Boom Goes The Dynamite

There's little surprise, for us, that most of the national media is still focused on the issue that blew up in the face of the Republican Party over the last few days, courtesy of Missouri Republican Representative Todd Akin. We've been saying for years now that someday the extremism and lunatic tendencies of the modern Republican party were going to explode at the worst possible time and burn the GOP politically.

What was more interesting for us was the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that came out late on Tuesday. In short, the numbers confirm what we've been saying for some time - that the current Republican Party leadership is at war with America, even if large numbers of Republicans are not.

Before we dig too deeply into the numbers, we want to preface today's commentary by noting a couple things. As the general election campaign expands to a full-on race, our general attitude about polls remains the same: we don't generally trust any single poll or pollster entirely. We do have a significant amount of trust in Nate Silver's research, and some polls have proven themselves over time to be more trustworthy - so we'll likely be quoting more of the trustworthy polls over the next dozen weeks.

According to one of those instruments, the new WSJ/NBC poll, the introduction of GOP House member Paul Ryan to the Republican Presidential ticket got no real bounce from voters. Outside polling confirms that. Nearly half of voters said Ryan was a fair or poor choice.

The overall national race between President Obama and Mr. Romney has tightened very slightly - but not because voters like the Romney/Ryan Plan. Fifty percent of all voters polled pick Obama on the issue of Medicare. Only 34 percent pick Romney.

That's not where the most explosive numbers showed up, however.

Mitt Romney only really leads the President in the polls with old, white, rural, male voters. Midwesterners, suburbanites, and independents are all split evenly.

President Obama leads Mitt Romney solidly in virtually every other major subcategory of voters. African American voters choose President Obama 94-0. That's 94 percent to 0 percent. Latinos pick Obama by a 2-to-1 margin, voters under 35 choose Obama by 52-41, and all women pick the current President by a 51-41 margin.

That last set of numbers, as well as the numbers on Medicare are key.

What they mean, collectively, is that President Obama has massive support from the most powerful blocks of voting minorities, and from women, and now - thanks to the detail-lacking "fairy dust" Romney/Ryan Plan - more seniors than ever.

In the midst of these kinds of numbers, the actions of Tea Party Republican Congressman like Todd Akin merely light the fuse that now has the GOP in a potentially devastating war with itself. It will only highlight the serious divisions in the Republican Party just in time for them to be displayed on prime time TV for all of America to see.

Frankly, the Republican Party may have sent a less explosive clue about their internal troubles if they'd invited the country to a nitroglycerine cookout.