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Nate Silver reports zero to little GOP Convention bounce according to Gallup:

The most sluggish of the tracking polls is from Gallup, which reports its results over a lengthy seven-day window. That means that only about half its interviews occurred after the start of the convention, and a smaller fraction than that will represent people surveyed after Mr. Romney’s acceptance address.

However, the trend so far in the Gallup poll is a bit disappointing for Mr. Romney; the survey still shows Mr. Obama one point ahead. By comparison, the Gallup poll has had a 46-46 tie on average over the past 60 days.

We’ll need to wait another day or two before we can make a more confident judgement on the size of Mr. Romney’s bounce, but the information we have so far points toward its being a little underwhelming.

Top Bush Strategist denounces Paul Ryan’s convention speech lies:

Paul Ryan’s speech before the Republican National Convention was riddled with lies, including a tall-tale blaming President Obama for the closure of a GM plant that announced its shutdown in June 2008. On ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Matthew Dowd, chief political strategist for former President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, criticized Ryan’s for its many falsehoods, saying, “at some point, the truth should matter”:

DOWD: Paul Ryan, what he did in his speech, I think so stretched the truth. And I like Paul Ryan, have a lot of great respect for Paul Ryan, but the elements that he said about closing the GM plant which closed before Barack Obama took President [sic], about the Simpson-Bowles bill which he opposed and then all of a sudden he faults Barack Obama for. At some point, the truth should matter…He was trying to convey that Barack Obama was responsible for the closing of that GM plant and that isn’t true.

Watch it here:

Foxnews.com reports that the Koch brothers might be seeing the writing on the wall as they endorse marriage equality, proclaim support for military defense spending cuts, and support tax increases (but for whom is another question):

The Libertarian-minded Koch — whose brother, Charlie, also is a big GOP supporter — made the remarks Thursday on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

“I believe in gay marriage,” the 72-year-old Koch told Politico. He was in Tampa as a New York delegate and to attend an event held by Americans for Prosperity — the political advocacy group he helps fund and lead.

He also told the newspaper the U.S. military should withdraw from the Middle East and that the federal government should consider tax increases and defense-spending cuts to improve fiscal woes.

Despite the apparent break from several traditional GOP positions, Koch said he considers himself foremost a Republican, not the Libertarian he was in the 1980s.
He said he quit the Libertarian Party because it had “gone too far off the deep end” but supports the Republican Party because it has “a great chance of being successful.”

And finally, Happy Labor Day weekend!

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