The GOP Bloom Is Fading Fast With Voters

Recent polls have shown that the voters are not really enamored with the Republican Party anymore. Americans think they would be worse off under House Republicans' Medicare overhaul by an overwhelming margin of 57 percent to 34 percent, according to a new Bloomberg National Poll.

Adding to Republicans' woes, 58 percent of Independents — a critical voting block — share those concerns. The House voted in April to replace Medicare with subsidies for private insurance starting in 2022, but the proposal is going nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The poll, Bloomberg points out, is likely to encourage Democrats to continue to use Medicare to bash the GOP ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Republicans, however, are urging for bipartisan cooperation on cutting Social Security and Medicare even as they reject any tax increases.

If Democrats go along with Republicans on cutting Social Security and Medicare the GOP echo chamber will blame Democrats for the cuts, just as they did during the 2010 mid-term elections.

(See - The GOP Bait And Switch On Social Security And Medicare Democrats need to stay positioned to run exactly the same Social Security and Medicare messaging campaign in 2012 against the GOP that the GOP used against Democrats in 2010.)

Unemployment	42%
Government spending	17%
Federal deficit	13%
Health care	10%
Afghanistan	5%

The new Bloomberg National Poll (conducted of 1,000 adults between June 17th and June 20th) show movement toward Democrats and away from the Republicans. Here are the top five issues with the public.

The people know that the most important issue facing America is the massive unemployment -- an issue the Republicans are ignoring.

The recession will not truly be over until most Americans are back to work.

And most Americans see the corporations outsourcing of jobs as the biggest impediment to job creation (78%) -- something the Republicans in Congress have voted to support.

And then there's this question on the poll. What scares you the most about the upcoming election? Here's what the voters said:

• 49% said the Republicans getting control of government and damaging or abolishing Medicare.
• 40% said the Democrats getting control of government and resuming their spending.

Medicare is still turning out to be a really bad mistake for Republicans (who want to abolish it and throw the elderly to the mercy of private insurance companies). About 57 % in this poll said the Republican plan would be bad for them, and 55% say supporting the privatization of Medicare would make them likely to vote against a presidential candidate.

President Obama's favorability rating was 54%, with 42% saying they viewed him unfavorably.

Among other presidential candidates, 43% of Republicans viewed Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) favorably and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had a 29% favorability rating.

Poll numbers are collapsing for first-term Republican governors across the country. The recent Inside Politics Newsletter gives a snapshot of the GOP's polling growing polling problem.

From Florida to Ohio, Wisconsin to Arizona, the bloom is fading from the GOP's blushing rose very quickly and very badly for Republican Governors who surfed into their respective state capitols on the tea party electoral wave last November.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

Newsweek: Fourteen million Americans remain out of work, a waste of our greatest resource. The 42nd president has more than a dozen ideas on how to attack the jobs crisis.

Next week in Chicago, the Clinton Global Initiative will focus on America for the first time, inviting business and political leaders to make specific commitments in support of the former president’s jobs blueprint, which he details below.

14 WAYS TO PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK

I’ve Had All I Can Stand! I Can't Stands No More!

In this video clip posted on the Netroots Nation YouTube channel, Netroots Nation 2011 keynote speaker Van Jones delivers the fiery last few minutes of his speech.

He humorously invokes “Popeye” cartoons, quoting, “I’ve had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!” and encourages attendees to stand up to the smears and hate-mongering spewed daily by Fox News.

Jones, who joined the White House Staff in March 2009 as Pres. Obama's environmental adviser on green jobs development, resigned in September 2009 after the rightwing media and blogosphere echo chamber ginned up calls for his ouster in over his past statements and activism.

Jones issued two public apologies in the days preceding his resignation, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of Jone's resignation on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual." The president does not endorse Jones's past statements and actions, "but he thanks him for his service," Gibbs said.