48% view Obama's views as extreme, whatever that means

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now regard President Obama’s political views as extreme. Forty-two percent (42%) place his views in the mainstream, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

By comparison, 51% see the views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as mainstream. Thirty-five percent (35%) think Clinton’s views are extreme. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.

Among five top contenders for the White House in 2012, only former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is viewed as more extreme than the president. Just 38% say Palin’s views are mainstream, while 55% regard them as extreme.

Mitt Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is considered mainstream by 45% and extreme by 33%. Twenty-two percent (22%), however, are not sure about his views.

Forty-four percent (44%) say the views of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another unsuccessful 2008 GOP hopeful, are in the mainstream. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think Huckabee is extreme, and another 18% are not sure.

It’s important to note that the questions did not define “mainstream” or “extreme.”

Zogby: Romney handily defeats Obama among independents

My take:

So, Mitt Romney is the front-runner, for the time being, among three unannounced but likely candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. He leads President Obama by 11 points among independents and trails Obama by only 2 points overall, according to a Zogby Poll released Thursday. Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee trail Obama by much bigger margins.

This is an exceptionally strong showing by Romney, whose overhaul of the Massachusetts health care system, while governor, became an embarrassing model for Obamacare. He has weathered that embarrassment.

From here, Romney's upside is terrific. Obama's anti-American policy regime, designed to weaken, and perhaps bankrupt, the country, has driven up the national deficits and debt and raised doubts throughout the world about this country's viability.

For Romney, this may induce a sense of deja vu. He earned his wealth by picking through the boneyards of corporate America, salvaging things of value from the debris. Later, as the Salt Lake City Olympics were careening toward debt-ridden disaster, he was called in to turn things around, and did.

Now, history may be calling again, except this time it is the nation itself that has been placed at risk by a corrupt and reckless Democrat Congress and a White House that uses thuggish Chicago tactics to enact legislative memorials to long-dead leftist icons.

"Medicine is the keystone of the socialist arch," said Vladimir Lenin, chief architect of Russian communism.

Obama appeared to take those words as his command, leading an absurd, exaggerated attack against the world's finest health care system.

Romney, on the other hand, undertook the Romneycare project for a practical reason. At the time, Massachusetts was taxing businesses to compensate for shortfalls in the health care system. Some businesses were leaving the state. The point of Romneycare was to preserve the state's tax base, while also extending health care to underserved citizens.

In any case, that's an old story and any resentments against Romney already are reflected in the polls.

Those polls show that, among independents, Obama is weak while Romney is strong.

The well-tailored Romney seems tailor-made for the task at hand.

Zogby: Romney surpasses Palin and Huckabee in head-to-head test against Obama, leads by 11 points among independents

Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney is a “major player” nipping at the heels of President Obama and stands as the GOP’s best shot to reclaim the Oval Office in 2012, a new national poll shows.

“In many ways, he’s arguably the establishment front-runner,” pollster John Zogby said of a new poll showing Romney trailing President Obama by just 2 percentage points. “He’s got name recognition, he’s been through it before, and he did credibly in 2008. He’s a major player in the race.”

The Zogby poll of 8,487 likely voters showed Obama edging Romney out 45 to 43 percent.

Romney’s potential GOP opponents, Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, both fared far worse against Obama. Palin trailed the president by 11 points while Huckabee was behind by 9 points, the poll found.

Romney has yet to say if he’s running again, but the wealthy venture capitalist has been traveling the country raising money for Republicans and handing out endorsements in state races.

“Gov. Romney’s focus is on helping Republicans win in 2010,” Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said. “We don’t want to get off track with speculation about future hypothetical races.”

The poll also found Romney leading the president among independents 47 to 36, which Zogby called “very significant.”

Romney was also stronger among GOP voters than Palin or Huckabee. Republicans favored Romney over Obama 81 percent to 6 percent while 73 percent favored Palin or Huckabee over the president.

“At least as of now, Romney does a better job bringing Republicans in and a significantly better job among independents,” Zogby said.

Romney leads in early race for campaign contributions

Mitt Romney’s political action committee blew away his potential rivals’, according to reports, in money raised during the latest fundraising period. Meanwhile, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s political groups combined raised nearly twice as much as Romney, though most was raised through a 527 group that doesn’t have the fundraising limits that the other PACs do.

Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC brought in $1.8 million during the April to June reporting period and has about $2.2 million cash on hand.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC raised $865,815.42, and has just more than a million cash on hand, according to reports.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC raised $724,000, with $940,000 cash on hand.

Former Alaska Gov. Mike Huckabee’s HuckPAC reportedly raised $258,000.

And Gingrich raised $3.5 million, the majority of which came from American Solutions, a 527 which by law cannot advocate the election or defeat of any candidate.

Obama leads all Republicans in 2012 matchup, but Huckabee and Romney are close and Paul runs strong with indendents

Barack Obama leads all of his potential Republican opponents in hypothetical 2012 match ups, and it's becoming increasingly clear from this monthly poll that there are two tiers of GOP candidates when it comes to electability.

Polling close to Obama are Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. The President leads Huckabee 46-44 and Romney 45-42. They both do a good job of consolidating the GOP vote and holding a solid advantage with independents.

Doing less well are Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Ron Paul. Obama has a 47-39 advantage over Gingrich, a 50-41 against Palin, and 46-36 edge matched against Paul.

One thing that's very interesting about these numbers is that Ron Paul is the most popular out of the whole group with independents. They see him favorably by a 35/25 margin. The only other White House hopeful on positive ground with them is Romney at a +2 spread and they're very negative on the rest: -5 for Huckabee, -16 for Gingrich and Palin, and -17 for Obama. All five of the possible GOP contenders lead Obama with independents, but Paul does so by the widest margin at 46-28.

Romney and Huckabee have crossover appeal, but Palin and Gingrich are better liked by Republicans

Our monthly look ahead to the 2012 Presidential race finds Barack Obama more or less tied with all four of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination. He trails Mike Huckabee 47-45 and Mitt Romney 45-44, ties Newt Gingrich at 45-45, and leads Sarah Palin 47-45. This is the weakest performance Obama's posted in these 13 monthly surveys and a pretty clear indication that passing health care has not done anything to enhance his political standing, at least in the short term.

It's not that any of the Republican candidates are particularly popular, or even that Obama's approval numbers have declined. But whereas in previous months a good number of the voters disapproving of his job performance weren't ready to commit to voting Republican in 2012 yet, now 85-89% of them do in each of these hypothetical contests. That suggests that even if Obama's overall unpopularity has not increased, the intensity of it has. For instance among voters who disapprove of Obama but also have an unfavorable opinion of Sarah Palin, she leads him by 22 points in a head to head contest. That wasn't necessarily the case in previous months.

Palin and Gingrich are the most popular among Republican voters...and the least popular overall. 71% of GOP folks have a favorable opinion of Palin but thanks to putrid numbers with Democrats and independents her overall favorability is 38% with 52% of voters having a negative opinion of her. For Gingrich 62% of Republicans see him positively but with similarly bad standing among voters outside the party his total favorability is 34% with 47% of voters expressing negative sentiments toward him.

Romney and Huckabee are less popular within their own parties than Palin and Gingrich but have better overall favorability numbers because they're less toxic to Democrats and independents. There is a real potential in the GOP race if all these folks run to put voters in a situation where they have to decide between who they like best and who they think has the best chance to defeat President Obama.

In test run, Huckabee beats Obama, surpasses Republican rivals among independent voters

Mike Huckabee has a 45-44 advantage over Obama, aided largely by a 44-38 lead with independents. There continues to be no evidence of any negative fallout for Huckabee after murders of police officers committed by an ex-Arkansas inmate whose sentence he had commuted. His 35/29 favorability breakdown is actually slightly better than it was in November before that incident.

Mitt Romney does the next best, trailing Obama 44-42. His favorability is 36/32, and he's the most popular Republican among independents (41/32). Romney actually matches Huckabee with GOP voters this month and gets over 50%, ending a trend in his numbers that had seemed to spell difficulty for snagging a Republican nomination.

Sarah Palin trails Obama 49-41 largely because she loses 14% of the Republican vote to him, making her the only one of the GOP candidates we tested who Obama could get double digit crossover support against. At the same time Palin continues to be the most well liked potential GOP candidate within her party- at 71% favorability. Her problem appears to be that the Republicans who don't care for her will go so far as to vote for Obama instead of her.

Huckabee closes within 1 point of Obama in test

With Barack Obama's approval rating hitting new lows in most polling it should come as no surprise that his leads over potential 2012 Republican opponents are as well. Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty all have their best performances relative to Obama in this month's poll and Mitt Romney matches his strongest standing yet.

Huckabee comes the closest, trailing Obama 46-45. It's interesting to note that Huckabee's share of the Democratic vote is up from 11% a month ago to now 16%, but his share of the Republican vote is down from 87% to 83%. There's a similar trend in his favorability numbers.

Although they're pretty much unchanged overall from 36/37 a month ago to 35/35 now, he's dropped from 65% of Republicans seeing him positively to 57% but has increased from 13% to 17% with Democrats. We'll want to see if this trend continues before making any definitive conclusions, but it appears there's some possibility the publicity about his commutation of Maurice Clemmons brought a side of Huckabee out in the national spotlight that made him more popular across party lines but less popular within his own.

Mitt Romney comes next closest to Obama, trailing 47-42, matching his five point deficit from a month ago. His biggest problem continues to be lagging popularity with Republicans- 51% of them view him favorably, well behind Huckabee and Sarah Palin. That's a trend that's existed in our polling for most of the year and could spell trouble when it comes to Romney's prospects of winning the nomination.

Palin has her top showing against Obama, trailing 50-44. That's quite an improvement from March when we first tested the Obama-Palin contest and found her trailing 55-35. What's interesting is that there's been almost no change in her favorability numbers over the course of the year. She was at 39/50 then and she's at 41/50 now. That's a pretty clear sign the tightening has had little to do with her and almost everything to do with Obama's declining popularity.