Will Obamacare Hurt Jobs? It's Already Happening, Poll Finds

"I can't say that the fears appear overstated, because the potential for big problems seems rather large," Friedman said about law's implementation.

"We don't know until 2014 and beyond what the impact of the ACA will be on businesses," he said. "There is tremendous fear that the premiums will be much higher, for small businesses especially. At this point we can't look a client straight in the eye and say, 'Don't worry about it. Everything will be fine.' "

(Read More: A Reason for Conservatives to Love Obamacare)

In addition to restricting hiring or cutting jobs, small companies are considering other ways to mitigate the expected financial fallout. Twenty-four percent are weighing whether to drop insurance coverage, while 18 percent have "reduced the hours of employees to part-time" in anticipation of the ACA's effects, the poll found.

Gallup Chief Economic Dennis Jacobe said small business owners' answers in the poll "is consistent with owners' tendency to be more Republican than Democratic, higher-income, more against big government, more conservative and less optimistic than Americans overall."

One group that favors Obamacare for small businesses said the findings reflect misconceptions about its true effects as well as the need for continued outreach by reform advocates to the small business community.

"We need to do more educating about the law," said Rhett Buttle, vice president for external affairs for the Small Business Majority, an advocacy group that has run informational meetings for owners about Obamacare.

"We think small business owners stand to benefit under the ACA," Buttle said. "We think small business owners, as they learn more [about the ACA] ... will save money in the long run."

—By CNBC's Dan Mangan. Follow him on Twitter @danpostman.

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As Even Dems Fret, NYT Finds GOP 'Misinformation' to Blame for Public Unease With Obama-Care

The New York Times has long excused the continuing unpopularity of Obamacare by arguing that people just don't understand it or that it's been unfairly caricatured by political opponents. The latest entry was John Harwood's "Political Memo" Tuesday, "The Next Big Challenge for Obama's Health Care Law: Carrying It Out." The text box fretted: "Misinformation and complex imperatives could cause trouble."

This month, a political organization aligned with House Republicans sent an e-mail to reporters attacking President Obama’s health care law.

“Young adults on parents’ plan pay more,” said the organization, the YG Network, citing a new employee benefits study. The e-mail’s subject line read “So Much for Popularity.”

Actually, the study did not show those young adults were paying more. It showed insurance companies were, because they had begun providing health coverage to those young adults, as called for under the law.

The missive, inaccurate though it was, illustrates the immense challenge facing the Obama administration as it puts in place the most significant parts of the 2010 law. Few government initiatives reach so many corners of the American economy and society -- and have as much potential to generate trouble for the party in the White House.

Harwood kept downplaying Obama-care related woes, even though Obama supporter and journalist Joe Klein found plenty to complain about in his April 2 column "Obamacare Incompetence," including those vaunted health-care exchanges: "...the key incentive for small businesses to support Obamacare was that they would be able to shop for the best deals in health care superstores -- called exchanges. The Administration has had three years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so."

Harwood even dismissed a Politico news report faulting Obama-care, while admitting to "modest potential headaches" for the economy. No mention of Obama-care architect and retiring Sen. Max Baucus calling the legislation's implementation a "train-wreck."

A new example popped up last week, to the delight of Republican opponents of the law. An article by Politico reported “high-level confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides” from the health law.

In fact, lawmakers said, the talks the article referred to concerned preserving the same kind of employer-subsidized health coverage for Congressional employees that workers at private companies can receive under the law. Yet the article sent White House aides and other Democrats scrambling to avoid the appearance of special treatment.

The law poses some modest potential headaches for the overall economy.

It requires, for example, that businesses with 50 or more full-time workers either offer insurance coverage or pay a penalty. Mr. Goolsbee said he would be watching whether companies around that threshold either defer hiring or shift some full-time workers to part-time jobs.

But the number of such companies is small. A vast majority of American workers are employed by larger companies that already offer coverage.

Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times. Click here to follow Clay Waters on Twitter.

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NYPD Spying On Muslims Bred Political And Religious Suppression, Report Finds

A sign in the Muslim Student Association room at Hunter College. The sign points to a news report on NYPD spying.

Systematic and widespread monitoring of Muslims’ everyday life by undercover informants, brought to light by an Associated Press investigative series last year, has had a severe chilling effect on speech, religious activity and community life, according to a new report by several civil rights organizations. Muslims fear speaking out even about the New York Police Department surveillance itself, and even youths described the fear of being arrested as “very real,” deterring them from activity that ranges from community involvement and speaking in class, to posting expressive messages on Facebook. “[W]hen your speech is limited, you can’t really do much: you can’t write on the internet, you can’t talk on the phone because they’re tapped, you can’t speak in public,” said one 22-year-old Sunday School teacher.

In interviews with 57 students, business owners, community leaders and educators, many recount having been asked to spy on their peers. One student recalled having been called into the principal’s office at age 16 and asked by the NYPD about her online activity. Several individuals described being questioned as suspects, and then later offered bribes to serve as informants when police realized they were not suspicious – told in moments of financial weakness that the police could “give them their freedom” by paying them for spying or providing them with a place to live. “These incidents – not infrequent in certain communities – have led many to realize that others, possibly their own peers, may not be as able to resist the pressures of working as informants,” the report said. This has bred mistrust both within the Muslim community and of law enforcement officers, prompting individuals and even businesses to accuse one another of being informants.

One of the most widespread and alarming elements of this NYPD surveillance was the recruitment of young people to infiltrate college groups. AP reports revealed that informants even accompanied students on a whitewater rafting trip, leading to fear that informants could be anyone and infiltrate anywhere. The report explains the impact on college campuses:

For college students, typically aged between 17 and 22, the prospect of dealing with surveillance by a police department, infiltration of events and extracurricular activities by informants, and the potentially devastating academic, professional, and personal repercussions can be overwhelming. … We found that the NYPD’s surveillance of students chilled First Amendment activity in what is perhaps the single most important formative and expressive space for any American youth: the college campus. […]

[W]ith a general understanding that dealing with “politics” is controversial, Muslim students find themselves steering away from those majors, classes, or extracurricular activities. Two students, both active members of their MSAs, reported switching their majors from political science to more conventional majors after becoming concerned about law enforcement scrutiny of “political” young Muslim males. […]

The isolationism that comes with being a member of a “spied on” community means that Muslim students are getting a fundamentally different, and less rewarding college experience compared to their non-Muslim peers.

As the report explains, these impacts suggest both First Amendment (free speech and religious suppression) and Fourteenth Amendment (discriminatory practices) implications, in a program that that may have broken the law and yielded no leads or cases.

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Poll Finds 15-Point Drop In Dem Support For Health Law

Democratic support for President Obama's healthcare law has dropped 15 points since November, contributing to a rise in negative attitudes toward the reform, according to a new poll.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act currently outnumber supporters (42 percent to 36), according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's latest tracking survey. Public opinion has switched back and forth since the law passed in 2010, and in November, support for the law was 4 percent higher than opposition (43 percent to 39). 

Kaiser attributed the marked slide in support among Democrats to a "post-presidential election fade." In November, 72 percent of that group expressed support for the law, compared with 57 percent who feel favorably toward it now.

Unaffiliated voters saw a similar but less dramatic decline in support, with 32 percent approving of the healthcare law compared with 37 percent in November.

"It's difficult to say whether this downward drop will last," Kaiser analysts wrote of the decline in overall support for the law. "Support seems to have shifted to the no-opinion category, up to nearly a quarter, a new high in Kaiser polling."

Obama's win in November cements the future of the Affordable Care Act. Implementation has begun in earnest in anticipation of 2014, when several major provisions will take effect.

Wednesday's poll was Kaiser's first effort since November to survey opinions on healthcare reform.

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Latest Polling Finds Strong Support For Clean Energy And Stricter Carbon Pollution Standards

Evidence of a striking shift in public opinion has begun to crystalize over the last few months: Poll after poll is finding staunch majorities of Americans view global warming as a “serious problem” and that human activity is a major driving cause.

In defiance of received Beltway wisdom, voters even told a recent Yale poll that a candidate’s views on global warming will affect their vote, and that the issue should be a top priority for the President and the Congress. Majorities have even stated that when it comes to deficit reduction, they prefer a tax on carbon emissions to cuts in education, Social Security, Medicare, or environmental protection.

Yesterday, Pew Research released new poll research that re-confirms the trend. When asked to choose between developing “alternative sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen” and expanding “exploration and production of oil, coal and natural” gas as their preferred priority for addressing America’s energy needs, 54 percent of Americans went with alternative energy. Only 34 percent chose continued prioritization of fossil fuels. That’s a drop from the 63 percent high in 2011, but an uptick over the 52 percent response last year.

Furthermore, Independents and Democrats were largely in concert, preferring alternative energy sources by 64 and 59 percent, respectively. Only 33 percent of Republicans went with solar and wind, in contrast to the 54 percent who preferred expanded fossil fuel use. But the distance between the two positions within the Republican group was smaller than the distance in the other two collections of voters.

And that wasn’t all. 62 percent of overall voters favored “setting stricter emission limits on power plants to address climate change,” with Democrats once again taking that position by a wide margin of 72 percent, and Independents coming in at a lower-but-still-impressive 64 percent. Republicans opposed the stricter standards by a 48 percent majority, but were again much more evenly split — the minority of GOP voters who favored the emissions limits close at the majority’s heels with 42 percent.

The age divide also stood out: Voters 18 to 29 supported alternative energy by a whopping 71 percent, and it wasn’t until voters crossed the age 65 that majorities flipped in favor of coal, oil and natural gas expansion.

And if the recent behavior and pronouncements of top lawmakers are any indication, this shift in the national mood is being felt. Newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry, who will shortly decide the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, declared in his first big speech since his confirmation that, “We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.” President Obama came out swinging on the issue of climate change in both his Second Inaugural address and the State of the Union speech calling for new renewable electricity and energy efficiency targets, and warming that “if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [from climate change] I will.”

The latest signs from the White House are that Obama may very well use his executive authority to limit the carbon existing power plants may emit, on top of the regulations the Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing for new power plants.

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NRA Endorsement Actually A Curse For Candidates, Poll Finds

Endorsements from the National Rifle Association might be doing political candidates more harm than good, according to a new poll from Public Policy Polling.

In a national survey, 39 percent of voters said that they are less likely to vote for a politician whose candidacy has garnered NRA backing. Only 26 percent believe they’re more likely to support such a candidate.

But more importantly, the number of independent voters — those who are really up for grabs in any election — are far less likely to see the NRA nod as a good thing: 41 percent say they’re inclined not to support a candidate who’s backed by the NRA.

This information serves to bust the myth that the NRA is an all-powerful lobbying group that dictates political outcomes. While the organization may enjoy wide support among those politicians whose campaigns it bankrolls, soon there may be few of such politicians left; in 2012, only .81 percent of the group’s spending went to politicians who won. And if the NRA is having a negative influence on swing voters as well, then it really has no sway on political elections overall.

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Clicking Online Ads More Likely To Deliver Malware Than Surfing Porn Sites, Report Finds

Your online habits may be less dangerous than you think if they involve the less savory aspects of the web: According to Cisco’s annual 2013 Security Report internet users are 182 times more likely to get malware from clicking on online ads than visiting a porn site. It turns out, the site on the gray or black market edges of the web most of us traditionally think of as dangerous aren’t the biggest threats to your online security, instead:

“The dangers […] are often hidden in plain sight through exploit-laden online ads that are distributed to legitimate websites, or hackers targeting the user community on the common sites they use most.”

Those common sites include online shopping and search engines, which were 21 and 27 times more likely respectively to deliver malicious content than counterfeit software sites according to Cisco. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports of the 81% of American adults who use the internet some 91 percent report using search engines to find information and 71 percent buy products online.

Of course, many online users (around 10 percent according to one 2012 study) are already using ad-blocking software to avoid being served possibly malicious ads. And the proportion of online resources and time devoted to racy material is up for debate, with just 4 percent of the 1 million most popular of sites in 2010 revolving around sex and 13 percent of searches being for erotic content.

Beyond the eye-catching numbers about the relative safety of surfing for porn, the Cisco report identifies a number of other emerging threats — key among them the rise of Android malware exploits and the possible info-security minefield represented by the internet of things.

Android malware grew much faster than any other form of web delivered malware, with a staggering 2,577 percent increase in malware encounters over 2012. Although only .5 percent of web malware encounters in 2012 were on mobile devices, 95 percent of them were on Android devices — not great news considering Android now controls a majority of the smartphone market.

When it comes to the ever expanding internet of things, much of Cisco’s commentary was speculative – but the core argument rings true: With great connection, comes great responsibility. And there will be great connection:

“Considering that less than 1 percent of things in the physical world are connected today, there remains vast potential to “connect the unconnected.” It is projected that with an Internet that already has an estimated 50 billion “things” connected to it, the number of connections will increase to 13,311,666,640,184,600 by the year 2020.”

Here’s hoping they all don’t serve malware-laced ads, or it could mean trouble.

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Koch-Funded Study Finds 2.5°F Warming Of Land Since 1750 Is Manmade, ‘Solar Forcing Does Not Appear To Contribute’

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) has finally published its findings on the cause of recent global warming. This Koch-funded reanalysis of millions of temperature observations from around the world, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” concludes:

… solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic [human-made] proxy.

The decadal land surface temperature from BEST average (black line), “compared to a linear combination of volcanic sulfate emissions (responsible for the short dips) and the natural logarithm of CO2 (responsible for the gradual rise) shown in red. Inclusion of a proxy for solar activity did not significantly improve the fit. The grey area is the 95% confidence interval.”

You may recall that back in July, Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, published a NY Times op-ed, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” which concluded

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

The finding itself is “dog bites man” (see It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950? Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was).

What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

Muller further explained:

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

The Koch-finded study also finds, “the rate of warming we observe is broadly consistent with the IPCC estimates of 2-4.5°C warming (for land plus oceans) at doubled CO2.” A summary of BEST’s findings are on their website.

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NASA-Led Study Finds Warming-Driven Megadroughts Jeopardizing Amazon Forest

An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.

At left, the extent of the 2005 megadrought in the western Amazon rainforests during the summer months of June, July and August as measured by NASA satellites. The most impacted areas are shown in shades of red and yellow. The circled area in the right panel shows the extent of the forests that experienced slow recovery from the 2005 drought, with areas in red and yellow shades experiencing the slowest recovery. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

A NASA JPL news release

An international research team led by Sassan Saatchi of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzed more than a decade of satellite microwave radar data collected between 2000 and 2009 over Amazonia. The observations included measurements of rainfall from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and measurements of the moisture content and structure of the forest canopy (top layer) from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA’s QuikScat spacecraft.

The scientists found that during the summer of 2005, more than 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometers, or 70 million hectares) of pristine, old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an extensive, severe drought. This megadrought caused widespread changes to the forest canopy that were detectable by satellite. The changes suggest dieback of branches and tree falls, especially among the older, larger, more vulnerable canopy trees that blanket the forest.

While rainfall levels gradually recovered in subsequent years, the damage to the forest canopy persisted all the way to the next major drought, which began in 2010. About half the forest affected by the 2005 drought – an area the size of California – did not recover by the time QuikScat stopped gathering global data in November 2009 and before the start of a more extensive drought in 2010.

“The biggest surprise for us was that the effects appeared to persist for years after the 2005 drought,” said study co-author Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. “We had expected the forest canopy to bounce back after a year with a new flush of leaf growth, but the damage appeared to persist right up to the subsequent drought in 2010.”

Recent Amazonian droughts have drawn attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests to climate change. Satellite and ground data have shown an increase in wildfires during drought years and tree die-offs following severe droughts. Until now, there had been no satellite-based assessment of the multi-year impacts of these droughts across all of Amazonia. Large-scale droughts can lead to sustained releases of carbon dioxide from decaying wood, affecting ecosystems and Earth’s carbon cycle.

The researchers attribute the 2005 Amazonian drought to the long-term warming of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures. “In effect, the same climate phenomenon that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia,” Saatchi said. “An extreme climate event caused the drought, which subsequently damaged the Amazonian trees.”

Saatchi said such megadroughts can have long-lasting effects on rainforest ecosystems. “Our results suggest that if droughts continue at five- to 10-year intervals or increase in frequency due to climate change, large areas of the Amazon forest are likely to be exposed to persistent effects of droughts and corresponding slow forest recovery,” he said. “This may alter the structure and function of Amazonian rainforest ecosystems.”

The team found that the area affected by the 2005 drought was much larger than scientists had previously predicted. About 30 percent (656,370 square miles, or 1.7 million square kilometers) of the Amazon basin’s total current forest area was affected, with more than five percent of the forest experiencing severe drought conditions. The 2010 drought affected nearly half of the entire Amazon forest, with nearly a fifth of it experiencing severe drought. More than 231,660 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of the area affected by the 2005 drought were also affected by the 2010 drought. This “double whammy” by successive droughts suggests a potentially long-lasting and widespread effect on forests in southern and western Amazonia.

The drought rate in Amazonia during the past decade is unprecedented over the past century. In addition to the two major droughts in 2005 and 2010, the area has experienced several localized mini-droughts in recent years. Observations from ground stations show that rainfall over the southern Amazon rainforest declined by almost 3.2 percent per year in the period from 1970 to 1998. Climate analyses for the period from 1995 to 2005 show a steady decline in water availability for plants in the region. Together, these data suggest a decade of moderate water stress led up to the 2005 drought, helping trigger the large-scale forest damage seen following the 2005 drought.

Saatchi said the new study sheds new light on a major controversy that existed about how the Amazon forest responded following the 2005 megadrought. Previous studies using conventional optical satellite data produced contradictory results, likely due to the difficulty of correcting the optical data for interference by clouds and other atmospheric conditions.

In contrast, QuikScat’s scatterometer radar was able to see through the clouds and penetrate into the top few meters of vegetation, providing daily measurements of the forest canopy structure and estimates of how much water the forest contains. Areas of drought-damaged forest produced a lower radar signal than the signals collected over healthy forest areas, indicating either that the forest canopy is drier or it is less “rough” due to damage to or the death of canopy trees.

Results of the study were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other participating institutions included UCLA; University of Oxford, United Kingdom; University of Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom; National Institute for Space Research, Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Boston University, Mass.; and NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

– A NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory news release

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Clinton finds warm reception for Organizing for Action comments

Former President Bill Clinton spoke to President Obama's national finance committee and other Democratic officials Saturday afternoon at the Newseum to discuss the newly launched Organizing for Action initiative, sources tell The Hill.

Organizing for Action is targeted at reaching out to past supporters of Obama's campaign and is the restructured version of the Obama for America organization. 

The former president talked about having courage to stand by Democratic leaders when dealing with hot-button issues this year, specifically mentioning the upcoming battle in Congress over gun-control legislation and comprehensive immigration reform. Clinton was received warmly by the crowd, which gave him a standing ovation following his comments. 

Clinton played a major role in helping Obama get reelected in November, despite the two having an tense relationship from the 2008 election. The former president gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention about Obama's track record during his first term and even traveled to key swing states to campaign for him.

Clinton was joined by former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, according to sources in the room, which had an overflowing crowd. In a recent email to supporters, Messina said the group would host discussions aimed at strategizing how to use the campaign's infrastructure and voter database to support the president in his second term.

"Issues like immigration, climate change, and gun violence will be debated over these next four years, and President Obama is ready to take them on — but he needs us by his side," Messina wrote in the email. "Our goal is to help him get things done, but also to help change how things get done in Washington in the first place."

First lady Michelle Obama launched the restructured organization in a video posted on Friday. The group is expected to be registered as a 501(c)4 organization, meaning it's barred by federal law from having politics as its main purpose. 

“The relationships you’ve made, the tools you’ve built and the lessons you’ve learned have already begun to change our politics. And in the coming years, they can change our country. And that’s the mission of Organizing for Action,” the first lady said in the video.

"In terms of the specifics of what this organization will look like, a lot of that will be up to you. It will be determined by your energy and ideas and feedback," she added. "Because after all, this is your movement."

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Congress less popular than colonoscopies, root canals, poll finds

A new poll released Tuesday finds the national favorability of Congress has again slipped into single digits, with American's elected officials now polling lower than painful medical procedures and a certain Canadian rock band.

The survey, from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, showed Congress with a mere 9 percent favorability rating. By contrast, 85 percent of voters see legislators in a negative way.

Congress didn't fare much better when compared against a wide swath of generally disliked staples of modern life. Asked for their preference between Congress and lice, the microscopic insects prevail 67-19 percent. Ditto colonoscopies (58-31 percent), root canals (65-32 percent), and being stuck in traffic (56-34 percent).

Other widely disliked professions also rank well above being a member of Congress. Used car salesmen are favored 57-32 percent over members, while NFL replacement referees earn a 56-29 percent favorability and carnival workers win 39-31 percent. Canadian rock band Nickleback — the punchline of many a joke — also beat out Congress, earning a 39-32 percent advantage. In fact, the list of subjects polling better than Congress was nearly inexhaustible: Genghis Khan (41-37 percent), Donald Trump (44-42 percent) and cockroaches (45-43 percent) all beat out the House and Senate.

There were a rare few items that Congress managed to exceed in the poll, however. Tabloid stars like Lindsay Lohan (41-45 percent) and the Kardashians (36-49 percent) were both seen less favorably than Congress. K Street also got no love in the survey: 48 percent said they preferred Congress to the people that worked to influence them, while just three in 10 preferred lobbyists.

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, himself once a member of the Senate, fared worse than his colleagues (29-45 percent), as did former Cuban leader Fidel Castro (32-54 percent) and North Korea (26-61 percent). Congress was also favored over more than half of respondents over diseases like gonorrhea and ebola, and eked out polling wins over playground bullies, telemarketers and meth labs.

PPP surveyed 830 voters from Jan. 3 to Jan. 6 via automated telephone interviews. The margin of error was 3.4 percentage points.

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Mitt Romney Finds A Problem-Solver

“What I’m hearing from folks around the country is: ‘Game on, we’re in, we will do whatever is necessary to elect Mitt Romney now because Obama has shown where he really stands,’” Brown said.

(HT: Politico.com)

A lot of Social Conservatives looked askance at Mitt Romney’s relatively easy victory in this year’s GOP Primary race. I endorsed Rick Santorumin the GOP Primary myself. Then conceded to reality and decided to suck it up. Thus, I refrain from whinging over various primary season butt-hurts and support my party’s inevitable nominee.

Then yesterday happened – now it’s time to commit even for the Mitt! At least that’s what some recent polling suggests is now happening in the GOP.

What’s funny is that Mitt really didn’t have to do much to earn this burst of enthusiasm. He just had to stand by his record as a moderately Republican Governor of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This made him look like an absolute Rock of Gibraltar athwart Barack Obama’s shameless, gutless and toothless pander to the homosexual community concerning same sex marriage. This in advance of a Big Hollywood fundraiser. Way to sell yourself and not in a good way.

So much for President Gutsy Call. Roger Stone blogs on behalf of Libertarian Presidential Candidate and Turncoat Former Republican, Gary Johnson. However, he describes Barack Obama’s gutlessness to a tee.

Once Gay Americans are through celebrating President Barack Obama’s “personal” support of Gay marriage equality, they will learn that Obama’s “evolution” changes nothing…This comes on the heels of an cynical Obama campaign pirouette where Team Obama trotted out first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then Vice President “Crazy” Joe Biden to say they support gay marriage and imply that the President would too–after the election. Now, incredibly, Obama says Gay marriage is a state issue.

This benefits Mitt Romney who displayed a quiet, yet firm stick-to-itiveness on the issue of same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney fought homosexual marriage all the way to the State Supreme Court as a governor and has decided not to veer from that stance on the issue.

“My view is that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “That’s the position I’ve had for some time, and I don’t intend to make any adjustments at this point. … Or ever, by the way.”

Mitt Romney did nothing more than remain Mitt Romney. Barack Obama herded disaffected social conservatives in Mr. Romney’s direction like the Tail-End Charlie on a cattle drive. Then, Mr. Obama ran away from his own panderation to his base after pocketing the checks and hob-knobbing with George Clooney. Thus, this becomes more than just a debate on same-sex marriage. It becomes a discussion of who these two men are and how each is faring with their respective party base.

Barack Obama is the unprincipled flip-flop artist that everyone accuses Mitt Romney of being. Mitt Romney hasn’t had to move an inch. Barack Obama sold out to his base and quite literally sang for his supper in the Palatial Clooney Mansion, amongst the pampered 1%. The GOP Base may not totally agree with Mitt Romney, but at least they no longer have to ask themselves how he is different than Barack Obama. Barack Obama’s pathetic moral cowardice has offered Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign a contribution-in-kind.

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The Left No Longer Finds Dissent Patriotic

Workforce Fairness is releasing a series of videos chronicling left-wing intimidation, including showing up at people’s houses to harass them and their families. We’re pleased to debut the first of the videos here at RedState. The videos document a growing trend in American civic discourse — the use of intimidation against private citizens to punish dissent.

Listen to Media Matters For America and other outlets on the left and they claim they are outraged at Rush Limbaugh for using the word “slut.”

They’re OK with it when the left does it. Routinely, conservative activists are targeted for harassment, subject to degrading comments, etc. from the left and they are okay with that. Bill Maher gets invited to keynote Democratic dinners.

Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, in a Lenten Letter to his pastoral flock, said that evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant and then tries to silence good. The secular left, having preached tolerance for years, is proving the Archbishop true with their new found intolerance for opposing views. Witness opponents to Proposition 8 in California actively targeting for harassment supporters of Proposition 8. Witness union goons showing up on the doorsteps of private citizens to scare them into submission. Witness Media Matters For America targeting American supporters of Israel and attacking them as “Israel Firsters,” questioning their loyalty to the United States.

The left is trying to shut down the opposition. When they were out of power, dissent was patriotic. Now that they are in power, they want to use both the state and intimidation in the public square to shut down opposing views. It goes beyond boycotts to financially intimidate those who disagree with them. Now, the left is showing up at the private homes of American citizens they disagree with to intimidate them, threaten them, harass them, and make them pay for daring to have a different view.

The only time anyone wants to shut down opposing views is when the opposing views are winning. And that is the left’s problem. Rush Limbaugh, the free market, the right to work states, etc. are all winning. And it is not just that the right is winning, the left is losing.

David Brock of Media Matters, for example, took the desperate act of spending $850,000.00 to buy his ex-boyfriend’s silence about Media Matters. He only spent $100,000.00 to try to silence Rush Limbaugh, by comparison. Media Matters has been subjected to two months of revelations that raise questions about their tax exempt status and coordination with the Democratic Party.

But it is not just Media Matters. It is unions too.

Like Media Matters, the unions are threatening and bullying businesses. They are threatening private citizens. Threatening the livelihood of businesses and individuals, unions, Media Matters, and the left are intending to shut down the opposition through fear of a loss of livelihood.

What is most appalling to me, however, is how the right has failed to counter this bullying with an aggressive adverttising campaign showing what is happening — showing the gay rights protestors in California targeting donors to the Proposition 8 campaign, showing Media Matters targeting businesses that support free speech, showing unions targeting small businesses that won’t give in to union demands, showing union thugs showing up at the private residences of individuals to silence and intimidate them, etc.

That may be changing. Workforce Fairness is releasing a series of videos chronicling left-wing intimidation, including showing up at people’s houses to harass them and their families. We’re pleased to debut the first of the videos here at RedState.

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