Gallop Polling reports that the 50% approval mark is notable because all incumbent presidents since Eisenhower who were at or above 50% approval at the time of the election were re-elected. Obama’s job approval rating has typically been in the mid-40% range for the last three months.
The poll shows that over the last two days, the President’s approval rating stayed at 50%. The poll also shows that President leads Mitt Romney – the presumptive Republican nominee – by 7 points, 49% to 42%.
With the Republican nomination race all but sewn up, here are 5 things to watch tonight.
1. Cougar Town (8:30 ABC)
Why watch: If you love nature shows, this is one for you. Cougars are sleek cats with keen eyes and a devastating first bite. They also run very fast. In their natural habitats they…oh wait, wrong cougars.
2. American Experience: The Crash of 1929 (8:00 PBS)
Why watch: Why indeed? Nothing to see here. Move along citizens.
3. Frontline: Money, Power and Wall Street (9:00 PBS)
Why watch: Really PBS? A double bill? Are you just baiting the Republicans to cut all of your funding when they take power next year? What’s next; Bert and Ernie Occupy Sesame Street?
4. Frozen Planet: The Ends of the Earth ( 9:00 Animal Planet DVR Alert!)
Why watch: Here is the ultimate relaxation program for the GOPer who’s come home after voting. The show talks about changing habitats, polar extremes and the warming trends that are affecting wildlife without mentioning the causes! It’s guilt free climate change! When Vanessa Berlowitz, the series producer, said in an interview. that scientific theories “would have undermined the strength of an objective documentary, and would then have become utilized by people with political agendas,” you know that Animal Planet is going to get a zillion dollars in the next budget go-round.
5. Edge of War: Saddam vs. The Ayatollah (10:00 Military Channel)
Why watch: Are you kidding? We love wrestling matches. Especially ones that incite 8-year wars between really bad guys. In this oldie but goodie, the US supports Saddam, but only so we can beat the crap out of him in 20 years. Ahhh, the Reagan-Bush-(Blank)-Bush years.
Or you could visit me at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest
Her name is Sarah Steelman and she is running for the Missouri’s Congress as a Republican. She will fit in perfectly with today’s other Congressional Republicans.
According to this website, Sarah Steelman serves on the Missouri Consolidated Health Care Plan Board of Trustees; the Missouri Public Service Commission’s Gas Cost Recovery Task Force; the Joint Committee on Terrorism, Bioterrorism & Homeland Security; and the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. She is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Environment; a member of the Senate Committee on Aging, Families, Mental & Public Health; a member of the Senate Committee on Education; and a member of the Senate Committee on Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight.
With all that knowledge, Ms Steelman was asked a very simple question – what do you think about the Violence Against Women Act?
We’re still waiting for a sensible answer.
President Obama was willing to put up with a lot of Anthony Weiner’s antics — the bad boy congressman’s sexting with women he never met, tweeting pics of his own penis, and acid tongue.
But the White House finally got fed up when reports emerged that the pol was in contact with an underage girl.
According to a new book, the cold shoulder from the White House was the beginning of the end of Weiner’s career in Congress.
“We were willing to stand by him before, but I don’t see how we can do it any longer,” White House political director Patrick Gaspard is quoted as telling Weiner’s advisers.
With that, Weiner — who thought he could weather the scandal that started when he accidentally tweeted a crotch shot — lost his trademark bravado.
“I just can’t figure out what I should do,” Weiner told advisers.
Source: New York Post
Mitt Romney and the Republicans have built a reputation – a false reputation that is – fighting for “small government.” They often pride themselves in saying they want government “out of our lives.”
But based on the recent contraception fight and the Republican’s war on women, it seems that what these Republicans mean is government should only stay out of our lives if that government is a Democratic government.
While campaigning for President in 2007, Mitt Romney proved this point perfectly when he told an audience that when he becomes president all new computers would be built with a pornography filter on them. Can you imagine the “big government” outcry if a Democratic president had said this? We would have heard calls of communism and “too much regulation” on the private market if this was said by a non-Republican.
What’s next for the “small government” Romney, a government-run media like North Korea or China, where what we see and hear is dictated by a Romney administration?
I’ve always liked Jon Huntsman because he spoke the truth, and that is something you can’t say about members of today’s Republican party. Over the weekend, Huntsman stuck to this uncommon trait of telling the truth and called out the Republican party for what they really are… Communists!
Former Republican candidate Jon Huntsman took a battle axe to his own party, comparing it to China’s Communist Party and criticizing it’s standard bearer in a wide-ranging interview at the 92nd Street Y Sunday night.
Recounting his first experience on the presidential debate stage in Iowa last August, Huntsman says he was struck by the question “Is this the best we could do?”
Huntsman, the former Utah governor and once President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to China, expressed disappointment that the Republican Party disinvited him from a Florida fundraiser in March after he publicly called for a third party.
“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” he said.
Huntsman said he regrets his decision to oppose a 10-to-1 spending cuts to tax increase deal to cut the deficit at the Iowa debate lamenting: “if you can only do certain things over again in life.”
“What went through my head was if I veer at all from my pledge not to raise any taxes…then I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining,” he explained. “What was going through my mind was ‘don’t I just want to get through this?'”
That decision, Huntsman said, “has caused me a lot of heartburn.”
Huntsman jokingly blamed his failed candidacy in part on his wife, Mary Kaye, who told him she’d leave him if he abandoned his principles.
“She said if you pandered, if you sign any of those damn pledges, I’ll leave you,” Huntsman recounted.
“So I had to say I believe in science — and people on stage look at you quizzically as though you’re was an oddball,” Huntsman said, explaining why he was “toast” in Iowa.
Remember when liking something had to do with ice cream or 8th grade crushes? Now the word is everywhere: Facebook, teenage (and increasingly adult) conversations, and now presidential politics.
The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows that President Obama leads Mitt Romney in large part because Americans like the president more, and more American women like Obama a lot more.
The same is true for the Washington Post/ABC News poll and the CBS News/New York Times poll. Nate Silver writes a more expansive article about what likeability/favorability means in the political context and concludes that the issue is cloudy about predicting a winner in the fall. What’s clear, though, is that it’s better to be the person more people like and trust than not.
The polls do serve as warnings for Obama because despite being liked, more Americans are still not pleased with the way he’s handled the economy. The April and May jobs numbers will be key for his reelection prospects because they will either signal an ongoing positive trend of (sluggish) job creation or they’ll show a slowdown or reversal.
If the news is positive, that could create a feeling that we’re finally on the right track out of Recession Terminal and on our way to Job Construction Junction. It would also give Obama a couple of months of leeway if the numbers dip a bit during the summer. If both month’s figures are very weak or negative, that could cement in people’s minds the image that Obama just isn’t going to get it done and that maybe we should give Mitt another chance. Yes, the fall numbers will be important, but both sides would like a head start with their economic arguments before the conventions.
Other measures of the economy are turning positive and lower unemployment in the swing states could trump any negative national news. After all, if there are more jobs in Ohio, Michigan and Florida, those people will not be so concerned about what’s happening in Nevada or Arizona.
Mitt will have the more difficult road because lurking deep within his mind is a collection of embarrassing rich guy things that will surely come out of his (or his wife’s) mouth. He’ll also be in the unenviable position of endorsing lower taxes on the wealthy and cuts to social programs that even Republicans want to stick around, like Medicare, Social Security, public and higher education and health care. And Mr Businessman will need to answer for why he would have allowed tens of thousands of workers to lose their jobs rather than save General Motors, and why any president should have the power to make gas prices go up or down.
Like, wow.
And, like, like me at www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest
Reducing government deficits Mitt Romney‘s way would mean less money for health care for the poor and disabled and big cuts to nuts-and-bolts functions such as food inspection, border security and education.
Romney also promises budget increases for the Pentagon, above those sought by some GOP defense hawks, meaning that the rest of the government would have to shrink even more. Nonmilitary programs would incur still larger cuts than those called for in the tightfisted GOP budget that the House passed last month.
Differences over the government’s budget and spiraling deficits are among the starkest that separate Republican Romney and Democratic President Barack Obama. Obama’s budget generally avoids risk, with minimal cuts to rapidly growing health care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid while socking wealthier people with tax increases. It’s all part of an effort to close trillion-dollar-plus deficits.
Romney, by contrast, proposes broad cuts in government spending, possibly overpromising on reductions that even a Congress stuffed with conservatives might find hard to deliver.
Source: Seattle PI
A new poll finds that President Obama continues to lead presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the key battleground state of Ohio but by a slightly narrower margin.
The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Obama with 46% support to Romney’s 42%. Five percent (5%) prefers some other candidate, while eight percent (8%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This Ohio survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted on April 18, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports.
In his effort to shake the Etch A Sketch and erase some of the things he and his Republican presidential candidates have said against the gay committee in their numerous debates, Mitt Romney hired a gay man as his National Security Spokesman. Needless to say, members of his “severely conservative” base have seen through this very transparent move by Romney to suddenly appear more inclusive, and they are calling him out on it.
Bryan Fischer, one of the most vocal Conservative leaders against the gay committee took to his Twitter account and tweeted that Romney’s move was another way of telling the “pro-family committee to drop dead!”
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/BryanJFischer/status/193508518282797056″]
But according to The Chicago Phoenix, Romney’s shaking of the Etch A Sketch is working.
Chuck Wolfe, CEO of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, praised Grenell for taking on the role with the Romney campaign.
“Good for him,” Wolfe said. “We applaud the participation of out professionals in government and politics. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, serving openly is important. It allows you to speak honestly about yourself and the LGBT community to colleagues inside campaigns and government offices.”
It remains to be seen if the rest of the LGBT community follows Chuch Wolfe’s lead and fall at Romney’s feet.
House Republicans have all agreed and passed the Paul Ryan Budget – a budget that takes $5.3 Trillion from services that helps the poor and transfer $4.3 Trillion to the rich in the form of subsidies and tax cuts.
Knowing that the Democratically controlled Senate will never approve such a dumb and draconian budget, House Republicans are now pretending that the Senate did just that. Included in a House Resolution (H.RES.614) this week was this little provision:
Pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2013, the provisions of House Concurrent Resolution 112, as adopted by the House, shall have force and effect in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution
In other words, we know the Senate didn’t approve and would never approve this Paul Ryan Republican budget (House Concurrent Resolution 112), but this provision allows us pretend and act as if they did. Yay for Paul Ryan!
Just another day in the life of a Do-Nothing Republican House of Representatives.
President Barack Obama urged Congress to limit student-loan rate increases, calling higher education an “economic imperative.”
Going to college is “an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford,” the President said Saturday in his weekly address.
Student-loan rates are set to be the next big issue split along party lines, and Obama hopes that his message of reasonable rates will resonate will younger voters as well as boost fellow Democrats.
“Republicans in Congress have voted against new ways to make college more affordable for middle-class families and voted for huge new tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires — tax cuts that would have to be paid for by cutting things like education and job-training programs that give students new opportunities to work and succeed,” Obama added.
