Obama Opens Big Gender Gap In Swing States

By Charles Dharapak, AP

USA TODAY

Mar 30, 2012

By David Jackson, USA TODAY

Updated  3d 8h ago

Another poll, another big lead for President Obama in a swing state — and more evidence he is benefiting from a growing gender gap.Obama leads Mitt Romney by 52%-35% in Wisconsin, according to a new NBC News/Marist Poll — thanks in large part to a 25-point lead among women voters, 55%-30%.

The president leads Republican candidate Rick Santorum by 51%-38% in Wisconsin, the poll says.

Obama’s approval rating is 50% in Wisconsin, a state he carried easily in 2008.

The Wisconsin numbers come the same week that a Quinnipiac Poll gives Obama leads in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida — again with significant leads among women voters.

“Women back the president over Romney or Santorum by 6 to 19 percentage points in the three states,” Quinnipiac reports.

Obama’s strength among women voters comes after weeks of news coverage about such issues as health insurance coverage for contraceptives. The political battles have included objections by the Catholic Church to Obama policies on contraception coverage.

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The Morning Plum: Romney Continues Hugging Extremism

Washington Post / The Plum Line

By Greg Sargent

Posted at  09:02 AM ET, 03/14/2012

Pop quiz: What do the following two events that took place yesterday have in common?

1) Rick Santorum wins the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, with Mitt Romney coming in third in both.

2) Romney tells a local TV station in Missouri that he would “get rid” of Planned Parenthood.

Answer: Both suggest Romney may remain trapped for months in a political dynamic that could damage him among key swing constituencies in advance of the general eleciton.

Romney won the delegate count last night, and by all accounts he moved closer to the nomination. But Santorum’s wins all but ensure that this contest will drag on into June, forcing Romney to continue embracing positions that appeal to the GOP voting blocs he’s been struggling to connect with but could also alienate independents and women. The pressure on Romney to do this could intensify if Santorum is able to unite conservatives behind his candidacy.

In an example of just such a position, Romney  said this in an interview with Missouri’s KSDK-TV in Missouri: “Of course you get rid of Obamacare, that’s the easy one. Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.”

This is exactly the sort of comment Dems are hoping Romney will be forced to keep making as the GOP nomination battle drags on. The DNC rushed out a video on Romney’s comments, highlighting the cancer screenings and birth control services that Romney would eliminate. The Obama campaign put out a statement arguing that Romney would eliminate “a vital health care provider for millions of American women.”

This comes as a new Bloomberg poll finds that an overwhelming majority, 77 percent, believe birth control should not even be “part of the national political debate.” It also finds that 62 percent think the contraception battle is “a matter of women’s health and access to birth control,” the Dem framing of the issue, while only 33 percent believe it’s about “religious liberty.” Fifty-three percent think Rush Limbaugh should be fired for his “slut” comments.

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98 Advertisers Pull Ads from Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Politicususa  By: Jason Easley

The toxic environment that right wing talk radio has created is now destroying it as Premiere Networks is circulating a list of 98 advertisers who don’t want their ads to appear on Hannity, Beck, or Limbaugh.

Taylor on Radio-Info had this note that Premiere Networks is circulating:

To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory. More than 350 different advertisers sponsor the programs and services provided to your station on a barter basis. Like advertisers that purchase commercials on your radio station from your sales staff, our sponsors communicate specific rotations, daypart preferences and advertising environments they prefer. . .They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.

 

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George Will Blasts GOP Candidates’ Meek Response To Rush: ‘They Want To Bomb Iran, But They’re Afraid Of Limbaugh’

Think Progress   By Judd Legum  on Mar 4, 2012 at 1:54 pm

This morning on ABC, prominent conservative columnist George Will blasted the Republican leadership’s meek response to Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke. Will mocked Speaker John Boehner for calling Rush’s language “inappropriate ” as comically weak, noting “using a salad fork for your entree, that’s inappropriate.”

Will also attacked the GOP presidential candidates timid response: “They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.” Watch it:

Check out what all the Presidential candidates have said about Limbaugh’s sexist attacks here.

SOURCE

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Operation Chaos – Proof That The Two Parties Are Not Flip Sides Of The Same Coin

March 4, 2012

Addicting Info   By Wes Bishop

It is often heard in political discussions that there is very little difference between America’s two political parties. The declarations are common that they both are corrupt, that they both lie, that they both represent what is wrong with the country. These statements are usually given in the hopes that the speaker will appear nuanced, impartial, and “fair and balanced.” But, for anyone actually following politics, the idea that both the Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin is a position nearly impossible to defend. Instead of being two sides of the same coin, the two parties are increasingly becoming completely separate currencies.

To illustrate this point one need look no further than the historic case of “Operation Chaos.” In late February, 2008 conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh began what he called an “operation chaos,” where he encouraged conservative Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton in the presidential primaries. The call to vote was not motivated by support of Clinton’s ideas, nor was Limbaugh encouraging people to respectfully do their civic duty. Instead, what Limbaugh and the conservatives that participated hoped to achieve, was civil discord by denying then Senator Barack Obama a decisive victory. In short it was an attempt to create an inaccurate reflection of what U.S. citizens wanted in the upcoming presidential elections.

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Limbaugh Advertisers: We Still Won’t Sponsor Rush Anymore

First Posted: 03/ 3/2012  8:34 pm Updated: 03/ 4/2012  6:13 pm

Huff Post

As the controversy grew over Rush Limbaugh’s latest incendiary comments — he called law student and birth control advocate Sandra Fluke a “slut” on Wednesday — his show’s advertisers began to flee in droves.

On Saturday, Limbaugh apologized. But for at least one CEO, that wasn’t good enough.

David Friend, who runs the online backup company Carbonite, issued a statement on his company’s website saying that Carbonite would no longer advertise with Limbaugh despite the host’s rare admission of regret. From the website:

“No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.”

UPDATE (3/4/2012):

On Sunday, ProFlowers said it was also pulling ads from Limbaugh’s show. On the company’s Facebook page, it criticized Limbaugh’s comments as “beyond political discourse to a personal attack” and stressed that they “do not reflect our values as a company.”

According to ThinkProgress, five other companies have vowed to stop sponsoring the show.

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Fluke: Obama Told Me My Parents Should Be Proud

Raw Story

By David Edwards Friday, March 2, 2012 16:12 EST

Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke on Friday choked up as she recalled an encouraging phone call from President Barack Obama after conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh smeared her as a “slut.”

“You were in our green room getting ready to come on and the White House tells us that we can reveal that you just got off the phone with President Obama,” MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell explained.

“Yes, I did,” Fluke agreed. “He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women.”

“And what was really personal for me was he said to tell my parents that they should be proud. And that meant a lot because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether my family would be proud of me,” she added, fighting back tears.

Limbaugh on Wednesday labeled the law student a “prostitute” and a “slut” because of her testimony in Congress about contraception.

Fluke had explained that her friend, a lesbian, could not afford the oral contraception she needed to prevent ovarian cysts from forming because her university refused to pay for them on religious grounds.

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Just A Question…

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Rush Limbaugh’s Attack On Sandra Fluke Was Hate Speech

Posted at  12:27 PM ET, 03/02/2012

The Washington Post   By- Jamila Bey

Radio host Rush Limbaugh is so keen on pornography, he’s suggested an entirely new genre of it.

In an attack against the Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, who House Republicans wouldn’t let testify at a hearing on insurance coverage for contraception, Limbaugh shared his ideas about what should happen to women who dare disagree with him on women’s health.

He said, “So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.”

He also called Fluke a “slut” and a prostitute after she argued that birth control should be covered by health insurance at religious institutions.

The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger argued in an earlier piece that Fluke may not have been the best witness for a very different reason: As a student, rather than an employee, of Georgetown, her insurance coverage would not change one way or the other under the Affordable Care Act as currently written, with or without a religious exemption to institutions like the Jesuit school Fluke attends.

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The Right-Wing Talk-Radio Flameout

The Right-Wing Talk-Radio Flameout

The Daily Beast – by John Avlon

May 12, 2011 | 10:38pm

Ratings for Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and other hyperpartisans are declining as listeners seek honest talk from hosts like Michael Smerconish over angry rants. A more civil conversation will add value to our political debate, writes John Avlon.

There’s new evidence to suggest a demand for something different than hyper-partisanship in the world of talk radio and political media.

It’s not just the sunset of the Glenn Beck Show on Fox or the dispatch of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC to CurrentTV. It’s the shuttering of a pioneering conservative radio station and data showing the demographic decline of Rush Limbaugh.

In contrast, growing numbers of listeners are tuning in to independent voices who can be honest brokers in debates and don’t just angrily parrot talking points.

In February, I wrote a column asking whether right wing talk radio was dying and ruffled some feathers in that flock. A more accurate means of measuring listeners showed that conservative talkers’ ratings had either declined or flatlined in the heat of the 2010 election, while the world-journalism focus of the John Batchelor Show had seen a decided ratings climb. Now, a look at radical centrist Michael Smerconish’s national ratings growth since the start of the year provides more evidence of this emerging market.

First, here’s a snapshot that puts the shift in perspective: Just days after the 2010 election, the nation’s first all-conservative talk radio station, KVI in Seattle, switched back to a classic-rock format after 17 years. Its innovation had become media saturation—and music became an appealing alternative to the drone of a dozen Rush Limbaugh imitators.

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