This article, by Al Quinlan and Andrew Baumann, president and vice president, respectively, of the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
This week’s White House announcement of rules that will, for the first time, limit the carbon dioxide emission from new power plants is a big victory for Americans who want to see the U.S. move away from outdated and dirty energy sources like coal and toward clean sources like wind and solar. It also, despite the conventional wisdom, can be a political boon for President Obama and the White House.
We recently conducted a bipartisan survey, along with the Republican firm Perception Insight, for the American Lung Association that explored voters’ attitudes toward environmental regulations generally and on carbon dioxide regulation specifically. We found that voters overwhelmingly support strengthening environmental regulations, including those on carbon emissions.
With the political debate about gas prices raging, we want to be clear that our survey did not touch on that issue and that we are not arguing that gas prices are not a danger for Obama or Democrats. As ads like the one recently released by one oil industry front group demonstrate, this can be an area of vulnerability for the White House. (However, as we have argued in the past, the GOP’s two-armed embrace of Big Oil, reaffirmed by yet another vote in favor of oil company subsidies, leaves them equally vulnerable.) Nonetheless, we believe voters see gas prices and environmental regulations as separate issues; our research shows that they do not connect the two in their minds.
In our survey for the ALA, two-thirds of voters support the EPA setting stricter limits on air pollution. And their support is 70 percent or higher for tighter limits on the emission of mercury, smog, AND carbon dioxide from power plants. In fact, a 72 to 24 percent majority support the EPA’s new rules limiting carbon emissions. After voters hear a balanced debate, including attacks on the new rule similar to those that have come from Republicans (claiming that the new rules are burdensome regulations that will kill jobs and increase energy prices at the worst time), some Republican voters do consolidate against the rules, but a nearly two-to-one majority (63 to 33 percent) continues to favor EPA’s new standards. That includes 65 percent of independents.
The reason there is such robust support for stronger environmental regulations generally — and these new carbon standards in particular — is that voters fundamentally reject the false choice that EPA critics are trying to set up between the economy and the environment. To test that specifically, we asked voters to choose between the following two statements:

Creating more environmental regulations will increase costs, hurt our economic recovery and destroy jobs. We have to prioritize between the environment and the economy.
OR
It is possible to protect our air quality and public health and have a strong economy with good jobs at the same time. We don’t have to choose one over the other.

By a 73 to 21 percent margin — including 78 percent of independents, 69 percent of conservatives and 60 percent of Republicans — voters choose the second statement. Moreover, a 60 to 31 percent majority believes that stronger environmental regulations will CREATE, rather than destroy, jobs by encouraging innovation and investment in new technologies. A study conducted earlier this month by the Economic Policy Institute shows that voters, not EPA critics, have it right: Stronger environmental regulations from the EPA (specifically its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards) will create more than 115,000 net jobs in American by 2015.
Despite the economic reality and the overwhelming public sentiment in favor of stronger environmental regulations, the conventional wisdom held by many on both sides of the aisle, and among many pundits, is that the voters will punish politicians who support stricter regulations. Such thinking led, among other things, to the White House’s mistaken decision to shelve new smog standards (which were overwhelmingly popular) last year. Our research shows that this conventional wisdom is wrong.
We believe that these sentiments are born from basic misunderstandings of three phenomena.
First is the mistaken assumption that the voting public’s general skepticism of regulations extends to regulations specifically addressing the environment. A recent survey from Pew demonstrates how this is incorrect. While a 52 to 40 percent majority says that government regulation of business usually does more harm than good, when Americans are asked about regulations on specific areas, more of them want to strengthen, rather than reduce, regulations (by a 50 to 17 percent margin on the environment). In this, environmental regulation is a lot like spending on Medicare. Voters support less spending or regulation in the abstract, but when asked about reducing spending or regulation on something they strongly support, they are vehemently opposed.
Second is the misread of last cycle’s Cap-and-Trade debate. Few would argue that the debate had a positive impact on Democrats (and we do not). However, the negative impacts have been somewhat overblown, leading many Democrats to be overly skittish about environmental and energy issues. There were certainly some rural, conservative districts where Cap-and-Trade played a role, but two separate academic studies have concluded that while voting for the Health Care reform has a significant negative impact on Democratic incumbents, a vote for Cap-and-Trade had little statistically significant impact on vote choice in most districts.
Third is Solyndra. Our research has found that while Solyndra can open Democrats to an attack about unaccountable spending, the concerted attempts from the right to use it to undermine support for clean energy have mostly failed among voters in the middle of the political spectrum. Recent focus groups among independent and swing voters that we conducted with Third Way found that Solyndra did not undermine these voters’ backing for government support (through incentives and regulation) of clean energy. Pew has shown similar quantitative results — support for alternative energy is down among Republican voters, but not independents or Democrats.
Conservatives and Republicans are already attacking the administration over the new carbon dioxide regulations, but they are doing so at their own peril. When it comes to these new standards, voters are firmly in the White House’s corner.

Josh Lederman posts at The Hill on “Siding with Gov. Walker in union fight could cost Romney in Nov.” It would be delicious if Romney lost the November election because of his shameless toadying up to Wisconsin’s anti-union GOP establishment. As Lederman puts it:

Embracing Walker offers major short-term advantages for Romney in Wisconsin, which holds its primary contest Tuesday, as the GOP front-runner looks for the last few wins he needs to lock up the nomination. But it might also risk alienating voters in union-heavy swing states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — at just the time when Romney and his campaign hope to turn their attention to the general election.
…Campaigning in Michigan in February, Romney blasted “labor stooges” who he said were shilling for Obama. The former Massachusetts governor also backed Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s (R) anti-union law, which voters overturned in November.
Romney’s campaign said he stands with Walker and will continue to address the union issue in the final days of the Wisconsin primary, including by visiting a call center where volunteers are working to keep Walker in office.

Romney’s pandering may not play so well on a national stage. As Lederman notes, “…a USA Today/Gallup poll in February showed that 61 percent of Americans opposed a law in their state similar to the one Walker championed in Wisconsin.” It’s not only Romney’s gaffes that feed the ‘Richie Rich’ image that fits him so well; it’s his beliefs and policies.

Alan I. Abramowitz, senior columnist for Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and member of the TDS advisory board, unpacks a forecasting model he used to successfully predict congressional takeovers in 2010 and 2006, plugs in some numbers and offers this perspective for 2012:

After estimating the models based on the results of all House and Senate elections since the end of World War II, the forecasting equations for the 2012 House and Senate elections are as follows:
CRHS = (1.35*GENBALLOT) + (.21*PRESAPP) – (.36*PRHS) – (19.6*MIDTERM) + 86.1
CRSS = (.18*GENBALLOT) + (.05*PRESAPP) – (.81*PRSS) – (2.9*MIDTERM) + 14.8,
Where CRHS is change in Republican House seats, CRSS is change in Republican Senate seats, GENBALLOT is the average current Republican margin on the generic congressional ballot, PRESAPP is net presidential approval coded according to the party of the president, PRHS is previous Republican House seats, PRSS is previous Republican Senate seats, and MIDTERM is a variable distinguishing Republican and Democratic midterm elections from presidential elections that is coded +1 for midterms under a Republican president, 0 for presidential elections and -1 for midterms under a Democratic president.

Sabato cautions that this model “considerably more accurate for House elections than for Senate elections.” based on the most recently-available figures. Abramowitz says “the House forecasting model predicts a very small Democratic seat gain (2-3 seats) in the House but not nearly the 25 seats Democrats would need to take back control of the House.”
As for the Senate, he gives the GOP “a good chance to regain control of the Senate with an expected pickup of 6-7 seats…due almost entirely to the fact that Republicans are defending only 10 Senate seats this year while Democrats are defending 23 seats.”
Yes, Abramowitz acknowledges it’s still early and the prez approval variables could change in Dems’ favor. At this political moment, however, it looks like Dems’ best chance to prevent a GOP takeover of congress may come down to investing some of that Obama war chest in a couple of pivotal senate races.

Generally speaking, there’s two ways to handle wingnut goon squad bullying tactics: 1. the usual way (shouting matches, complaining, legal action that often goes nowhere etc.) and 2. The calm, creative way.
WaPo’s Petula Dvorak has an inspiring report on one of the latter approaches in her post “A clinic’s landlord turns the tables on anti-abortion protesters.” Dvorak explains how Todd Stave, a landlord for an abortion doctor’s office responded to a pro-life protesters showing up at his daughter’s middle school with grotesque signage, then “harassing calls from protesters started coming to his home. By the dozens, at all hours.” the landlord was no pushover, however, since his family had experienced violence from anti-abortion groups, going back to his childhood, including a bombing. Here’s how he handled it:

Friends asked him how they could help. He began to take the names and phone numbers down of anyone who contacted him with an unwanted call. And he gave those lists to his friends and asked them to call these folks back.
“In a very calm, very respectful voice, they said that the Stave family thanks you for your prayers,” he said. “They cannot terminate the lease, and they do not want to. They support women’s rights.”
This started with a dozen or so friends, then grew. Soon, there were more than a thousand volunteers dialing…If they could find the information, Stave’s callers would even ask the family how their children were doing, and mention their names and the name of their school. “And then we’d tell them that we bless their home on such and such street,” giving them their address.
In some cases, the family of a protester who called Stave’s home could get up to 5,000 calls in return.

Dvorak adds:

The supporters came so fast and in such big numbers, Stave founded a group, Voice for Choice . And now there are about 3,000 volunteers ready to make calm, reasoned calls to the homes of people who bombard doctors, landlords and families with their unsolicited protests at homes or schools across the country.

Such is the power of calm, creative response to bullying from the right. Dvorak does believe that pro-lifers could be more effective in terms of preventing abortions, and offers a couple of interesting suggestions;

People who want to stop abortion can make a difference with education, support, counseling and genuine efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies and support childrearing…They need to be working toward affordable and safe childcare for all, solid healthcare for children and generous workplace policies and family leave so that parenthood is not an onerous and difficult prospect in America.

Now that would be the real beginning of a pro-child society.

It appears that Florida Republicans are still getting away with voter suppression activities, as Michael Cooper and Jo Craven McGinty report at the New York Times.

…Prominent civic organizations have suspended registration drives because of what they describe as onerous restrictions imposed last year by Republican state officials.
The state’s new elections law — which requires groups that register voters to turn in completed forms within 48 hours or risk fines, among other things — has led the state’s League of Women Voters to halt its efforts this year. Rock the Vote, a national organization that encourages young people to vote, began an effort last week to register high school students around the nation — but not in Florida, over fears that teachers could face fines. And on college campuses, the once-ubiquitous folding tables piled high with voter registration forms are now a rarer sight.
…In the months since its new law took effect in July, 81,471 fewer Floridians have registered to vote than during the same period before the 2008 presidential election, according to an analysis of registration data by The New York Times. All told, there are 11.3 million voters registered in the state.
…new registrations dropped sharply in some areas where the voting-age population has been growing, the analysis found, including Miami-Dade County, where they fell by 39 percent, and Orange County, where they fell by a little more than a fifth. Some local elections officials said that the lack of registration drives by outside groups has been a factor in the decline.

More than a dozen states have passed laws making it harder to vote in recent years. Many of the laws require photo identification, restrict groups that register voters and cut back on early voting. In Florida, civic groups in counties covered by the Voting Rights Act are filing court challenges.
The authors describe the Florida law as “among the strictest in the nation and “similar to one New Mexico passed in 2005, which also imposes penalties for failing to meet a 48-hour deadline for handing in forms.” Unfortunately civic group court challenges failed in New Mexico and voter registration rolls have been shortened. In Florida, however, the Brennan Center for Justice is “challenging the Florida law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that speaking to voters and registering them is protected speech.”
If Super-PACs are protected by the First Amendment and citizens who register voters are not, then America is in trouble, and voters should hold the GOP accountable in November.

The New York Times editorial “Where Are the Good-Government Republicans?” commends Sen. John McCain for his comment that the Citizens United decision is “naïve and politically ignorant,”” and will probably produce “a huge scandal” before long. The editorial has a worthy challenge for Sen. McCain:

Democrats in Congress are pushing for disclosure, but, so far, there isn’t a Republican co-sponsor in sight. A measure from Senate Democrats would require timely disclosure by self-proclaimed independent groups that spend $10,000 or more on election ads, including the names of their major donors and a personal “I approved this ad” tag on television by the group’s chief executive. The group would have to certify that it is not “coordinating” with the candidate it obviously champions — an attempt to plug the rampant abuse of campaign law by “super PACs” and other hypocritical spenders. Democrats in the House have a similar worthy measure.
Republicans once identified with good government have an opportunity right now to reach across the aisle — before that scandal breaks. Senator McCain?

Doesn’t seem like a lot to ask…for a real maverick.

At his Washington Monthly blog, TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore posts on “The ‘What Then’ Debate.” Kilgore mines some salient insights from President Clinton’s campaign manager, James Carville and Bush speechwriter David Frum about what could happen if the SOTU bashes the ACA. First, Carville:

I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party…Then the Republican Party will own the healthcare system for the foreseeable future. And I really believe that. That is not spin

Frum thinks the GOP may want to chill the celebrations for a bit:

Repeal” may excite a Republican primary electorate that doesn’t need to worry about health insurance because it’s overwhelmingly over 65 and happily enjoying its government-mandated and taxpayer-subsidized single-payer Medicare system. But the general-election electorate doesn’t have the benefit of government medicine. It relies on the collapsing system of employer-directed care. It’s frightened, and it wants answers.

Kilgore adds that there is not much reason to think that Republicans are prepared to fill the void with credible proposals

Sure, Republicans have their highly misleading pet rock proposals to hold down premiums–interstate insurance sales and “tort reform”–and a shriveled booby prize of an approach to extend health insurance to people who are routinely denied coverage–state-run “high-risk pools” that typically offer crappy coverage at astronomical rates. But all the focus on ObamaCare since 2009 has obscured the fact that most people who are not on Medicare pretty much do hate the health care status quo ante, and will expect both parties to propose new reforms.

In short, what the Supremes are now mulling over is a potential minefield of unintended consequences, some of which could boomerang badly on the GOP.

The following article, by Democratic political strategist Robert Creamer, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

Time was, not long ago, when the right wing railed against the overreach of unelected judges with lifetime appointments who tried to usurp the power of Congress and impose their own vision of society.
That was before the Roberts Court. In fact, it turns out, many extreme conservatives didn’t give a rat’s left foot about the overreach of unelected judges. They simply wanted judges who would impose their vision of society on the rest of us.
Justices Roberts and Kennedy will likely be the deciding votes on the question of whether the individual responsibility provision of the Affordable Care Act passes constitutional muster. But they will also decide whether the Roberts Court goes down as the most activist, partisan court in modern history.
Up to now the Court’s decision in the Citizens United case allowing corporations and billionaires to make virtually unlimited contributions to political candidates and “Super Pacs” stood out as its most glaring beacon of judicial activism. Citizens United reversed a century of legal precedent to reach a result that gives corporations the political rights of people, and distributes the right of free political expression in proportion to one’s control of wealth. Not exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.
It was, of course, exactly what the far Right had in mind. Extreme conservative voices found themselves strangely silent in the face of the Supreme Court’s willingness to substitute its judgment for that of elected Members of Congress and to upend the bi-partisan McCain-Feingold law that had been passed to regulate federal elections.
But if the Court rejects the individual responsibility provisions in the Affordable Care Act, that will take the cake.
In fact, when Congress passed Obamacare there were very few serious constitutional scholars who questioned the constitutionality of this provision.
There is no question whatsoever, that government in America has the right to require our citizens to pay for public goods or for services that we decide can best be provided through government.
Clearly, government can tax homeowners to provide the community with fire protection, for example. You might not need fire protection for years — or decades — or ever — but government can decide that you have to pay into the fire protection district because if your house catches fire, it could affect the entire community.
But, says the right wing, government can’t require an individual to purchase a product from a private company they may not want or “need.”
Now I personally believe that it would make much more sense to expand Medicare to all Americans, and maintain one, efficient government-run insurance system that covers everyone — and cuts out the need to pay huge profits to Wall Street and the big bonuses to insurance company CEO’s.

Read more…

If bipartisan compromise is dead in Washington, then maybe it has something to with the fact that self proclaimed moderate Republicans simply stopped supporting any proposals that could reasonably be labeled bipartisan compromises.

Read the whole thing.

The GOP’s hypocritical double-talk about the ‘individual mandate’ was brutally exposed last night on Maddow, providing Dem ad-makers with some useful video. The fun starts about a third of the way into the clip below, just in time to spice up your discussions re Tuesday’s SOTUS hearings. Gaze in awe:

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