After fumbling oil spill, White House tries to control backlash

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The White House has quietly launched an effort to confront the political backlash along the Gulf Coast over its handling of the BP oil spill — giving special attention to Florida, the only state in the region President Barack Obama won in 2008 and one he will need again when he runs for reelection in 2012.

The White House dispatched political and communications aides to the Gulf Coast states on July 12, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving one each, sources familiar with the effort said. Some aides went to Louisiana, while Florida received four.

That battleground state will be a heavy lift. In interviews conducted along the coast, Florida Democrats accused the administration of largely ignoring their calls and letters and complained of a White House that’s out of touch.

Alex Sink, Florida’s chief financial officer and the state’s presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, even characterized Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the state as “a screw-up,” saying she was “embarrassed” by his speech.

“It was just so off target and out of touch with the reality of what’s going on over there,” Sink said in an interview at the Florida Democratic Party headquarters in Tallahassee.

It’s the type of criticism the White House wants to avoid. The administration aides in Florida function similarly to a campaign. They do rapid response and media coordination, and they report back to senior aides in the West Wing in nearly real time about what they’re hearing on the ground.

The effort came about after the White House grew concerned over political damage from not having a permanent presence in the Gulf Coast states. Obama’s top advisers summoned a small group of young former campaign staffers working in the administration to the White House for a meeting, said a source with knowledge of the meeting. No one mentioned 2012 specifically, but it was clear the administration’s approach to the oil spill had the potential to hurt the president’s reelection campaign and that the issue required more hands-on attention.

“Someone recognized that all we were doing was playing defense,” said an administration official. The aides were sent to the Gulf Coast five days after the meeting.

Gallup: 65% say throw Congress critters out

PRINCETON, NJ -- A record-low percentage of U.S. voters -- 28% -- say most members of Congress deserve to be re-elected. The previous low was 29% in October 1992.

"Notably, independents -- who could be swing voters in many districts -- are the least supportive of the three party groups when it comes to re-electing their own member."The trend for previous midterm elections reveals that the 28% re-elect figure puts the sitting majority party in a danger zone. In the two recent midterm elections in which the congressional balance of power changed (1994 and 2006), the percentage of voters saying most members deserved to be re-elected fell below 40%, as it does today. By contrast, in 1998 and 2002, when the existing Republican majority was maintained, 55% or better held this view.

Additionally, 65% of registered voters -- the highest in Gallup history, and by far the highest in any recent midterm year -- now say most members of Congress do not deserve re-election.

Rising star Paul Ryan states the case

Americans are preparing to fight another American Revolution, this time, a peaceful one with election ballots...but the "causes" of both are the same:

Should unchecked centralized government be allowed to grow and grow in power ... or should its powers be limited and returned to the people?

Should irresponsible leaders in a distant capital be encouraged to run up scandalous debts without limit that crush jobs and stall prosperity ... or should the reckless be turned out of office and a new government elected to live within its means?

Should America bid farewell to exceptional freedom and follow the retreat to European social welfare paternalism ... or should we make a new start, in the faith that boundless opportunities belong to the workers, the builders, the industrious, and the free?

We are at the beginning of an election campaign like you've never seen before!

Hey, Barack, here's a list of Dems you should hug

WASHINGTON -- During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother.

In remarks that could not have been more laudatory, Obama repeatedly characterized the veteran Democratic leader as a man "made of very strong stuff" who was making the right decisions for the state back in the nation's capital.

But as Reid faces an uphill path to win re-election to a fifth Senate term, Obama's enthusiastic endorsement does not appear to have improved the Senate majority leader's standing among constituents, according to a new poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Reid got no bounce from Obama's visit on Feb. 19, when the president spoke highly of him at Green Valley High School and to business leaders at CityCenter, polling indicates.

A larger percentage of voters surveyed (17 percent) said they would be less likely to vote for Reid following the president's visit than said they would be more likely to vote for him (7 percent). Seventy-five percent said Obama's visit would have no effect on how they vote.

Exposure of global warming hoax topples Aussie pol; next election may turn on the issue

So the great climate e-mail fiasco has drawn blood – that of an opposition leader, no less, on the other side of the world. Australian Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has been replaced by a climate sceptic, Tony Abbott, after ten of its most senior politicians resigned over its support for the Government’s plans for fighting global warming. They were, it seems, fired up by the hacked communications from the University of East Anglia (I really don’t want to call it Climategate, adding to the endless succession of ‘gates’ since the original one – and anyway Mark Steyn’s name, ‘warmergate’ is much wittier.)

As it happens I know Tony Abbott slightly, and once spent a very pleasant morning with him some years ago in his office in Manley, discussing green issues among other things. I even, at his request, gave him a line for a speech he was preparing. So it came as a bit of a surprise a little while ago when I heard that he had called the argument for climate change “absolute crap”. But, then it may have surprised him too, for this morning – in a quote to cherish – he said this “was not my most considered opinion”.

But this is not the end of it. The sceptics coup is likely to lead to a general election before long, fought on climate change. Global warming has been an election issue before – stronger action to combat it featured heavily in the new Japanese Goverment’s campaign which revolutionised the country’s politics, and indeed the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used the issue to help unseat John Howard, George W. Bush’s strongest anti-Kyoto ally. But this would be the first climate election per se.

If so Australia is an appropriate place to hold it. Gripped by a 13 year drought, it is thought to be the rich country most vulnerable to global warming. Its climate is already hot and dry. Agriculture, so badly hit by the drought, is central to the economy. And most people and industry are concentrated on coasts, vulnerable to the rising seas and fiercer storms expected to accompany a warming world. On the other side of the coin, it also emits more carbon per person than any other country on earth.