Free Republic

Here's The Chart That Will Get Obama Fired Henry Blodget Oct. 9, 2011, 3:31 PM Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has written an excellent treatise on how the American economy collapsed, what the government did about it, and what the government might have done differently that would have actually fixed it. At the beginning of the article, Klein publishes what might be described as the chart that will get President Obama fired. The chart (below) shows three lines: 1. The incoming Obama Administration's projections for what the unemployment rate would be if no stimulus was enacted in the depths...

Such a development would be disastrous for Obama. The president faces even longer odds of carrying the traditionally red states he won in 2008, including Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. So Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes, becomes all the more crucial in an election most analysts expect to be closely contested. Obama's ace in the hole is Vice President Biden, who was raised in a Catholic family in Scranton. Biden will be dispatched routinely during election season in hopes of shoring up the president's deficiencies with blue-collar voters, according to campaign officials. And Team Obama is also banking on...

Old Obama campaign excuse: The economy is terrible because the GOP’s blocking my jobs bill. New Obama campaign excuse: The economy is terrible because red-staters who hate me won’t hire anyone out of spite.Tomorrow we’re eating turkey but tonight it’s red meat all the way: “Can’t afford it,” explained the employer, Bill Looman, Tuesday evening. “I’ve got people that I want to hire now, but I just can’t afford it. And I don’t foresee that I’ll be able to afford it unless some things change in D.C.”…Looman made it clear, talking with 11Alive’s Jon Shirek, that he is not refusing...

At this point, President Obama has got to be sick of hearing about buyer's remorse from Democratic voters; and I'm sure Hillary Clinton is getting sick of hearing about why she should run against Obama in 2012, but the calls for Obama to step down and for Clinton to step up are only getting louder. Democratic pollsters Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell have said Obama should step aside before, and they did it again over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal. He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of...

Shocking AP Headline: 'Obama Disconnects Rhetoric, Reality' By Noel Sheppard Created 10/10/2011 - 10:22am Many right-thinking Americans have been wondering when Obama-loving news outlets would notice that even Democrats don't support the president's new jobs bill. On Monday, the truth came from a surprising source - the Associated Press: In President Barack Obama's sales pitch for his jobs bill, there are two versions of reality: The one in his speeches and the one actually unfolding in Washington. When Obama accuses Republicans of standing in the way of his nearly $450 billion plan, he ignores the fact that his own party...

President Obama continues to have trouble in Pennsylvania and Ohio as a majority of voters in those battleground states said that he does not deserve to be reelected, according to two Quinnipiac University polls released on Wednesday. Obama carried both states in 2008, but the latest polls show that he would have a tough, though not impossible, time repeating in 2012. Still. it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, and in both states Obama is running very slightly ahead of either Texas Gov. Rick Perry or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the top contestants in the race for the...

President Barack Obama is in deep trouble in the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, which combined with Florida will determine the outcome of the 2012 election. A pair of polls released by Quinnipiac University Wednesday show Obama in a statistical tie with Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Ohio, with Obama holding a slight lead over Perry in Pennsylvania. Most strikingly, a majority of voters in both states do not believe Obama deserves another term — with majorities also disapproving of the president's job performance. In the race for the Republican nomination, Romney...

At a speech before the Congressional Black Caucus this weekend, President Obama told the crowd, “I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain.” He also told the CBC to “take off your bedroom slippers” and “put on your marching shoes.” And he scolded them to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.” I have written before about Obama’s deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is, to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. We have seen it in all sorts of areas,...

With the President's poll numbers falling, Obama supporters have begun to send signals that the party might be better off if he chose not to seek reelection. Several media stories have appeared recently suggesting that Obama could face serious challenges in the 2012 election and one newspaper in Chicago has suggested the President consider not running for re-election. The Chicago Tribune, which previously endorsed Obama, featured a recent column by Steve Chapman, who said the President is under no compulsion to run for a second term. Chapman said, “He can scrap the campaign, bag the fund-raising calls and never watch...

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. (AP) -- President Barack Obama is playing golf with another first duffer, former President Bill Clinton. They teed off on a cloudy afternoon at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

Obama and Bill Clinton tee off at Andrews By: CNN's Kevin Liptak (CNN) - President Barack Obama had a high-profile golf partner Saturday: former President Bill Clinton. The two hit the links on the golf course at Joint Base Andrews, a course outside of Washington that Obama plays frequently. Rounding out the foursome were Obama’s Chief of Staff William Daley and Doug Band, one of Clinton’s aides.

September 18, 2011 2:01 PM Bill Clinton feels Obama's pain By Corbett B. Daly (CBS News) Former President Bill Clinton expressed empathy Sunday for President Obama's weak poll numbers Sunday, but suggested his fellow Democrat would see higher approval ratings once voters know who his Republican opponent will be. "When you are out there running against yourself and people feel miserable, it's hard to see your numbers go up," Mr. Clinton said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation." According to a CBS News/New York Times poll released Friday, Mr. Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 46 percent,...

Liberals Seeking Primary Challengers To Obama Ed O’Keefe September 17, 3:10 PM Liberal activists and academics displeased with the Obama administration’s handling of several issues popular with progressives say they are seeking candidates willing to mount a primary challenge against President Obama next year. The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations. The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate”...

Why Republicans are optimistic and Democrats are worried.The week before the special election in New York’s 9th congressional district, the Democratic National Committee meeting in Chicago focused on three main areas of concern that required improved “messaging” for the 2012 campaign: jobs, health care, and Jewish voters — an odd list to be sure. The Obama campaign hired the former long-time head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, Ira Forman, to help with this third task. A poll out last week from Gallup suggested that Obama’s approval level in the Jewish community is now 55%, down 5% from the prior...

The disease that is the unmistakable sign of a president on the cusp of losing his re-election to the Land of Oz that is a second term in the White House. A looming loss always signaled by the telltale barking dogs of American politics. What is Barking Dog Syndrome? What sets the dogs off? For that matter -- just who are these barking dogs in the first place?

With President Obama’s political troubles mounting, some analysts are suggesting that President Obama’s Democratic backers may approach him in the very near future and ask him, politely, to forget that second term. “I’m warning my clients — ‘Don’t run in 2012.” The Hill quotes one unnamed Democratic strategist today, voicing concerns about Obama’s coattails or lack thereof next year. Wall Street Journal’s John Fund Says Obama’s Backers Are Backing Off: (VIDEO AT LINK) “The odds of me being reelected are much higher than the odds of me being elected in the first place,” Obama told a group of Washington D.C....

White House Defends Daley Amid Calls for Staff Shakeup By Stephen Clark Published September 16, 2011 | FoxNews.com The White House is standing firm behind President Obama's chief of staff, Bill Daley, after several unnamed aides reportedly lambasted Daley's management style and Democrats blamed him for the president's limited successes since Republicans took control of Congress. Daley, a former businessman and commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, was brought in to replace Rahm Emanuel who became Chicago mayor this year. Daley, considered a shrewd but fair negotiator, was seen as a conduit to thaw icy relations between the White House...

Barack Obama's troubled presidency was hit hard again this week on several fronts that shook the White House and raised fears in his party of deeper losses in Congress next year. First, Republicans won a special election for a long-held Democratic House seat in New York that the GOP turned into a referendum on Obama's economic policies. Then, internal administration emails revealed the White House pushed budget officials to rush a review of a half-billion-dollar federal loan to a solar manufacturer championed by Obama that ended up going bankrupt. Finally, a new report says poverty in America surged in the...

Carville doubles down: Obama ‘not going to win re-election on the course he’s on right now’ Jeff Poor - The Daily Caller 46 mins ago On Thursday, former political adviser and current CNN contributor James Carville dropped a bomb on the Obama administration, saying it was time for panic and that, on his current trajectory, President Barack Obama would not be re-elected. Later that evening on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Carville appeared from Starkville, Miss. and warned Obama again, alluding to the two special election losses — one in New York City and the other Nevada — as signs that...

At least, Barack Obama has to hope it’s peaking, rather than continuing to build. Bloomberg headlines the poll results with an explicit slam at Obama: “Clinton Popularity Prompts Buyer’s Remorse.” So far, the numbers aren’t overwhelming, but they are growing: The most popular national political figure in America today is one who was rejected by her own party three years ago: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of her and one-third are suffering a form of buyer’s remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead...