this might not hurt, but close your eyes anyways — President Obama is now virtually tied with “a...

President Obama is now virtually tied with “a generic Republican” in polls for 2012.

It’s important to hypothesize who, exactly, respondents think they’re favoring when they indicate they’d like to see an unnamed Republican defeat the incumbent Obama in 2012. Here are some guesses:

Noah Daniels, the war-mongering, fictional president from the television series 24.
A clone of Ayn Rand who is male and not Russian.
A bucket that contains a gun, a bible, a flag, and an ancient spell that makes the steady hand of the free markets tuck them into bed at night.
The loudest yeller at their Thanksgiving.
A president whose administration will increase defense spending at every available opportunity, not close the country’s most infamous torture mill, start new wars, sign Republican healthcare policy into law, find new ways to pollute more, and kill bad people by breaking the law. In other words, Barack Obama.