Obama Campaign Slams Koch Brothers: Americans For Prosperity Should Reveal Donors

The Huffington Post | By Leigh Owens
Posted: 03/02/12 02:56 PM ET

The Obama campaign has started a petition aimed at forcing Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by billionaires Charles and David Koch, to release its donor lists to the public, proving the group’s claim of running a grassroots-supported organization.

This latest move by the campaign is part of an ongoing battle between the Obama team and the Koch brothers.

In late February an email to Obama supporters described Americans for Prosperity as a “front group” and accused the Koch brothers of making millions by “jacking up prices at the pump.” The email also claimed the Koch brothers have committed $200 million to destroying Obama before the November election.

Phillip Ellender, president of government and public affairs for Koch Industries, responded to the email with a letter addressed to Jim Messina, campaign manager for Obama’s re-election efforts, disputing the accusations.

“We own no gasoline stations and the part of our business you allude to, oil and gas refining, actually lowers the price of gasoline by increasing supply. Either you simply misunderstand the way commodities markets work or you are misleading your supporters and the rest of the American people,” Ellender wrote.

The letter goes on to defend the organization as not being funded exclusively by the Koch brothers. “Rather it has tens of thousands of members and contributors from across the country and from all walks of life,” the letter stated.

As the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, Messina responded directly to Ellender’s letter, in which he scolded the Koch brothers’ companies and organizations.

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Obama Holds Lead Against Republican Opponents, Santorum Rises In GOP Primary: AP Poll

By LAURIE KELLMAN and JENNIFER AGIESTA 02/22/12 08:03 AM ET

Associated Press  via:  Huff  Post

WASHINGTON — A surging Rick Santorum is running even with Mitt Romney atop the Republican presidential field, but neither candidate is faring well against President Barack Obama eight months before Americans vote, a new survey shows.

Obama tops 50 percent support when matched against each of the four GOP candidates and holds a significant lead over each of them, according to the Associated Press-GfK poll. Republicans, meanwhile, are divided on whether they’d rather see Romney or Santorum capture the nomination, with Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul lagging behind. It’s a troubling sign for the better-funded Romney as the GOP race heads toward crucial votes in his home state of Michigan, in Arizona and in an array of states on Super Tuesday, March 6.

“I’d pick Santorum, because it seems Romney may be waffling on a few issues and I’m not sure I trust him,” said Thomas Stehlin, 66, of St. Clair Shores, Mich. He thinks the Detroit-born son of a Michigan governor is facing a strong challenge from Santorum in his home state because of his tangled answers on the auto industry bailout.

Also, he says, there’s this: Romney, the self-described can-do turnaround artist of the corporate world and the troubled Salt Lake City Olympics, with his millions of dollars, has been unable to vanquish his political opponents.

“That may be the reason right there,” said Stehlin, a retired government worker and a Republican. “He spends lots of money and he doesn’t get anywhere.”

Nationally, Republicans are evenly split between Romney and Santorum. The poll found 33 percent would most like to see Santorum get the nomination, while 32 percent prefer Romney. Gingrich and Paul each had 15 percent support.

Romney’s fall from presumed front-runner to struggling establishment favorite has given his opponents an opening as he tries to expand his support. His Republican rivals have stepped in claiming to be a more consistent conservative and viable opponent against Obama, and each of the last three AP-GfK polls has found a different contender battling Romney for the top spot. But Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and abortion foe, has hit his stride at a key moment in the nomination contest.

Santorum’s spike comes as satisfaction with the field of candidates remains tepid and interest in the contest is cools. About 6 in 10 Republicans in the poll say they are satisfied with the people running for the nomination, stagnant since December and below the 66 percent that felt that way in October. Only 23 percent are strongly satisfied with the field and 4 in 10 said they are dissatisfied with the candidates running, the poll found. And deep interest in the race is slipping: Just 40 percent of Republicans say they have a great deal of interest in following the contest, compared with 48 percent in December.

“It seems like in the last month or so everything’s just chilled out,” said James Jackson of Fort Worth, Texas, a 40-year-old independent who leans Republican. “I just haven’t been following it lately.”

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Polling Shows Obama Heading For Huge Victory Over Romney

Politicususa- February 1, 2012

By Jason Easley

It is early, but an analysis of state by state polling data reveals that President Obama may be heading for a huge victory over Mitt Romney.

Although President Obama’s polling numbers have been trending upwards for a few months now, the right wing media is claiming that the president is heading for a huge defeat based on a state by state analysis of an average of his 2011 Gallup approval ratings. The analysis assumed that any state where the president has an under 50% job approval rating would go Republican in fall. There are three obvious problems with this conclusion. First, Obama’s national job approval rating is a tick or two under 50%, so that under the right wing analysis, Obama would lose most of the states in the country. Second, what a year long average can’t reflect is that President Obama’s approval ratings are trending up.

Third, President Obama isn’t running for reelection against his own approval rating. He will be running against Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. The more accurate way to measure Obama’s reelection chances is by looking at how he matches up with Mitt Romney in each state. When Obama and Romney are matched up on a state by state basis, guess what? Obama’s huge defeat becomes a huge victory.

For instance the Republican analysis has Obama losing Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but a PPP poll released today found that President Obama is leading Mitt Romney, 49%-42%. Romney’s favorability rating in the state has fallen to 28%. In North Carolina, the latest PPP poll found that Obama leads Romney by 1 point, 46%-45. A December, a Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania found Obama leading Romney, 46%-43%. The latest Quinnipiac poll of Florida found Obama and Romney tied in Sunshine State, 45%-45%.

The Republican analysis had Mitt Romney getting 323 Electoral College delegates to Obama’s 215, but a January PPP state by state analysis of the head to head match up found the opposite. Obama finished with 337 Electoral College delegates compared to 195 for Mitt Romney.

Relying on an average of 2011 job approval numbers was not accurate way to project an Electoral College map. The general consensus is that if Obama wins any one of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina, he will win reelection. The snapshot of the national mood today suggests that Romney is trending down and Obama could be headed for a big reelection win, but we are still more than nine months out from Election Day.

With so much time before the election, it is foolish to predict any result with certainty, but Republicans see their frontrunner falling apart before their very eyes, so they are doing their best to try to convince America that Obama is heading for a major defeat.

They are living in a delusion, and now they are inventing Electoral College maps to provide themselves comfort in their unreality.

Image: Poz Blogs

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Last Night’s Winner? President Obama

Huff Post- Posted: 02/ 1/2012 10:21 am  By- Giancarlo Sopo

The Florida primary is in the history books and, as analysts predicted, Mitt Romney romped Newt Gingrich. While the Romney campaign should pat itself on the back for its double-digit victory, they should keep the champagne on ice for now. The polls show President Obama down in Florida, but he may have gotten the last laugh.

Here are four troubling signs for the GOP emerging from the Sunshine State’s primary:

1. Statewide GOP turnout is down from 2008

You would think that with a Republican Party whose “single most important political goal” is to make President Obama a one-term president, GOP voters would have flocked to the polls; however, they did not.

Compared to the 2008 primary, GOP turnout was down 14% on Tuesday. In 2008, 1,949,498 Republicans cast their ballot in the Florida primary; last night, the number was 1,672,702. Are there less registered Republicans now in Florida than there were in 2008? No, there are 25,000 more.

The cause for the drop in GOP turnout last night is unclear. The Republican base isn’t electrified by its front-runner candidate, but it would be foolish for Democrats to assume that means they won’t show up to vote in November because the one thing they are fired up about is defeating President Obama. However, as we saw in the 2000 Florida recount, elections are sometimes won on the slimmest of margins, and Washington Republicans are going to need all hands on deck if they want to defeat the president.

2. Romney’s favorability ratings are down and his negatives are up

Romney may have bombarded Gingrich with negative ads and outspent him 5:1 in Florida, but as the HuffPost Pollster chart below shows, it wasn’t just the former speaker’s image that took a dive as the GOP candidates toured the Sunshine State.

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