Who’s afraid of Mitt and T-Paw…
It turns out that Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the scariest pair of presidential prospects in the GOP field today, judging from a new Democratic ad and remarks by some Democratic Party hierophants.
Priorities USA Action, a political group founded by two former aides to President Barack Obama, targets Romney as a flip-flopper in a South Carolina TV ad that wields Republican Paul Ryan’s Medicare reforms like a political cudgel.
The 30-second black-and-white spot begins with Newt Gingrich’s “Meet the Press” remarks opposing what he called radical right-wing social engineering on Medicare. The ad then recounts Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s defense of Ryan before turning finally to Romney: “Mitt Romney says he’s ‘on the same page’ as Paul Ryan … but with Mitt Romney, you have to wonder: which page is he on today?”
The New York Times says the ad will run this weekend while Romney visits South Carolina.
Pundits view the ad as evidence that Democrats have locked on Romney as the GOP frontrunner, at least for now.
Ed Rendell, a leading Democrat who served as Pennsylvania governor and DNC chairman, put it this way on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “What really is instructive here is that this group’s trying to knock out Mitt Romney in the primaries. We don’t want to face Mitt Romney. A Romney-Pawlenty ticket is the most credible general election ticket.”
A monster twosome, perhaps. But that doesn’t mean top Republicans aren’t still baying at the doorsteps of Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie in hopes that one or both will take the plunge.
Bachmann is tops in GOP “intensity”
House Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann may not rate highly with Republican hierophants like George Will. But some Republicans seem to have an intense liking for her none the less, according to a new Gallup poll.
The Gallup survey of more than 1,500 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents shows Bachmann with a 20 percent “positive intensity” rating among 12 potential GOP White House wannabes. That’s second only to Mike Huckabee’s 25 percent rating. And it’s worth noting that Bachmann was recognized by only 52 percent of the respondents, so there may be room for improvement.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor with a disarming nice-guy persona, has polled strongly among Republican voters for some time. But the results seem encouraging for Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican who has only recently emerged from relative obscurity on the back of the Tea Party movement.
Viewed in some circles as a not-ready-for-prime-time-player in national politics, Bachmann has been parodied on Saturday Night Live and castigated by critics for gaffes including a recent reference to the first shots of the American Revolution being fired in New Hampshire, instead of Massachusetts, where the Battles of Lexington and Concord actually occurred.
Will, the influential conservative columnist, told ABC’s “This Week” only two days ago that Bachmann was “not among the serious contenders.” That’s likely to prove true if she doesn’t poll strongly among independent voters who are not necessarily Tea Party-minded. Overall, Gallup said none of the GOP contenders they looked at drew a high level of intensely positive opinion — and that’s among Republicans.
The polling organization formulated its “positive intensity” ratings by asking respondents whether they have a strongly favorable, favorable, unfavorable, or strongly unfavorable opinion of the potential wannabe in question.
Rounding out the top 5 were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 17 percent, and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania with 16 percent each.
As a Minnesotan, I have opposed Bachmann on every single issue, save one:
Congress should never have nationalized Wall Street’s debts on the backs of taxpayers.
In my opinion, that is the only time she has come down on the right side of an issue since the first time I heard of her.
As Senators, Obama and McCain both voted for the bail out and for that reason I didn’t vote for either of them.
If they were truly afraid of an apocalyptic outcome, then they should have nationalized the banks’ money generators in addition of nationalizing their debt.
As GOP regroups on healthcare, new poll questions its priority
The new House Republican majority may be about to do what President Barack Obama did a year ago — assign the top priority to healthcare at a time when Americans really really want action on the economy and jobs.
That’s what a new Gallup poll suggests. Pollsters found that a clear majority of U.S. adults (52 perecent) think it is “extremely important” for Congress and Obama to focus on the economy in the new year. Next in importance come unemployment (47 percent), the federal budget deficit (44 percent), and government corruption (44 percent).
Healthcare and education are tied at 40 percent. But when Gallup looked more broadly at what people said were either “extremely important” or ”very important,” education edged ahead of healthcare.
That seems ironic. Republicans, fresh from their electoral sweep in November, have made a vote to repeal Obama’s healthcare reform their first act in the House because, they say, it’s what the People want. They say that knowing the move will likely be a dead letter, given Democratic opposition in the Senate and the threat of an Obama veto.
More ironic is that Gallup’s Jan. 7-9 survey produced results generally in line with what the polling organization found before the November election.
It’s not as if Republicans are listening only to Republican voters. The data show healthcare to be a higher priority for Democrats (who tend not to want it repealed) than for Republicans, who ranked it behind terrorism as well as the economic and fiscal issues as topics in need of action.
So who are Republicans in Congress listening to? Hard to tell.
The vast majority of Americans are not on board with the Republican effort, nor should they be — passing repeal means forcing vulnerable seniors to pay thousands of additional out-of-pocket dollars for their medication, allowing insurers to discriminate against children with pre-existing conditions, higher taxes on small businesses, forcing young people off their family’s insurance plans, and making care more expensive for everyone. Even the business community that backs the GOP is making it clear — it doesn’t back repeal.
And what about jobs? Naturally, Republicans have the story backwards. Since the immediate impact of the measure will be to allow 30 million more Americans the chance to buy drugs and medical services from doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, it’s hard to imagine a more effective way to reduce employment in the one sector that is actually adding jobs.
The GOP says it needs to gut America’s health care system in order to create jobs. But were they to succeed, it would cost America jobs. Republicans just have to hope the public isn’t paying any attention to reality at all. Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, the private sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Roughly a fifth of that total — more than 200,000 — were jobs created in the health care industry.
If health care reform is bad for job creation, how did this happen?
Washington Extra – Making nice (or not)
It was President Obama’s day for showing the business community he cares. He invited CEOs to Blair House across the street from the White House to discuss ideas for creating jobs and revving up the economy.
Republicans tried to turn the olive branch into an inconsequential twig. House Speaker-to-be John Boehner (who wasn’t invited) tweeted while the meeting was underway that it amounted to a “nothingburger.”
Honeywell CEO David Cote, who attended the meeting, had some sympathy for Obama: “We avoided a depression largely because of the actions of the president … I think he gets zero credit for it in the business or political community, because it seems like you get zero credit for the problem you avoid, even though that may be the biggest thing that you do.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans were trying to make a contest out of who had more Christmas spirit.
Faced with the prospect of a legislative session going into and beyond the Christmas holiday, Republican Senator Jon Kyl said it was impossible to get everything done that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted “without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians…”
Reid said he didn’t need to hear any “sanctimonious” lecture from Kyl, and added: “My question is where were their concerns about Christmas as they led filibusters on every major piece of legislation this Congress?”
A Gallup poll had a bit of coal for all of their stockings — public opinion of Congress hit a new low with an 83 percent disapproval rating.
Congress hits new low in public opinion
The American public’s opinion of Congress has hit a new low, with only 13 percent of adults saying they approve of the job the national legislature is doing.
That’s according to a new Gallup survey, which finds an 83 percent disapproval rating for Congress — the worst the polling organization has seen in more than 30 years of congressional performance tracking.
The ‘good’ news is that Congress’ rating slipped only 1 percentage point from last time.
For 2010 as whole, Congress’ approval rating averaged 19 percent. That ties the averages for 1979 and 2008, and ranks just 1 percentage point above the 18 percent average for 1992.
Those years were all marked by difficult economic times for the United States. Gallup interviewed 1,019 adults Dec. 10-12 for the survey, as the Democratic-controlled Congress pursued its lame duck agenda before going out of business when a new Republican majority enters the House of Representatives in January. Gallup says people seem more frustrated with the Democratic congressional majority than with President Barack Obama, whose approval rating has been relatively stable at between 44 percent and 46 percent. But the polling organization said congressional popularity could rebound in 2011, if history is any guide. Public approval of Congress jumped 10 percentage points in January 1995, as Republicans took control of the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. Approval jumped even higher — by 14 percentage points — in January 2007 after Democrats seized control of the legislative body.
Photo credits: Reuters/Stormy Capitol (Jim Young); Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Pelosi and Reid) and (McConnell and Boehner)
Click here for more political coverage from Reuters
Rising above politics … in Washington
President Barack Obama seems to want to rise above politics in the tax debate. Good luck with that.
When Obama announced the White House’s tentative tax deal with congressional Republicans, he said he had agreed to compromise rather than “play politics” at a time when Americans want problems solved.
The president gave every impression of bowing to the verdict that voters delivered on Nov. 2, when they evicted so many Democrats from their lodgings in the House of Representatives and handed the time-share keys to the Republicans.
But whether voters are grateful enough to reward Obama’s thoughtfulness in 2012 is another story.
Many Democratic voters are likely to be aghast at his willingness to accept continued tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
Democratic lawmakers, mindful of those same voters, may show their own distaste for the deal by walking out on the debate.
“There’s a group that may walk and say at some point, you’ve gone too far,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told National Public Radio after Obama announced the tentative tax deal. “If the Republicans overreach, if they start including some of their pet projects into this compromise, when it comes to the tax code, you could find a walkout on the Democratic side, people saying you’ve just pushed it too far.”
Did GOP victory boost economic optimism?
It’s not exactly a tsunami of euphoria. But Republican victories in the midterm elections may have helped goose economic optimism, at least among …well… Republicans.
A new Gallup survey finds that Republicans grew more optimistic during the first week of November, as Tea Party candidates led a GOP charge that captured the House and narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate.
Republicans grew 13 points rosier on the Gallup Economic Confidence Index, compared with October, and that change appeared strong enough to drive an increase in optimism across the board.
In fact, Gallup suspects the overall performance could foreshadow improvement in the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, which includes a barometer of current conditions that hit its lowest level since November 2009 last month. We’ll soon know. The next survey report comes out Friday.
Meanwhile, Gallup says other factors that may have helped make people happier on the whole include the surge on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve’s new $600 billion grove and a better-than-expected jobs report.
Photo Credits: Reuters/Mike Segar (Happy Tea Partier); Reuters/Shannon Stapleton (Shopper)
Some insight into the election results: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/opinio n/14friedman.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedm an
Are Obama’s approval ratings that bad? Maybe not, relatively speaking
President Obama’s approval rating has been below 50 percent for most of 2010. But are things really so bad? Gallup suggests they’re not, relatively speaking.
In fact, Democratic incumbents who’ve shunned or tried to avoid associating with Obama may have denied themselves the chance to firm their own party base for an election contest that’s all about turnout.
The Obama approval rating, at the moment, stands in the mid- to low-40s and foreshadows stiff losses for congressional Democrats on Nov. 2.
But Gallup says the president’s average rating since taking office is at 52 percent — a number above George W. Bush’s 49 percent rating and on par with Ronald Reagan’s. That’s not all. The really good news for Obama is how well he’s doing vis-a-vis Congress. Gallup’s study, which has a 4 percentage point sampling error, shows Obama’s 52-percent approval average to be twice that of Congress, which got only 26 percent.
That 26-percentage-point margin outshines those for all but one of the five preceding presidents, the exception being George H.W. Bush, who was better liked than lawmakers to the tune of 30 percentage points.
The president’s way ahead of Congress in the latest round of polling, too, with his weak 45 percent approval towering over the 21 percent popularity rating that U.S. adults gave lawmakers. (Twenty-one percent of Americans also think the country’s heading in the right direction, though Gallup gave no hints about who they might be.)
GOP, conservatives seen dominating November turnout
Bad news, Democrats.
The crowd most likely to vote on Nov. 2 is a lot more Republican and a lot more conservative than the one that gave Congress to the GOP in 1994.
So says a new Gallup survey that forecasts Republican and conservative majorities at polling stations for the congressional mid-term elections.
Fifty-seven percent of people who call themselves likely voters are Republican or lean Republican, while 54 percent are conservative, according to Gallup.
Compare that to pre-election polling data from 1994 which showed likely voters to be 49 percent Republican and 40 percent conservative.
Meanwhile, Democrats have slipped from 33 percent of likely voters to 30 percent over the course of those same 16 years.
Liberals have grown, but only from 12 percent to 18 percent.
You get the government you deserve, so if Democrats do not go out and vote… they will get a Republican congress and deserve it.
White House adviser says Obama to energize his base for November
President Barack Obama adds a new item to his first-term to-do list: energize his most loyal supporters in a national get-out-the-vote campaign for the November congressional midterm elections.
That’s the message Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett delivered on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where she predicted a robust White House campaign to encourage voters including blacks and Hispanics to get to the polls next month.
Obama has already been out trying to stir up enthusiasm among the younger voters. But that was just for starters.
“He’s going to be energizing his base. He’s going to be energizing the entire country to come out and participate in this election,” Jarrett said.
“The president may not be on the ballot. But it’s very important that everybody come out and vote and that will be his message going forward.” Democrats hope to limit the loss of House and Senate seats in an election widely expected to yield Republican gains.
Some Democratic incumbents have sought to save their jobs by distancing themselves from the president and some of his more unpopular programs including healthcare reform. But analysts say Obama could help compensate for Republican strengths among white and independent voters by reaching out to voting blocs that enthusiastically supported him in 2008 and convincing them to come out to the polls on Election Day. A Gallup poll released on Monday showed that the president’s GOTV campaign may face challenges with some segments of its intended audience, however. Obama’s approval ratings stand at 91 percent among blacks, 79 percent among Democrats and 75 percent among liberals. But Hispanic’s give him only a 55 percent approval rating, according to findings based on interviews with 15,200 adults conducted Sept 1-30 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The results have a 1 percentage point error margin. The presidential approval rating was 47 percent among women and 54 percent among moderates. Obama’s overall approval rating has firmed a bit from an August low of 44 percent — but only to 45 percent. Gallup says Obama’s overall approval rating is similar to midterm results of Democrat Bill Clinton (45 percent) and Republican Ronald Reagan (42 percent), whose parties suffered substantial congressional losses at the same juncture in their presidencies.
Photo credits: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama); Reuters/Denis Balibouse (Jarrett); Reuters/Jim Young (Obama supporters).
its good to see that hispanics are waking up to Barry the liar. it is a shame to see his support rate amoung blacks @ 91%.
How blind blacks are to the political process. Name one other race who so blindly follows one political party. Whites, hispanics, all races came out in droves to vote for Barry and even now people play the card…
And I dare you to play that card, you know what i mean…
Glad to see serious (though flawed) GOPers running. The more Palin, Trump and Newt just muddy the waters.