Happy Hour Roundup
* In an interview airing this evening PBS, President Obama brushed off today’s Washington Post poll finding that his approval rating has dropped below 50% on health care. Here’s what he said, according to an advance excerpt:
It means that what we’re doing is hard and, you know, the truth is I feel pretty good about the fact that our polls have held up under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. You know, I think we may have set a very high bar for ourselves. Normally at 59 percent, folks would say, we’ll take it.
* Sam Stein gets RNC chair Michael Steele to say that he agrees that health care could be Obama’s “Waterloo,” a pretty important comment from the GOP’s chief operative and public face.
* Newt Gingrich, who played a big role scuttling Hillarycare, also agrees with the “health care will be Obama’s Waterloo” prayer. Listen to Gingrich here.
* Ed Rendell wants Joe Sestak to ditch his challenge to Arlen Specter, even though polls show that Dems from Rendell’s state (a.k.a. his constituents) want a primary choice.
* Sestak unleashes a statement hitting back hard at Specter’s assaults on him for missing votes:
Pennsylvanians would have been better off if Arlen Specter had missed a lot more votes over the past eight years instead of voting for George Bush’s failed economic policies [and] an ill-conceived war in Iraq.
Hmm, I bet Rendell won’t like that very much.
* Spencer Ackerman and Josh Orton explain the meaning of Russ Feingold’s throwing down of the gauntlet on the CIA.
* For those of you (us) who sometimes find the health care debate bewildering, Josh Marshall boils down the key questions at the heart of the current political warfare.
* Unless I’m missing something, TPM’s Brian Beutler is right to point out that Obama declared over the weekend that reform must have a public insurance option.
* And Rachel Weiner notes that Sarah Palin supporters are valiantly keeping up their assault on unfair media coverage … of her hair.
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It’s going to be a tough primary for Specter if that’s the best he can do. His Senate votes are quite damning.
Would my barber go to bat for me in some trying time? I think it unlikely and am content.
Well someone in the media evidently made up a story about her hair and it got repeated and repeated.
re: sestak/specter – go Sestak. I will never, ever vote for specter. He’s done, everyone seems to know it except the party bosses.
re: healthcare – yea right, Bush tried to get started fixing social security – that bombed, this is the same thing…. one big bomb. We spent the money on the stimulus, tarp and all the bailouts.. oh and the omnibus… soon cap & trade. There’s none left. We’re broke. End of story.
I heard on the radio today that Pres Obama said he would veto any bill that included taxing health care benefits. Looks like he is starting to draw those lines in the sand as we get closer to the endgame. I figured that was how he would play it and I wouldn’t be surprised, skeptics aside, that he does get them to pass the Senate Finance bill before they leave for August break. This guy is just better than everybody else on the chess board right now. It is what it is.
re Obama at Waterloo (will we see a poster?) John Bolton catches a whiff of the future too…
“Beck’s guest John Bolton suggested now is the time to “stand up” to Obama because if he loses on health care, he’ll “begin to lose on other issues.” (from Think Progress)
I confess, I don’t much like these fellows. “What do we have to do” (they ask themselves) in order to regain/increase dominance and thereby get back to all that good killing of enemies, foreign and domestic”
Ten bucks says Palin is up in Alaska right now trying to figure out the connection between Obama and a 35 year old ABBA song.
Just a few days ago I read another almost perfect two-word phrase for our dear Sarah: Clueless Flake. It so perfect. Gotta add it to my collection of Airhead Bimbo and Half-Baked Alaska.
Republicans need to stop fantasizing about Obama’s Waterloo and try to figure out what was theirs, instead of continuing to do the same things that brought them to their present dismal approval ratings.