Obama blames economy for losses, says he gets ‘discouraged’ but is resilient
From the Hill…..
President Obama blamed a sluggish economy for heavy Democratic electoral losses on Sunday’s “60 Minutes.”
“I think first and foremost, [the election] was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting,” said the president.
Asked whether he accepted Republicans’ claim that the election sends a clear message that Americans’ want smaller government, Obama said, “I think that first and foremost, they want jobs and economic growth in this country.”
Giving his first in-depth interview since a disastrous election day for Democrats, a downbeat Obama focused on his role in the electoral defeats.
The president accepted he should be held accountable for the state of the economy. “So, what you had was the economy continuing to get worse in the first several months of my administration, before any of our economic policies had a chance to be put into place,” he said. “Appropriately, I’m held accountable for that.”
He also admitted to being discouraged by the lack of economic growth, saying, “I do get discouraged, I mean, there are times where I thought the economy would have gotten better by now.”
The Wall Street Financial Reform Bill is supported by most American’s……
That’s the results of a new Washington Post/ABC poll…which is music in Obama and the Democrats ears……
That’s playing against a report that Sen. Shelby has lined up the 41 Senate Republican’s against signing on to the Bill at this time….
More bargaining?
Yep….
Again…There will be a Bill..the GOP can’t afford to do another Healthcare thing and get shut out and labeled the party of ‘No’…..
About two-thirds of Americans support stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Majorities also back two main components of legislation congressional Democrats plan to bring to a vote in the Senate this week: greater federal oversight of consumer loans and a company-paid fund that would cover the costs of dismantling failed firms that put the broader economy at risk.
A third pillar of the reform effort draws a more even split: 43 percent support federal regulation of the derivatives market; 41 percent are opposed. Nearly one in five – 17 percent – express no opinion on this complicated topic.
President Obama, who traveled to New York last week to deliver his case for sweeping changes to the financial system gets an even-up review of his performance on the issue, with 48 percent of those polled approving of his handling of financial regulation and 48 percent disapproving.
But compared with congressional Republicans, Obama has a clear advantage. A slim majority – 52 percent – of all Americans says they trust Obama over the GOP on the issue, while 35 percent favor the Republicans in Congress. Independents prefer Obama 47 to 35 percent, with 16 percent trusting neither side on the issue.
In the poll, most Democrats back each of the three major elements of the reform legislation and most Republicans oppose them, echoing the congressional showdown expected this week.
The area with the highest levels of cross-party support is on more robust federal oversight of the way banks and other financial companies make consumer loans, such as auto loans, credit cards and mortgages……
More…… and the poll numbers…..
Shelby piece……
“I believe that 41 Republicans right now are going to stand together,” Shelby said of Monday’s planned 5 p.m. test vote on the Senate floor. “I wish we’d stand together, period,” he added, noting that such unity would give GOP members “more negotiating power and more clout.”
Shelby’s comments to a crowd of community bankers at the Mayflower Hotel came as Democrats increasingly coalesced around the far-reaching legislation. They are eager to pressure Republicans into a difficult vote, in which liberals could characterize those who oppose the bill as trying to protect Wall Street.
The Wall Street Financial Reform Bill is supported by most American's……
That’s the results of a new Washington Post/ABC poll…which is music in Obama and the Democrats ears……
That’s playing against a report that Sen. Shelby has lined up the 41 Senate Republican’s against signing on to the Bill at this time….
More bargaining?
Yep….
Again…There will be a Bill..the GOP can’t afford to do another Healthcare thing and get shut out and labeled the party of ‘No’…..
About two-thirds of Americans support stricter regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Majorities also back two main components of legislation congressional Democrats plan to bring to a vote in the Senate this week: greater federal oversight of consumer loans and a company-paid fund that would cover the costs of dismantling failed firms that put the broader economy at risk.
A third pillar of the reform effort draws a more even split: 43 percent support federal regulation of the derivatives market; 41 percent are opposed. Nearly one in five – 17 percent – express no opinion on this complicated topic.
President Obama, who traveled to New York last week to deliver his case for sweeping changes to the financial system gets an even-up review of his performance on the issue, with 48 percent of those polled approving of his handling of financial regulation and 48 percent disapproving.
But compared with congressional Republicans, Obama has a clear advantage. A slim majority – 52 percent – of all Americans says they trust Obama over the GOP on the issue, while 35 percent favor the Republicans in Congress. Independents prefer Obama 47 to 35 percent, with 16 percent trusting neither side on the issue.
In the poll, most Democrats back each of the three major elements of the reform legislation and most Republicans oppose them, echoing the congressional showdown expected this week.
The area with the highest levels of cross-party support is on more robust federal oversight of the way banks and other financial companies make consumer loans, such as auto loans, credit cards and mortgages……
More…… and the poll numbers…..
Shelby piece……
“I believe that 41 Republicans right now are going to stand together,” Shelby said of Monday’s planned 5 p.m. test vote on the Senate floor. “I wish we’d stand together, period,” he added, noting that such unity would give GOP members “more negotiating power and more clout.”
Shelby’s comments to a crowd of community bankers at the Mayflower Hotel came as Democrats increasingly coalesced around the far-reaching legislation. They are eager to pressure Republicans into a difficult vote, in which liberals could characterize those who oppose the bill as trying to protect Wall Street.
The Tea Party movement…. young, inexperienced and underfunded spells trouble for the GOP……
My partner Daniel….Is hoping for a windfall in November elections…..
He feels that the countries voters will be mad at Obama and Healthcare…..mad enough to vote Republicans into majorities in the House or Senate…….
I don’t thing that’s gonna happen…For one…I think the Healthcare Bill is going to be ancient history by November…Number two…the President seems to be holding his own after last weeks good performance…And number three is the emergence of the Tea Party movement…..
Because most of its members come from the Republican party ….. the GOP gets a split from its base……and from that split we are seeing numerous local candidates springing up to run for office…..almost all are new..but strongly motivated….and almost all have little or no funds….but as is the case in Nevada Senator Reid’s case…running a Tea Party candidate may do nothing more than provide Democrats with chance to keep more seats than Daniel thinks the GOP will be able to take ……
I keep reminding Daniel about AL Gore and Ralph Nader stealing his best chance to win the Presidency…..
The question is being asked as homegrown candidates confront brute realities of politics: reluctant donors, limited party support, inexperienced staffers and the uphill fight against incumbents
Grassroots support remains vigorous, as evidenced by the thousands of tea-party activists who gathered Saturday in Searchlight, Nev., to protest the health-care law and urge the ouster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Yet despite thronging primary races across the U.S., true tea-party candidates have stumbled at the polls. In the March 2 Texas primary, 18 incumbent Republican House members faced multiple challengers, including a flock of tea-party faithful. The incumbents won handily, with only one garnering below 60% of the vote.
“The problem with the tea-party movement is it has inspired too many candidates,” says Patrick Hughes, a candidate with tea-party backing who was trounced by Rep. Mark Kirk in the crowded Illinois Republican Senate primary. “The movement will fail if it can’t coalesce behind candidates who can win.”
Organizers hope public anger over President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul will help tea-party candidates who fiercely opposed the plan. Many are now promising to help repeal the law if they win, and are using the bill to try to drum up support from donors.
The movement began last year as a backlash against the growth of the government, federal bailouts and the national debt. The next big test comes in May, when 10 states hold primaries, including the tea-party hotbeds of Indiana and Ohio. The Republican establishment is watching to see if tea-party voters fall in line behind the national party’s candidates.
Handicappers are predicting heavy Democratic losses in November. Democrats hope the tea-party surge will soften that blow by diluting Republican campaign coffers and pulling mainstream conservatives to the right, imperiling their chances in the general election.
House and Senate Races in 2010
![[races2010promo]](https://i0.wp.com/si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-HZ028_races2_D_20100328174450.jpg)
The whole House of Representatives and a third of Senate seats are on the ballot in 2010. See which races are considered closest.
“This is great news for us,” says Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The DCCC has launched a Web site to highlight divisions in the GOP primaries.
From the Wall Street Journal…..
Iowa and the GOP…….2012……
Huckabee and Romney……..again
From Jerome Armstrong @ Mydd.Com
A blog called the RightOsphere conducted a poll in Iowa among Republican caucus-goers, finding:
Among a subset of voters who indicated that they were certain to vote in the 2012 Republican Caucuses, the results were: Huckabee 21%, Romney 14%, Palin 12%, Pawlenty 1%, with 52% undecided. …The only other candidate that the survey included was former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. Johnson received less than 1% support.
The Iowa Republican pretty much favors Huckabee:
Mike Huckabee is the only 2008 candidate who has maintained a presence in the state. He has also made more trips to Iowa since the 2008 caucuses than any other presidential hopeful. He has visited the state two different times to sell books, and he has also traveled to the state to support Bob Vander Plaats’ campaign for governor. Vander Plaats served as Huckabee’s campaign chairman in Iowa.
…Iowa, however, will not be an easy place for Romney to campaign. Doug Gross, his 2008 Iowa Chairman, seems to have gone sour on Romney. He also has a hostile relationship with Jan Mickelson and Steve Deace on WHO radio, Iowa’s only statewide media outlet. For Romney to be able to come into Iowa and run for president again, he will have to walk a delicate line of focusing on the fiscal conservative that he is comfortable talking about, while remaining the social conservative he told Iowans he was in 2008. If he is unable or incapable of doing that, Iowa will haunt his second attempt at the presidency.
Sarah Palin remains a mystery. Many believe that, if she did have presidential aspirations, she would have made a splash in Iowa by now. Regardless of what people think of Palin, she is incredibly popular and would have tremendous appeal to caucus goers. Her third place finish in this poll is surprising and probably not reflective of the support she would receive if she did run.
The candidates that should be the most excited about these polling numbers are people like Tim Pawlenty and the others who were not polled. With 57% of likely caucus voters undecided, there is plenty of room for candidates to come to Iowa and stake their claim. One such candidate is former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who will headline an event tonight for the Iowa Christian Alliance in Des Moines.
Rick Santorum? Huckabee is not nearly as in a strong position, as say John Edwards was in, at this point in the ’08 cycle (in the 40’s) for Democrats, given he won in ’08 for the Republicans.
I would think there’s an argument to be made by Romney’s campaign that he skips Iowa and lets the evangelical side (Huckabee, Palin?, Santorum??) duke it out. But, no doubt, Romney is most afraid of some other candidate emerging, so that’s not a decision that’s going to be made anytime soon.
The poll didn’t include Ron Paul, who hasn’t indicated if he will run or not in ’12, which is probably complicating the task of Gary Johnson (good interview with the Tea Party champion) making any traction.
Its still wide open, still too early, but that’s the snapshot.
The GOP is afraid that Democrats WILL pass a bill without them….
This from The Hill.…….
Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona on Sunday threw more cold water on the chances that his party would cooperate with a Feb. 25 healthcare reform summit at the White House, protesting that Democrats already seem poised to force a bill through Congress.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kyl echoed a claim that congressional Republicans have made for the past week, that President Barack Obama and House and Senate Democrats intend the summit as a public display and not a genuine dialogue. He quoted a recent Wall Street Journal article that asserted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has “set the stage” for using reconciliation to pass the bill. That controversial legislative tactic could allow the bill to pass the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60 as usually required to break a filibuster.
This from Politico.….
As the harshest critic of the White House health care summit, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Saturday released the second statement in two days sniffing at the attempt at fostering some bipartisanship on health care reform.
Boehner seems to be setting expectations — that the summit will be nothing more than a White House-scripted production masking a pre-determined outcome.
Boehner, however, does not suggest that either he or other Republicans plan to skip the event.
The Dog has been sniffing around and has come to the conclusion that several things are going on behind closed door…….First…..President Obama stung by criticism and tired of being portrayed as being soft has decided to finally ‘man-up’…he has made it be known that he us the Presidency’s ‘Executive Power’ to move ahead of some issues and from the signals being given by the Republican’s …….there will probably be a Healthcare Bill passed afterall based on the Senate’s version.…..
Once the Healthcare Bill is out of the way…..things will calm down and Obama will have to get out in the hustling to help the democrats in Congress patch up things and blunt the ‘Scott Brown’ effect…..
It has taken long enough…..
By the way….The GOP has its own problems between moderates and conservatives…..
The Massachusetts Republican party tries to expand on Scott brown’s back….
Last week at Mul’s a new political movement was being hatched.
They called themselves the South Boston Conservatives. And the nine South Boston voters who gathered over coffee and French toast had come to make a Republican mark on this Democratic political stronghold.
“What is the very first thing we have to do, besides getting a larger crowd?’’ asked Eunice Fallon, a 79-year-old who last campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
Long considered an endangered species, the Massachusetts Republican is staging a comeback. In small groups across the state, conservatives are joining forces to try to seize on the nation’s impatience with change and last month’s stunning election of Republican Scott Brown to succeed liberal icon US Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Since last summer, Republican ward committees that were dormant for years have been revived in traditionally Democratic Boston neighborhoods, including South Boston, the kind of place where loyalty to family, Kennedys, and ward bosses with job offers made voters lifelong Democrats, despite their socially conservative mores.
“I have this little elderly lady in my building; she was afraid to go down to the polling booth and vote Republican because she knows the ladies who have been there forever will know she voted Republican and will tell everybody,’’ said Jason Healey, a 33-year-old technology software salesman and Connecticut transplant who moved to South Boston in 2007.
The traditionally Irish Catholic enclave always had a socially conservative mind-set defined in part by its resistance to court-ordered busing to integrate schools and its successful Supreme Court battle to prevent gay rights groups from marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. But the neighborhood’s deep ties to its politicians and labor kept it so securely Democratic that Republican ward committees effectively stopped functioning in the early 1990s.
Those calculations may be changing, with an influx of new people and a dramatically altered economy.
South Boston was the only city neighborhood that voted overwhelmingly for Brown. And the Republican went there for a campaign stop that was filmed for a successful ad that showed him interacting with voters at a time his Democratic opponent was being criticized for seeming aloof.
Fallon, who spotted Brown that day, was so excited to see him campaigning in South Boston that she circled the block to look again.
“In 25 years I’ve lived in South Boston,’’ she said, “I’ve never seen a Republican face.’’
In recent months, Healey said he reorganized South Boston ward committees by tracking down people from a list of about 350 South Boston registered Republicans he got from City Hall. He needed only two willing volunteers to become officers.Continued…
The Massachusetts Republican party tries to expand on Scott brown's back….
Last week at Mul’s a new political movement was being hatched.
They called themselves the South Boston Conservatives. And the nine South Boston voters who gathered over coffee and French toast had come to make a Republican mark on this Democratic political stronghold.
“What is the very first thing we have to do, besides getting a larger crowd?’’ asked Eunice Fallon, a 79-year-old who last campaigned for Barry Goldwater.
Long considered an endangered species, the Massachusetts Republican is staging a comeback. In small groups across the state, conservatives are joining forces to try to seize on the nation’s impatience with change and last month’s stunning election of Republican Scott Brown to succeed liberal icon US Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Since last summer, Republican ward committees that were dormant for years have been revived in traditionally Democratic Boston neighborhoods, including South Boston, the kind of place where loyalty to family, Kennedys, and ward bosses with job offers made voters lifelong Democrats, despite their socially conservative mores.
“I have this little elderly lady in my building; she was afraid to go down to the polling booth and vote Republican because she knows the ladies who have been there forever will know she voted Republican and will tell everybody,’’ said Jason Healey, a 33-year-old technology software salesman and Connecticut transplant who moved to South Boston in 2007.
The traditionally Irish Catholic enclave always had a socially conservative mind-set defined in part by its resistance to court-ordered busing to integrate schools and its successful Supreme Court battle to prevent gay rights groups from marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. But the neighborhood’s deep ties to its politicians and labor kept it so securely Democratic that Republican ward committees effectively stopped functioning in the early 1990s.
Those calculations may be changing, with an influx of new people and a dramatically altered economy.
South Boston was the only city neighborhood that voted overwhelmingly for Brown. And the Republican went there for a campaign stop that was filmed for a successful ad that showed him interacting with voters at a time his Democratic opponent was being criticized for seeming aloof.
Fallon, who spotted Brown that day, was so excited to see him campaigning in South Boston that she circled the block to look again.
“In 25 years I’ve lived in South Boston,’’ she said, “I’ve never seen a Republican face.’’
In recent months, Healey said he reorganized South Boston ward committees by tracking down people from a list of about 350 South Boston registered Republicans he got from City Hall. He needed only two willing volunteers to become officers.Continued…
Are the GOP plans to make gains in the House dashed by retirements?
With the three latest lawmakers choosing not to seek reelection in November, Republicans will have to defend 18 open seats and Democrats 14.
The raw numbers contradict the conventional wisdom that Democrats would head for the sidelines after GOP Sen. Scott Brown’s special election victory Jan. 19 in Massachusetts.
GOP strategists are brushing aside the retirement gap, saying that many of their House members see an improving political environment and are jumping ship to run for statewide office, and that other retirements are occuring in mostly conservative terrain that will be easy to defend. Democrats counter that the GOP retirements are a sign that most rank-and-file Republicans do not believe they will recapture the majority anytime soon.
National Republican Congressional Committee ChairmanPete Sessions (Tex.) said that “not all retirements are created equal,” adding that Democratic retirements are coming in far less friendly territory for the majority. “The fact of the matter is Democrats in swing districts are retiring because they know what November has in store for them,” Sessions said.
“The fact that you have 10 percent of House Republicans retiring suggests they don’t believe their own hype about taking back the House,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “If that was a realistic prospect, people would be running for office, not from it.”
The Dog sniffed this out a long time ago……What took the Washington Post so long figure this out?
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