Poll: Republicans Could Be Heading For A Devastating 2012 Defeat

According to Democracy Corps, for the first time in two years the Democratic Party has taken the lead on the generic congressional ballot, 47%-44%. The bad news for the GOP is that Independents have shifted back to the Democratic Party. In the previous surveys congressional Republicans led congressional Democrats by a net 9 points in October and 19 points in August with Independents, but today Democrats have taken a two point lead.

Why have the Democrats surged? The answer is that the behavior of Republicans in Congress has turned off voters. By a margin of 53%-39% respondents said the more they watched the Republicans in Congress, the less they like what they are offering. Approval of Republicans in Congress has dropped to a new low of 28%, and 8% strongly approve of the Republican caucus.

18%-25% of Republicans and Republican leaners surveyed said that they would vote for a conservative third party candidate, and if that candidate was Ron Paul, Romney’s general election support would collapse.

Obama leads Romney by one point (47%-46%) in a two person race, but if Paul gets in, Romney loses 12 points and falls to 34%. Obama only loses three points if Paul runs as an Independent, and overall Paul draws the support of 18% of the electorate. (A third party candidacy by Ron Paul would split the Republican vote, and hand the election to Obama).

A big problem for Republicans was that President Obama remained the most personally popular politician in the poll. Obama now only trails Romney by three points with Independents, and the Democratic Party 5 points and moved into a tie with Republicans on the issue of the economy. The poll also found that Obama has more potential voters willing to support him than Romney does.

All three of these components, an unpopular Republican congress, a cold fish of a nominee, and surging incumbent president could add up to a perfect storm of defeat for the GOP. The most telling statistic is that the more people get to know the Republican Party, the less likely they are to support their candidates.

The problem with generic ballots is that unnamed candidates tend to be more popular than real people, but generic ballots can help gauge the current temperature of an electorate. Right now, the electorate is moving back to the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party could have offset the damage done by their congressional members with a warm, energizing, and inspiring nominee. Unfortunately for them, Mitt Romney is none of those things. Romney tends to leave voters cold, and helps to reinforce the negative impressions that many respondents have about the GOP.

The ultimate representation of Republican voter dissatisfaction is their willingness to vote for a third party conservative candidate. The GOP has become an unpopular party that is seriously in danger of fracturing. Add into this equation an incumbent president who is personally popular and gaining positive momentum in the polls, and the result is the potential for a disastrous defeat.

It is possible, even without the presence of an Independent conservative third party candidate that Democrats take back the House, keep the Senate, and win the White House.

The pieces are starting to fall into place for what looked like an impossible scenario after the 2010 election to become a reality in 2012.

I love it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President.

• Romney has made an average of $57,000 per day.

  The average HOUSEHOLD income is $50,221 ANNUALLY.
  
  Remember when Romney told people at a coffee shop “I should tell my story. I’m also unemployed.”

Quote:
.....REPEAL YOUR OWN HEALTH CARE

How The Gas Prices Are Manipulated By The Koch Brothers And Other Wall Street Players

Why are gas prices surging to levels unseen since the 2008 oil spike while the oil companies reporting record profits? Much of the problem is actually created by Wall Street traders here in the USA who gamble on oil prices and powerful multinational companies that manipulate the supply and demand by stockpiling oil when the price is low and expected to rise in the near future. And yes, so far this practice is perfectly legal.

Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that regulates commodity futures and option trading in the United States, says a very few number of players control too much of the market, allowing them to push the price of gas higher and higher. The American public knows very little about the oil speculation industry because a conservative majority on the CFTC has refused to implement the mandates from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to curb abuses and provide transparency.

One of those players is the petrochemical multinational Koch Industries. Although oil extraction is a small part of the Koch’s oil business the company has major control over every other part of the market as its core venture is shipping crude oil, refining it, distributing it to retailers, then speculating on the future price. The company actively trades about 50 types of crude oil around the world and has trading operations in London, Geneva, Singapore, Houston, New York, Wichita, Rotterdam, and Mumbai.

When future oil prices are expected to rise–which means when demand is expected to exceed supply–big banks and companies like Koch start buying up oil and storing it in massive containers both on land and offshore to lock in the oil for sale later at a set price.

In 2008, Fortune magazine reported that Koch Supply & Trading leased the 2-million-barrel-capacity Dubai Titan that year, the third supertanker the company has leased, because the demand for oil storage was so high that Koch and other big investors who could not secure storage on land have resorted to leasing supertankers and using them as floating oil tanks.

Koch was one of the companies that lobbied aggressively against President’s financial reform bill-–mentioned above–particularly on provisions related to transparency in the energy trading market. Representatives from the company’s lobbying firm even argued that moderate levels of the toxic chemical dioxin should not be designated as a cancer risk for humans at an EPA hearing last summer.

When we look at the money Koch has spent on lobbying to influence laws and regulations in Washington in recent years–from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008–it is not surprising that Koch’s lobbyists and officials have successfully fought to preserve the industry’s tax breaks and credits, and defeated all attempts by Congress to regulate environmental hazards and transparency requirements.

At the beginning of February 2012, Koch and about 300 other-–invitation only–individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections at a private meeting in California. And now at the end of February 2012 we are seeing a distinctive rise in the oil prices at the pump. I will not speculate any further as I have the utmost trust in the intelligence of our readers to connect the dots and fill in the blanks.

The rising cost of gas

Posted by Letters editor

There are two points Obama missed

President Obama failed to connect two important dots associated with gas prices [“Gas prices on the Obama campaign trail,” News, Feb. 24].

The president was quoted in a speech to University of Miami students regarding the political consequences of high gas prices saying, “You pay more and they’re licking their chops.”

While he did acknowledge the unprecedented amount of domestic-oil production, he did not mention the work of Senator Maria Cantwell and others, which has shown that the price at the pump is increasingly due to speculators rather than market forces of supply and demand.

Therefore, speculators like the Koch Brothers can intentionally manipulate gas prices to coincide with presidential elections which, along with the recent rash of refinery closures, is likely behind the not so coincidental timing of the gas price spike.

— Fred Felleman, Seattle

These are ways to lower our gas prices

There are four ways that the price of gas can be lowered. We must require that no one who is not a final consumer of petroleum products can speculate in petroleum futures. All refiners must produce only one grade of gas. If every car can run on the minimum octane with some adjustment, this would result in a savings of up to 30 cents per gallon.

We should allow oil companies only to be in a maximum of two of the functions of producing gas. The fact that they are allowed to drill, refine and sell the final product allows them to create false costs in each of the individual steps.

Lastly, we need to eliminate all tax breaks for the gas companies.

— John Lay, Seattle

We need to blame the oil companies not Wall Street

Gas has gone up 26 cents in 10 days. This is not from speculators on Wall Street, nor is it the effects of the refinery fire (that gas hasn’t gotten into the market yet) or the new trouble in the Middle East (that oil hasn’t even been purchased yet).

This is the oil companies, who have junior executives who scan the news daily looking for reasons to raise prices.

All we can do is shop for the cheapest gas around.

— Howard F. Heller, Seattle

It's a funny old world.

Here in the UK we have much the reverse situation.

We have a mainly Welfare Health system but due to world financial problems the current government wishes to introduce more competition. The public here is VERY defensive about our beloved free to all health system and tempers are very high.

This was a few days ago.