But among those who appear most likely to vote, based on their level of interest in the campaign and their history of voting, the Republicans own a dramatic 49% to 40% advantage. If that kind of lead holds, Republicans would almost certainly take back control of the House. 

From the Washington Post/ABC poll:

Among all voters, 47 percent say they would back the Republican in their congressional district if the election were held now, while 45 percent would vote for the Democrat. Any GOP advantage on this question has been rare in past years - and among those most likely to vote this fall, the Republican advantage swells to 53 percent to the Democrats' 40 percent.

Voters were also asked whether they think it is more important to have Democrats in charge of Congress to help support the president's policies or to have Republicans in control to serve as a check on Obama's agenda. Here, 55 percent say they prefer Republicans, while 39 percent choose Democrats. The GOP's 16-point edge is double what it was in July.

From Rasmussen:

This matches the largest advantage ever measured for the Republicans. Three weeks ago, the GOP also held a 12-point lead.

Meanwhile, CNN gives the Republicans a 7-point advantage.  And Fox News gives Republicans a 9-point edge.

Locally, don't be surprised if national Democrats start spending money in New Jersey.  The New York Times say the Dems are looking at political triage, and will send money where they think they can save seats:

While Democrats have all but given up hope that the political or economic climate will improve substantially before the election, they are not conceding control of the House. Several party leaders and strategists privately acknowledge that about 20 seats are already probably lost, but they believe they can build a fire wall around seats in the Northeast and in other pockets across the country where Republicans have nominated untested candidates.

Last time we looked, tho, a tidal wave can still swamp a fire wall.

Of course, Democrats are already calling this the Divert Attention agenda, noting that Christie's campaign begins the same day as hearings into the $400 million Race to the Top fiasco.  The key to those hearings is whether fired Education Commissioner Bret Schundler shows up to testify and takes on the governor.  Our bet is he won't, which means the hearings will not be all the Democrats hope.  (By the way, why is Joe Cryan always quoted as the opposition voice against Christie?  Isn't Sheila Oliver the speaker of the Assembly?)

(UPDATE:  Schundler decided not to testify.)

Anyway, for those of you up early enough, here's Christie's TV schedule:  On Morning Joe on MSNBC at 7, Imus on the Fox Business Network (and WABC-AM radio) at 7:30, and Fox and Friends at 8.

Wonder how many Schundler questions he'll get.

More on the reform agenda later.

Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the job Christie is doing, while 66% of Democrats disapprove. Most unaffiliated voters (63%) also like the job their governor is doing in New Jersey.

You can read the full report here.

The movie, ”The Man of LaMancha,” is based on Miguel de Cervantes 17^th Century masterwork, “Don Quixote,” the would-be knight who traveled Spain, fighting windmills that he thought giants, and sheep that he believed advancing armies.

Saying he would not be “defamed” by Gov. Chris Christie, who called him a liar, Schundler laid out his case that he had not told Christie that he had verbally corrected the $400 million error.

The evidence, including Schundler’s narrative chronology of events, lays out his side, and frankly, he makes a good case.  It also includes a series of e-mail exchanges with Maria Comella, Christie’s deputy chief of staff for communications; Schundler’s initial letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan; Christie Chief of Staff Rich Bagger’s rewrite; and a second rewrite

You can read them and draw your own conclusions.

Now Democrats are hoping to bring Schundler in and turn this into a political star chamber, where the fired ex-commissioner would lay out the case against Christie.

But Schundler, in his e-mail to reporters, seemed to indicate that his chronology would be his last statement on the episode.

"I am sick of this thing and will let the governor have the last word," he wrote.

And the irony is, if he holds to that, he strengthens his case.  A man who appears out for a vendetta loses credibility, whether it be in politics, or in life.  But a man out to clear his name, regardless of cost?

They tend to get noticed.

For their part, the Christie administration has thrown the full weight of their scorn at Schundler.  And while Christie has been more generous to Schundler than his spokespeople, he also called Schundler a liar.

It’s not unheard of for staff to try and shield the boss.  Just like it’s not unheard of for people who have been fired to try and redirect blame.

It’s possible that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of all these accounts.  We’ll never know.

All we can hope is that if Christie learned that he had made a mistake, even a public one like his rant at the Obama administration, he would have owned up to it, and let the chips fall where they may.

There’s an old saying about how integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is looking.

In government, everyone is looking, every day. And the tendency is to want to avoid embarrassment, avoid mistakes, at all costs.

There is so much to admire about what Christie has done to date in Trenton that you have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But there’s no denying that we’re left with a sorry episode, in which there are no winners, and the gloss on the Christie administration is a little less shiny.

Kind of like he is tilting at windmills.

When a clerical error seemingly costs a state $400 million in federal education funding, there are plenty of lessons to be learned.

Some of those lessons are obvious. As I learned in my very first newspaper job, you can never proofread an item too many times. Secondly, if you plan to make a bold public statement, make sure the facts are on your side, especially in today’s environment where advanced technology makes it possible to keep permanent electronic records of communications that previously were left to the frailness of the human brain.

In New Jersey, the value of each of these lessons was illustrated when the state missed qualifying for a federal Race to the Top grant in August. New Jersey lost points on its grant application by reporting budget figures for the wrong years in one section of the form. Had that question been answered correctly, the state would have had enough points to be awarded the $400 million grant. Hence, we have an expensive lesson in the value of proofreading.

As for the second lesson: First a video released by the U.S. Education Department contradicted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s statement that the state attempted to provide the correct information after the error was discovered, but the federal agency refused to accept it.  Then, after Christie fired state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler for misleading him about what had transpired, Schundler produced emails that seem to show that the information he provided to the Governor’s Office was accurate.

It will take a while to sort all of this out, and we may never know which version of what is being said is correct. The simple lesson here is to speak honestly at all times. In the real world of partisan politics, however, the lesson is to look before you leap and be cognizant of the fact that videos, emails and other electronic records – which may contradict your version of the facts – are easily retrievable today.

But there is an even more important lesson to be learned from this debacle – and it comes from the reaction of our public officials, Democrats as well as Republicans.

Having read Bret Schundler’s acceptance of the fact that he’s the one that made the original $400 million mistake on the Race to the Top application, can we all agree that this is one sorry episode.

And those that will suffer the most will be New Jersey’s schoolchildren, if the proposed reforms are delayed in any way because of a lack of funds.

It was uncomfortable watching how Schundler’s star has not only fallen, but crash-landed.  We all understand the natural tendency to want to defend yourself, and yet, it’s all sort of unseemly at the same time.

It’s certainly legitimate to wonder when Christie was told that Schundler gave the information to the feds during the presentation, or if Comella ever forwarded those e-mails to the boss.

And like it’s legitimate to wonder why union buy-in was so important to the feds, or just what role politics played in the awarding of the grants in the first place.

He can get away with blaming the underlings once.  Twice?  Not so much.

NJ-06: Is longtime Dem endangered? GOP internal poll says he is
If this internal poll is to be believed (and the standard caveats, of course, apply), then the climate for Dems in this cycle might be even worse than has been often projected. A new internal poll, by National Research, for longshot Republican candidate Anna Little claims that she might not be a longshot, after all. The poll shows longtime Democratic incumbent Frank Pallone leading Little by just six points (40-34). This would be a stunning result, if true, in a district where Barack Obama won by 60-38 and where Pallone has won every election since 1992 with at least 57% of the vote.

This analysis ignores that Gov. Chris Christie won the 6th District in his race against Jon Corzine last year. Not to mention the Tea Party-fueled voters who gave Little the upset victory in the June primary.

But make no mistake -- if Pallone is defeated, that Republican wave began right off the Jersey Shore. 

And so the Race to the Top has become The Race to Point Blame.

At some point in any circular firing squad, the guns find a target.

And now that application has once again become Schundler’s undoing.

Don’t get us wrong.  Christie had no choice.  What started out as a reported clerical error had become an issue of Christie’s credibility.

He said that one mistaken piece of paper had been submitted as part of the 1,000-page Race to the Top grant application.  Instead of providing data for 2008 and 2009, they gave answers for 2010-11.

And then Christie said Schundler had verbally provided the correct answer during the grant presentation in Washington. And Christie let loose with a classic Christieism, saying:

Well, it sounded good.

But then the White House reminded everyone that they can play politics too.  Thursday night, they released a video showing that Schundler had not answered the question. He did not give the reviewers the correct answers, as Christie said.

Oops.

What YouTube giveth, YouTube can also taketh away.

On NJ101.5 last night, Christie said he would be disappointed if it turned out that he was misled.

Seething was the phrase that actually came to mind.

And the videos – Christie’s comments Wednesday, and the Obama response Thursday –made Christie looked like a fool, or worse yet, a liar.

Especially not someone whose brand is that he’ll be honest, direct and blunt.

And so Schundler had to go.

But barring any further revelations, Christie stopped the damage, and probably learned a lesson or two.

Plenty o’ caterwauling out in the Statehouse today over the fact that the Christie administration submitted a wrong piece of paper that cost the state 4.8 points in its Race to the Top application – enough, apparently to doom the state’s bid for $4400 million.

The Star Ledger trumpeted the mistake in its pages today.  Democrats and the NJEA leapt on the error, looking to bash Gov. Chris Christie with it.

Here’s our question:  How many points did the NJEA’s refusal to sign on to the proposal cost the state?

We’re just saying.

Meanwhile, there’s no denying that the administration made a stupid mistake. In reading the question and answer, it almost reads as if the administration felt that it had to justify its school aid cut of $820 million, instead of answering the question.

But Christie is also right that the fact that the government wouldn’t allow the application to be amended is government bureaucracy at its worst.

And New Jersey came in 11^th, and lost out on $400 million.

But here’s what we’ve learned about Christie’s character.

"If you think for a minute I'm going to fire some mid-level person ... then you don't know me," Christie said today.

So if Bob Ingle was hoping to write a sequel to “The Soprano State,” well, he’d best not look to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for help.

Instead, he said his top priorities were "public safety, or terrorism" prosecutions.

That’s nice, Mr. Fishman.  But this isn’t Iowa or Kansas -- we live in New Jersey.  And we know exactly what we’ve got here.

After all, there is a reason why “The Sopranos” was set in Jersey. And why “The Soprano State” was a best seller.  And why “The Jersey Sting” likely will be too.

Like there is a reason why undercover FBI agents were able to walk through a League of Municipalities convention and catch so many fish.

Just like salmon swim upstream, in New Jersey, some politicians go up the river.

Fishman was apparently reacting to quotes made last July after 44 people were arrested in a corruption investigation.  (The same one that led to the new book, “The Jersey Sting.”)

But fear not, New Jersey.  It isn’t as bad as we thought.

Demoralizing, or – as our governor likes to say – honest and refreshing?

Listen, what’s demoralizing is not to think you live in a corrupt state; it’s to live in a corrupt state and think no one is doing anything about it.  To think that the politicians are getting away with it.

That’s demoralizing.

And at least, when the politicians were being rounded up every other week, we the public had a sense that the bad guys were on the run.  That the good guys were just one wiretap away from throwing the bums in jail.

If there’s anything any one knows about New Jersey, it’s that we know human nature. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Heck, turn on any Jersey-based reality TV show and you’ll see what we mean.

Blunt, even.

And we’re blunt enough to know that unless some politicians are worried about the U.S. Attorney’s Office listening in, they’ll just go back to the old way of doing business.

Now that’s demoralizing.

Don’t get us wrong – of course terrorism is important.  Of course it has to be a priority.  But it almost sounds like the U.S. attorney doesn’t want to focus on public corruption cases so as not to upset the zeitgeist of the Jersey citizenry.

Trust us, U.S. Attorney Fishman – we can handle it.

So yes, focus on terrorism – but don’t forget about public corruption.

As we recall, there was a couple of terrorism cases during Chris Christie’s reign, too.

And once again, we have been reminded that leadership stems from the top.

And if there is one thing we have learned during the last seven months, there’s no doubt that Christie – love him or hate him – is a leader.

So we guess that the state attorney general will take the lead on public corruption cases, if the U.S. attorney won’t.

Reading the Star Ledger piece this weekend about Gov. Chris Christie and his school years in Livingston, one thing stood out:

We’re not talking about the Livingston teachers, but about all those who’ve asked Christie’s teachers what the back-story is?  Did he have a vendetta?  What did you do to them that would explain his behavior?

And therein lies the problem.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a politician, a state employee, or a teacher.

Instead of trying to find someone else to blame, perhaps teachers – not to mention all public employees – should sit down with their neighbor, and justify why paying 1½% of salary is too much to pay for health insurance.  Especially to families who are paying 25% of the cost. Or whose companies don’t offer health insurance.

But try having that conversation to someone that who’s been hurt by the recession.

And that’s the point.

And speaking of the mosque, has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forgotten what country she’s in?    Has Washington become so perverse that she thinks that opposition can only be genuine if it’s paid for?