen. Contribute in the next 48 hours to help Democrat Mark Critz fight back against the latest Republican attacks before it’s too late so he can win the special election to succeed the late, great Congressman Jack Murtha in PA-12.

“The late, great Jack Murtha” all by itself is a pretty pungent phrase. What was great about him? ABSCAM? Defaming the Haditha Marines? Building monuments to himself with our money?

One wonders if in his dotage Carville, who in truth was past his prime in 1994 (and is proving it with his ridiculous stewardship of Charlie Melancon’s moribund Senate campaign), hasn’t grown exceedingly contemptuous of Democrat voters. The letter comes off as slapdash and half-hearted, with boilerplate generic rhetoric about “Republican lies” and “fear-mongering” and “tea party extremists” and “nut jobs” designed to freak out every union capo and LGBT stormtrooper across the fruited plain – and an exhortation to give $5 to Critz.

$5?

If it was really so crucial for Critz to beat back the Republican nut jobs and tea party extremists, wouldn’t $50 be more appropriate than $5? Or does Carville just think all the Democrats are broke? And if so, isn’t that an admission that his party’s performance with respect to the economy ought to disqualify them from holding seats like the one Critz is running for against Tim Burns?

According to a survey this week by Public Policy Polling, a Democrat outfit, Burns leads Critz 44-41 in a district which is 55 percent Democrat. The special election in May 18.

Earlier this week the Times-Picayune’s James Gill, in a column panning Charlie Melancon’s campaign to date as a threat to the viability of politics as Louisiana’s state pastime, asked whether we will soon see the handiwork of Democrat strategic guru and New Orleans resident James Carville as Melancon’s side attempts to climb out of a 20-plus point hole as reflected in the race’s poll numbers.

We’ve begun to see something of a strategy emerge.

The first major strategic task for Carville is to keep the race relevant before national Democrat dollars vacate the field – a major concern for Melancon with poll numbers as lopsided as they are. Toward that end, Melancon’s campaign conducted what looks a whole lot like a “push-poll” last week and – surprise! – found that all of a sudden the race is a lot closer than anybody thought. According to pollster John Anzalone, who back in September released a survey that may have contributed to leading congressional Democrats off a cliff on health care, incumbent Republican David Vitter’s lead on Melancon is only 48-38, not the 24-point lead Rasmussen found for Vitter last month.

Or, apparently, the 23-point lead Rasmussen finds for Vitter in his most recent poll released today.

Anzalone’s poll is the basis for another effort Carville seems to be making; namely, to gin up some optimistic press coverage. Thus today we see a story in The Politico which reads a lot like a Melancon campaign press release; it seems that on a day Rasmussen releases polling data which shows Vitter’s support at a solid 57 percent over Melancon, who polls 34 percent today as opposed to 33 percent last month and is losing to Vitter by a 46-43 count among women despite the senator’s supposed weakness with female voters, Vitter’s seat is the “Democrats’ best opportunity to take down a sitting senator.”

The first quote in the Politico piece? Why, it’s James Carville, who says:

“I think this is our shot for a takeaway. And that in itself will bring a lot of attention down here.”

In other words, since Vitter has a 2-to-1 fundraising advantage over Melancon right now, Carville’s using free media to troll for donations from Washington. Why buy ads when you can get a free one in the “objective” media?

Carville then pushes a wishful-thinking narrative that continues the meme from the Anzalone poll:

“Normally, in this current environment, it’s hard to move a Democrat’s numbers with an argument. This is not the case in Louisiana,” Carville said. “There’s a fundamental pullback from Vitter. They’re kind of shopping out there. They’re not crazy about this guy.”

A fundamental pullback? Vitter polls at the same 57 percent in Rasmussen that he polled a month ago, and the 48 percent in Anzalone’s poll from last week is a percent better than the one Melancon’s campaign released in May of last year. There is no pullback showing up in the numbers, but this is Carville’s attempt to create a narrative irrespective of the facts.

The Anzalone poll’s internals seem deeply flawed, but they provide talking points for Carville’s free Politico ad. First, the article notes that the poll found 47 percent willing to vote for “someone else” and 43 percent said they’d vote for Vitter. The poll also says Vitter’s name identification of 92 percent is the source for his lead, as Melancon’s name ID is only 59 percent. It goes on to say that “Once voters hear equal amounts of positive information about each candidate, Melancon takes a 4-point lead (46% Melancon / 42% Vitter),” which is basically a dead giveaway that it’s a push-poll.

The poll also took place over the course of six days rather than the normal three, and it was conducted from Feb. 18, the Thursday after Mardi Gras, to Feb. 24, the Wednesday of the following week. Whether the sample was affected by events is debatable, but an awful lot of folks of means in the New Orleans area tend to get out of Dodge the week of Mardi Gras and the ones who stick around town tend to be in the midst of catching up with work and might not have the time to talk to Charlie Melancon’s pollster.

Anzalone suggests that since Mary Landrieu polled at 96 percent of the black vote against John Kennedy in 2008, if Melancon can poll 90 percent of that demographic he’s all of a sudden within two points of Vitter (46-44). That might not be a bad assumption, but on the other hand it’s hard to see a compelling reason why African-American turnout for Melancon this fall is going to be anything even remotely like what it was two years ago when Barack Obama was at the top of the ballot – and it ought to be remembered that Obama was pounded by 19 points by John McCain that year even with the high, near-unanimous black turnout. So a strategy depending on turnout in the black community on Melancon’s part is flawed on the basis of the pushback it will generate with white voters, and let’s not forget that Melancon is no Mary Landrieu. While Carville might be able to help him get out the black vote, it’s not as though he’s beloved in that community – after all, just three years ago he caused a furor by suggesting that the Democrats needed to run a white conservative candidate for governor if they wanted to beat Jindal, which alienated several of the power brokers he would need to generate a high turnout.

The Melancon campaign poll release also says that Vitter is becoming more unpopular and can’t take advantage of the Republican tide because of his personal baggage, which comes through loud and clear in Carville’s Politico statements. It also comes through in the statements of Melancon’s campaign manager Bradley Beychok, who has this to say in the article:

“He has been cheating on Louisiana for too long, and it’s time the people know it,” said Melancon campaign manager Bradley Beychok, previewing some of the language that will be used to remind voters of Vitter’s personal problems.

“Sen. Vitter is not the poster boy for a model, law-abiding citizen, and he has failed to deliver for Louisiana middle-class families,” Beychok said.

Back to Carville, who hints at the next step in Melancon’s campaign strategy…

“I would deem him on probation right now,” said Carville, assessing Vitter’s vulnerability among female voters. “If he gets hit with a second thing — which can happen in these campaigns — there’s going to be no great reluctance to unleash. And the voters are more prone to believe it.”

In other words, what we’re in for with the Melancon-Vitter campaign, at least on the Democrat side, is a series of personal assaults sliming the senator in an effort to dredge up his personal past. Melancon’s side knows that’s a good way to keep his campaign in the headlines and they think Vitter can be scored on as a result.

Maybe they’re right, but a slimy, negative campaign not revolving around the issues doesn’t seem like one which will resonate in the midst of an electorate engaged in policy more than it has been in decades. Unless Carville can come up with some new scandal to enmesh Vitter the public doesn’t already know about, it seems like a tough sell – and should there be a skeleton in Melancon’s closet someone might decide to let out, such a low-brow presentation could backfire in the extreme.

More than that, though, a typical Carville bare-knuckles campaign doesn’t seem like a good fit for “Charlie Boy,” who prides himself on being a nice guy folks on both sides can work with and who keeps as low a profile as you can keep on Capitol Hill. But that might be Melancon’s only real card to play; this week’s controversy over Obama’s proposals to limit sport fishing showed the problems the campaign has on policy; while Vitter served up a spirited and detailed letter to the president in response to revelations that the administration is working on assaulting the rights of 60 million recreational anglers, while Melancon was a day late with a milquetoast communique asking for a meeting to talk about whether the president will let him keep going fishing.

This isn’t to say Vitter is invincible. The business with the hookers took a lot of wind out of his sails and if the Democrats had a legitimately high-powered candidate this really could be a race. But where Vitter is tough is on policy; Louisiana is a politically conservative state and he articulates conservatism as well as anybody. Melancon just can’t compete on that playing field in this environment, regardless of what strategy and tactics Carville might have cooking.

New Orleans-based Democrat political strategist James Carville wrote a piece in London’s Financial Times last month in which he suggested that his political allies running for office this year ought to redouble their efforts to pin the nation’s problems on George W. Bush – as though the American people haven’t heard quite enough from that point of view.

Carville’s piece justifies his call for continued attacks on the ex-president on this basis:

It is under his disastrous tenure in the White House that health insurance premiums nearly doubled for the average American family and the number of uninsured skyrocketed. It was under Mr Bush that the deficit spiralled out of control as we fought an unnecessary and endless $3,000bn war in Iraq and enacted the largest unfunded entitlement programme in history with the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It was Mr Bush’s economic team that worshipped at the Church of Deregulation and was asleep at the wheel as banks and insurance companies became too big to fail.

At the American Thinker today, though, Carville’s charges are answered forcefully. Randall Hoven says of the above paragraph, “of nine claims…James Carville told eight lies and dissembled once.”

Hoven disputes the claim that insurance premiums nearly doubled, referencing statistical data showing that insurance premiums grew by 63 percent over the eight years of Bush 43′s presidency, an average increase of some 6.3 percent which statistically represented a slower increase than his predecessors, and that rather than skyrocketing the percentage of uninsured in the health market has hovered around 15 percent for the past 20 years. He says that Bush’s deficits averaged 2.0 percent of GDP, less than the average of 2.2 percent from 1961-2000 and certainly less than the 9.9 percent in FY2009.

On Iraq, Hoven disputes Carville’s characterization of the war as unnecessary, points out that it certainly isn’t endless since the current president is, in fact, ending it, and shows that Carville’s figure of $3 trillion is a wild fabrication.

And Hoven takes aim at Carville’s characterization of Bush as a laissez-faire economic president, pointing out that the signer of Sarbanes-Oxley is anything but a devotee of deregulation and that Bush attempted – unsuccessfully – to regulate Fannie and Freddie in an effort to reel in the destructive forces which ultimately created the housing crisis. He does give Carville credit for a semi-true statement about Bush having signed the Medicare prescription drug bill, but mentions that the Democrats opposed it not as a fiscally unsound measure but because it didn’t give away enough money.

It’s a fairly devastating deconstruction of Carville’s claims, and it points out that Louisiana’s most famous spin doctor isn’t just over-the-top in his support of LSU.