With six weeks until Election Day, new polling from Quinnipiac, the New York Times and CBS News shows President Obama leading in crucial swing states including Ohio, Florida and Iowa. As Obama’s lead grows, so does the number of conservatives who claim polls in general are biased and cannot be trusted. Similar to their dismissal of fact-checkers who flagged lies in Romney’s ads and Paul Ryan’s convention speech, conservatives are now claiming the media outlets that conduct the polls are attempting to discourage Republicans from voting by falsely tipping the polls toward Democrats.

Helping this narrative along is a new website, Unskewed Polls, which claims, after liberal media bias is removed, Romney is in fact beating Obama by a wide margin in every poll. Business Insider unpacked how the website is manipulating data to come up with a Romney victory.

Nicknamed “poll sample truthers” by Dave Weigel, the skeptics are falling over each other to explain how the numbers are lying:

Erick Erickson
Erickson, Editor-in-Chief of RedState.com and CNN political contributor, accuses the media of a “confirmation bias” that makes them conform their data to what they want: “The polls are confirming what the press thinks and that they have a larger than 2008 Democratic turnout is of no consequence to them.”

John McLaughlin
The Republican pollster explains the poll conspiracy: “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want.”

Hugh Hewitt
Radio host Hugh Hewitt thinks the CBS/Quinnipiac/NYT poll is “junk”, choosing instead to focus on Rasmussen and Gallup’s daily polls, which have Obama leading by a smaller margin. These polls, he says, amounts to “lots of evidence this morning that their campaign is in terrific shape.”
Read more

The Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation on Wednesday released a statement condemning the employees of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) after a video surfaced of three campaign staffers mocking Brown’s opponent’s Native American heritage.

“The conduct of these individuals goes far beyond what is appropriate and proper in political discourse,” said Chief Bill John Baker in his statement, “The use of stereotypical ‘war whoop chants’ and ‘tomahawk chops’ are offensive and downright racist.”

Baker called on Brown to “apologize for the offensive actions of his staff and their uneducated, unenlightened and racist portrayal of native peoples,” and said, “A campaign that would allow and condone such offensive and racist behavior must be called to task for their actions.”

Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware Native American ancestry has been a frequent line of attack for Brown, with the campaign even running ads on the topic. The Senator did say Tuesday, however, that he did not “condone” their actions.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) released a statement Tuesday backing Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), a little less than a month after publicly calling for an end to his campaign after Akin’s “legitimate rape” debacle. Akin withstood the clamoring of many Republican lawmakers and fundraisers to stay in the race. But his party seems to be making their peace with him now that the official deadline for his withdrawal has passed. Blunt echoed Newt Gingrich, who exhorted Republicans to overlook Akin’s comments and support him because of a “moral obligation” to win a majority in the Senate.

In August, Blunt told MSNBC he hoped Akin would withdraw:

Todd needs to get out of this race…it’s not helpful. He’s a person who I think will ultimately look at this and try to figure out the greater good. I didn’t say I was confident … I’m hopeful he will and I believe he will. He’s an engineer, he’s a quantitative guy. I think at some point you have to add up the columns here, and my belief is that by anyway you add them up, they don’t add up.

On Tuesday, Blunt embraced Akin in a statement:

Congressman Akin and I don’t agree on everything, but he and I agree the Senate majority must change. From Governor Romney to the county courthouse, I’ll be working for the Republican ticket in Missouri, and that includes Todd Akin.

The Missouri Republican Party has also changed its mind about Akin. After the August deadline to drop out passed, Party Chariman David Cole sent a memo to the Republican State Committee warning that Akin “posed a threat” and reassuring them there was still time to change his mind:

It has become increasingly clear that Congressman Akin’s comments over the weekend are not just a distraction—they pose a threat to our Party’s chances of retaking control of the US Senate and impact other races here in Missouri…This afternoon, Congressman Akin stated that he intends to remain in the race. While one may question the wisdom of this choice, there will still be time for the Congressman to reevaluate his decision in the coming days. Despite today’s widely-reported 5:00 deadline for Congressman Akin to withdraw from the race, Missouri statute allows for candidates to withdraw at a later date, so there will still be time for him to reconsider his current decision to continue his campaign.

Now, it seems, Cole has decided to make the best of Akin’s refusal to drop out:

Just like all of our GOP candidates elected in the August primary, the Missouri Republican Party stands behind Congressman Todd Akin in his race for United State Senate. Claire McCaskill is far too liberal for Missouri—voting with Barack Obama 95% of the time since 2010 and supporting every major piece of his reckless agenda. We are confident that Todd will defeat McCaskill in November, and the Missouri Republican Party will do everything we can to assist in his efforts.

Blunt also serves as a liasion between Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and the Senate Republicans. Romney previously said Akin should drop out of the race, but former rival Gingrich recently predicted Romney would come around and support Akin. Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) super PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, is also preparing to back Akin now that he has agreed to change his position on an earmark ban the Fund supports. Rick Santorum has also announced that he is backing Akin, and may donate to his campaign through the Patriot Voices PAC.

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have claimed they will not raise money for his campaign.

Mitt Romney told voters in Westerville, Ohio on Wednesday not to expect a “huge cut in taxes” from his economic proposal, noting that he is “also gonna get rid of deductions and exemptions.” The message is at odds with the GOP nominee’s promises to cut taxes for the middle class and small businesses, while maintaining the current tax burden on the rich.

ROMNEY: Number 5, I’m going to champion small business. Small business, where jobs come from. And let me tell you how to do that. One, as Sen. Portman said, we’ve got to reform our tax system. Look, small businesses typically pay tax at the individual tax rate. And so, our individual income taxes are ones I want to reform, make them simpler. I want to bring the rates down. By the way, don’t be expecting a huge cut in taxes, because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions. But by bringing rates down, we’ll be able to let small businesses keep more of their money, so they can hire more people.

Watch it:

Romney has been pledging that he will cut taxes for all Americans by 20 percent, while also instituting tax reform that will not add to the nation’s deficit. But numerous analyses of the plan — including a recent study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center — found that there are not enough loopholes in the tax code to finance the loss in revenue that would result from Romney’s massive cuts by only targeting deductions for the rich, meaning that middle class Americans will experience a net tax increase.