Charles Franklin looks at effect of Benghazi hearings
A polling interlude, starting with this:
Steve Kraske:
“There’s really been no movement,” said Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
But why hasn’t the president been knocked down a peg or two at a time when the media focused intently on Benghazi, the IRS and reports that Obama’s Justice Department secretly collected telephone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a leak investigation?
It’s the economy, stupid. And a polarized electorate not much willing to change its thinking on the country’s big issues, or the politicians at the helm.
From one of my favorite pollsters,
Charles Franklin:
A lot has been written about the impact, or rather the lack of impact, of the recent Benghazi hearing, IRS and AP phone records revelations on President Obama’s job approval. I was sitting this one out until Steve Kraske of the Kansas City Star called Thursday to talk about the issue. His piece appeared today and is nicely done. I ran an analysis of my own in order to answer his questions and that analysis is what you see here.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Mark Blumenthal on an internal report from Gallup expected later today:
Gallup's 2012 Mea Culpa: What To Expect
Gallup got it very wrong, but how to right the ship is bound to be more complex than simply adjusting some data. And see also
Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: A rare look at Obama's internal polling, and how it beat Gallup.
My favorite to feature
during the election run-up was RAND.
Final RAND poll
Greg Sargent:
It’s true that some news orgs have been way too quick to inflate the importance of this or that detail of what the White House knew and when about the timing of the impending inspector general’s report on the IRS scandal. But we’re also seeing a very serious effort in many cases to separate the scandal wheat from the chaff. The Washington Post has done great work detailing, contextualizing, and demythologizing what those emails concerning the Benghazi talking points really told us. The New York Times has done deeply reported, nuanced work on what really drove the IRS targeting of conservatives.
Meanwhile, some D.C. journos are now openly reacting badly to GOP scandal hyping.
[6/6] High quality polling will always have value. If anything, aggregation helps judge which pollsters are good/bad
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— @DrewLinzer via web
WaPo headline says it all:
GOP governors’ endorsements of Medicaid expansion deepen rifts within party
Meanwhile the
WaPo writes about feuding Republicans:
The coming battles will test Boehner’s power and, many Republicans privately suggested, potentially reveal whether it’s time for him to go.
“This is a big summer and fall, a test for all concerned,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a close Boehner ally.
Yes, the GOP civil war is real.
Andrew Rosenthal:
There has been no shortage of Republican post-mortems on the 2012 presidential election – and no shortage of apologists who claim the party need only change its rhetoric (and stop nominating members of the legitimate-rape caucus) to attract women, minorities and young people, rather than reconsider its actual policies.
The latest of these analyses, focused on voters aged 18-29, sometimes falls into the apologist/rebranding trap. It suggests, for example, that abortion is a problematic topic for the G.O.P. because young people “conflate” abortion with Planned Parenthood, contraception and women’s health care in general — as though Republican officeholders and candidates across the country hadn’t done their best to draw that connection.
But the report is far more candid than other post-mortems. It could also be far more helpful if the Republicans choose to examine the policies behind their lagging support among young voters, and not just their slogans.
NY Times:
The president will name Cornelia T. L. Pillard, a law professor; Patricia Ann Millett, an appellate lawyer; and Robert L. Wilkins, a federal district judge, to fill out the appeals court, which is often described as the second most powerful court in the country because it decides major cases and often serves as a launching pad for future Supreme Court justices.
By making his choices in a group, the president and his strategists are hoping to put pressure on Senate Republicans to confirm them.