It says HERE that President Obama gave House Majority Leader Eric Cantor a bit of what-for in a closed-door meeting Wednesday at the White House.
An excerpt:
“Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence,” said an official in the meeting. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.”
There’s more on the matter HERE:
Democratic sources dispute Cantor’s version of Obama’s walk out, but all sides agree that the two had a blow up. The sources described Obama as “impassioned” but said he didn’t exactly storm out of the room.
“Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it,” a Democratic aide said. “Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting….”
For other slants on the meeting, see HERE and HERE.
Meanwhile, a NEW POLL shows that Americans trust Obama more than congressional Republicans to handle the economy and to deal with the nation’s debt :
American voters disapprove 56 – 38 percent of the way President Barack Obama is handling the economy, but by 45 – 38 percent they trust the president more than congressional Republicans to handle the economy, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
The country is in a recession, 71 percent of American voters say, but by 54 – 27 percent they blame former President George W. Bush more than President Obama.
The president gets a 47 – 46 percent job approval rating, unchanged from the June 9 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University. That tops a 64 – 28 percent disapproval for Democrats in Congress and a 65 – 26 percent disapproval for Republicans. Obama outscores congressional Republicans on several points in the deficit reduction battle.
Related posts:
- Report: Obama offered to raise Medicare eligibility age by two years as part of debt deal
- Fox poll: Obama would lose in 2012 to no-name candidate, but he’d trounce Romney, Palin, Gingrich or any teabagger
- Exit polls say Obama not a factor in Virginia, New Jersey elections
- Wingnuts peddle false report that Obama had U.S. flag removed from Ground Zero
- NYT-CBS poll has fairly good news for Obama
I am suspicious of many polls.
I remember watching the Flip Wilson show many years ago at my grandmother’s house. One time they sent a television camera out to people on the street and asked them whether the U.S. should get its troops out of Provolone. An astounding number said yes, some of them quite angry and agitated. Others said absolutely not, keep all those troops there where they can do some good.
Provolone is a cheese.
Dan F: Polls are only as good as the methods used in conducting them.
History shows that polls conducted by unbiased scientific methods usually are pretty accurate. That’s why the major media and politicians of both parties annually spend many millions of dollars to commission polls.
But, yes, there are still lots of bad polls out there — polls that violate the most fundamental of scientific rules. There also are lots of misreadings of otherwise accurate polls.
I have stated on numerous occasions here that I have almost complete faith in the polls commissioned by Fox News, even though I don’t trust that network’s reporting of the news. Fox hires a reputable, independent firm to conduct its polls, and they follow time-tested scientific methods.
However, when the results of the polls commissioned by Fox News don’t fit the network’s well-known political bias, the reporting of them is often skewed.
Read this:
http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2011/05/19/fox-news-poll-obama-approval-rating-jumps-eight-points-in-one-month-to-two-year-high/
And this:
http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2011/04/07/fox-news-falsifies-results-of-poll-on-federal-budget-controversy/
And this:
http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2011/03/18/is-fox-news-trying-to-obscure-its-own-poll-on-obamas-approval-rating/
Good for the President! I find upbraiding a definitive trait of strong leadership. I find that if you can’t have a conversation or a civil negotiating, yelling and storming out of the room works every time.
On a related note, stomping your foot and pulling on your hair are additional succesful tactics that all good leaders and negotiators should master.
doc: Once again, you’re showing your political naivete.
And I’m sure you feel sorry for poor Eric Cantor, whose widdle feelings were hurt when the big bad man spoke sternly to him.
Grow up, doc. As the old saying goes, politics ain’t beanbag.
doc: By the way, I would take with a grain of salt the claims that Obama “stormed out of the room.”
Traditional decorum holds that a meeting with the president in the White House is over when the president decides it’s over — and not until.
While the exchanges between Obama and Cantor were said to be tense and perhaps testy, some witnesses say Obama simply signaled an end to the discussion and left. It wasn’t as if he ran from the room in a rage and slammed the door as he left.
I’m guessing that the last time something like that happened in the White House was at the conclusion of a discussion between Bill and Hillary Clinton during the height of the Lewinsky scandal.
How quickly you forget about sarcasm my friend.
My only point is that your headline makes the President seem like some sort of hero for his “upbraiding” of Cantor. He is playing the same hard ball politics as the Republicans. It appears that the whole thing has turned into a game of chicken and finger pointing.
Here is an editorial from yesterday’s WSJ that agrees with a point you were trying to make to me previously about the brilliance of Obama’s strategery.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303678704576442231815463502.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Republicans who say they can use the debt limit to force Democrats to agree to a balanced budget amendment are dreaming. Such an amendment won’t get the two-thirds vote to pass the Senate, but it would give every Democrat running for re-election next year a chance to vote for it and claim to be a fiscal conservative.
We agree with those who say that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner can cut other federal spending before he allows a technical default on U.S. debt. No doubt that is what he will do. We’d even support a showdown over technical default if we thought it might yield some major government reforms. But Mr. Obama clearly has no such intention.
Instead he and Mr. Geithner will gradually shut down government services, the more painful the better. The polls that now find that voters oppose a debt-limit increase will turn on a dime when Americans start learning that they won’t get Social Security checks. Republicans will then run like they’re fleeing the Pamplona bulls, and chaotic retreats are the ugliest kind. By then they might end up having to vote for a debt-limit increase and a tax increase.
The tea party/talk-radio expectations for what Republicans can accomplish over the debt-limit showdown have always been unrealistic. As former Senator Phil Gramm once told us, never take a hostage you’re not prepared to shoot. Republicans aren’t prepared to stop a debt-limit increase because the political costs are unbearable. Republicans might have played this game better, but the truth is that Mr. Obama has more cards to play.
Read this article and pray that Obama doesn’t “win” this issue. If he does, the country and the world will lose.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576443953024891120.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Mike Carroll: I don’t see anything in that piece by Daniel Henninger about what might happen if Obama does, in fact, “win” the battle over the debt ceiling. I see allusions to the so-called consequences of higher taxes on the rich, but nothing about the spending cuts that would accompany those higher taxes in a deal between Obama and Republicans on the deficit.
I would prefer the US grow the economy and fix the spending problem that has led us to this crisis.
Poor doc still can’t get it through his head that tax cuts for the rich have contributed to the deficits. The very thought goes against his pluocratic grain.
And, of course, he’s still upset about what happened to his little buddy Eric Cantor.
and Pat still can’t get it through his head that tax cuts for the rich did not contribute to the deficit.
I believe liberals suffer from a disease that I have labelled EDD, Economic Deficit Disorder. Symptoms include ignoring the history of rising tax revenues when tax rates are cut, talking about the rich paying their “fair share” without defining what a fair share is, worshipping at the altar of Paul Krugman and an addiction to MSNBC.
Sadly, Obamacare will eviscerate “Big Pharma” and no cure would appear to be forthcoming for this sad affliction.
Revenue is related to GDP not the tax rate. Grow the economy and the revenue will follow. This is a fact that liberals are too simple minded to grasp.
Spending is related to spending period. Entitlement spending makes up the vast majority of said spending. This must be reformed if we are to avoid catastrophe. Do it now or be forced to do it later, it must be done eventually.
I once again point out that all of the necessary reforms will hurt me financially in multiple ways, so for you and your class warfare buddies, this should all make you very happy.
Mike Carroll: “Tax cuts for the rich did not contribute to the deficit”???
You really believe that?
Read this:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036.
Yeah I read it and The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (about as non-partisan as Paul Begala) makes the same mistake that all liberals who suffer from EDD make by assuming a static response to a change in tax rates.
One more time folks, change the incentives and you change behavior. Raise tax rates and the wealthy shuffle income, create more tax shelters and generally expose less income to taxation thus lowering tax revenue. Lower rates and the opposite occurs. Corporations do exactly the same.
Thats why when the Capital Gains tax rate was increased tax revenues went DOWN. Even Charlie Gibson of ABC figured that out to the embarassment of candidate Obama.