Rubio Overtakes Crist in Poll, First Tea Party Senator?

And in This Corner, Top Contender for First Tea Party Senator, Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio has come out of contender status to a dead heat, with a tiny 47%-44% lead in a Quinnipiac Poll. Crist was a shoo-in for the Republican nomination until he endorsed Obama's stimulus package and gave Obambi a bromance hug at a function last year.

Crist is flailing trying to make his YouTube endorsement of the Porkulus Bill go away, as well as his momentary YouTube viral man-hug with Obama. Rubio, who calls Crist a RINO who cannot be trusted [just ask Mitt Romney who thought he had Crist's Florida primary endorsement in the bank in '08 until Charlie-boy did a 180 and endorsed McCain just before the bell] has been a tireless campaigner whose youth and Cuban background offset his sternly conservative credentials. He is a Tea Party favorite. And now he is a mainstream Republican fave. Of course, the national media played down the Republican takeover of the Statehouse and both legislative chambers in the early '00s, but nobody will play down the ascent of a 38-year old Cubano who hates Castro and loves America.

And it was the NYT, in a putdown back 3 weeks ago, before the Massachusetts Massacre, that dubbed him "The First Senator From the Tea Party?

Suddenly, the nasty "teabagger" insult pervs on the Left, including One-Term POTUS Obambi, leveled at the Tea Party movement are becoming fatally viral to the Democrats undergoing a thorough panic attack rather than their preferred Botox Makeover.

2010 is promising to be 1994 with even the Senate coming into play as Feingold and Boxer have become weak & Evan Bayh may get out-righted in Hoosierland. As a trifecta, Repubs may gain Reid's NV seat, Obama's IL seat, and Biden's DE seat. ND & PA will go Repub if hair-plug creep Specter is the Dem PA candidate!

Atlanticon Ambinder pooh poohs the possibiiity, but after the Boston Massacre/Tea Party on Jan. 19th, the unpopular Health Care and failing economy are both balls and chains for aspiring Dem candidates and incumbents. Plus POTUS In-Love-With-Himself is now around 48% overall approval, the biggest nose dive any POTUS has taken in his first term, according to Gallup. And he is the most-polarizing President ever, as he abandoned his campaign promises for a balanced budget and transparency to become the biggest spender in US history, running the humongous GWB deficit at 5.5 trillion to over $12.9 trillion and counting---ALL IN ONE YEAR.

The Wall Street Journal calls Obama's fervent narcissistic self-esteem "The Copenhagen Syndrome" And given the brain-dead allegiance of Dems on the Gallup poll, they already suffer from The Stockholm Syndrome of becoming enchanted with their kidnapper.

What the Democrats refuse in their delusional denial to comprehend and internalize is that the US is 20% liberal, 40% conservative and 40% independent. Both the conservatives and independents rarely register as Republicans, whereas the Dems have made it their goal to increase registration by hook or, as in Massachusetts, by crook. [MA cits who register as Dems to vote in a primary are not taken off the rolls unless they re-register, as is mandated in most states]. Ironically, it was the 22% of Dems who voted for Scott Brown who pushed him over the top of Martha Coakley. And there is a seismic shift of independents, 40% of the electorate, from Dem to Repub-leaning. Here is Bret Stephans on the Copenhagen Syndrome which has virtually neutered US foreign policy because of Obama's conviction that his karma is irresistible:

Mr. Obama's first year in office amounts to a long parade of rebuffs. His inaugural address famously offered the world's dictators an outstretched hand in exchange for an unclenched fist. From North Korea, he got missile and nuclear tests. From Iran, he got a contemptuous rejection of his extraordinary offer to enrich uranium for it. From Cuba, Fidel Castro said last month that "the empire's real intentions are obvious, this time beneath the kindly smile and African-American face of Barack Obama." From Venezuela, Hugo Chávez is now comparing Mr. Obama to the devil, a shtick he first tried out on George W. Bush back when liberals thought it was kind of funny.

Of course these are America's enemies, so we probably should not have expected better even if Mr. Obama seemed to believe we might. What about our (ostensible) non-enemies? The president pre-emptively conceded the Czech and Polish missile-defense bases to Russia in hopes of getting Moscow to take a tougher line on Tehran's nuclear programs. The Kremlin isn't biting. Neither is China, never mind Mr. Obama's gratuitous snub last year of the Dalai Lama.

As for the Muslim world that Mr. Obama has been at such pains to court (the Cairo and Ankara speeches, his opposition to Gitmo and the war in Iraq, etc.), the 2009 Pew Global Survey that measures opinions about the U.S. finds as follows: Turkey, 14% favorable views of the U.S.; Palestinian territories, 15%; Pakistan, 16%; Jordan, 25%; Egypt, 27%. Granted, this is up slightly from the last year of the Bush administration, but only by a couple of percentage points on average. So that's the great Obama perception dividend?

And then there are America's friends. Hondurans will not soon forgive the administration's efforts to shove ex-president Manuel Zelaya down their throats. Among Israelis suspicion of Mr. Obama is pervasive. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wonders aloud, "Est-il faible?" (Is he weak?)

Now the same question is being asked in the U.S. in the wake of Scott Brown's Senate victory in Massachusetts. The president from Oprah Nation, says Newsweek, suffers from an "inspiration gap"; the prevailing wisdom is that he's too cool and detached for his own political good. Are they kidding? Should the president now take squealing lessons from Howard Dean?

Mr. Obama's real problems are of a different stripe. It's not as if he lacks for charisma. It's that he believes too much in the power of charisma itself and specifically too much in his own.

He seems to have come to office believing that America's problems abroad could mainly be put down to the rough-edged persona of his predecessor. Change the president, change the tone, give magnificent speeches, tinker with the policy, and the world would revert to some default mode of liking America and wanting to work with it. It doesn't work that way. Nor does it work in domestic policy, where personal salesmanship has failed to overcome the defects of legislation. Americans still generally like Mr. Obama, or at least they'd like to like him. It's the $12 trillion deficit and Rube Goldberg health schemes that rub them wrong.

So what's Copenhagen Syndrome? It is a belief in your own miracles. It is thinking that those who crowned you king actually knew what they were doing. It is buying into your own tulip bulb mania. It is the floating evanescent bubble of self. God help you when it bursts.

Obama's naive delusion that terrorists have civil rights rivals Coakley's delusion that "there are no terrorists in Afghanistan." And if he wants a "shovel-ready" project for his ridiculous pork-barrel stimulus package, try erecting an Israeli-type fence along the Mexican border's most porous precincts. Then maybe Janet-from-another-planet Napolitano might be able to handle ONE area of her responsibilities.

Atlanticon Ambinder complains about the "right-wing noise machine," a JournoListServ rubric for any deviation from the socialism-by-stealth roadway Obama thought he could sneak by the rest of America while we weren't looking!

Marco Rubio is much more than a target for the Ultra-Left's slime machine like NYT writer Marc Leibovich. He is more than the wake-up call Scott Brown's heroic campaigning gave the Dems in MA. Marco Rubio is the Ultra-Left's worst nightmare, a guy talented and charismatic enough to open the doors of the ganja-pungent Capitol backrooms where the Dem leadership concoct their most vile attacks on the Constitution and the American people.