Republicans Step Up Attacks Against Reid

Top Republicans condemned Senator Harry Reid Sunday, accusing the Senate majority leader of fabricating an assertion that an unnamed Bain Capital investor had told him that Mitt Romney has not paid taxes over a 10-year period.

“I just cannot believe that the majority leader of the United States Senate would take the floor twice, make accusations that are absolutely unfounded, in my view, and quite frankly making things up to divert the campaign away from the real issues,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was even more direct in his criticism of Mr. Reid on ABC’s “This Week,” dismissing the speculation about Mr. Romney’s tax returns as “a made-up issue” and calling Mr. Reid a “dirty liar.”

“As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, I know you might want to go down that road — I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself,” Mr. Preibus said.

The back-and-forth this week over Mr. Romney’s unreleased tax returns spilled onto the Sunday talk shows after Mr. Reid told The Huffington Post he had learned of what he said was Mr. Romney’s failure to pay taxes from a caller to his office, an assertion he repeated on the Senate floor. But the senator has provided no evidence to support his claim, and Mr. Romney has released two years of tax data showing he paid taxes for the years of 2010 and 2011.

While campaigning in Mr. Reid’s home state of Nevada Friday, Mr. Romney said he had paid taxes every year, firing back, “Harry Reid really has to put up or shut up.”

Meanwhile, Democrats continued their attacks on Mr. Romney Sunday, with Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, questioning why Mr. Romney won’t release more of his tax returns.

“I don’t know who Harry Reid’s source is, but I do know that Mitt Romney could clear this up in 10 seconds by releasing the 23 years of tax returns that he gave to John McCain when he was being vetted for vice president. Or even 12 years of tax returns that his own father said were what was appropriate,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Romney could easily put the issue to rest with a trip to Kinko’s to make copies of his tax returns.

“I’ll send him the nickels,” he said.

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Delay on Violence Against Women Act

With Congress just days away from its August break, House Republicans have to decide which is more important: protecting victims of domestic violence or advancing the harsh antigay and anti-immigrant sentiments of some on their party’s far right. At the moment, harshness is winning.

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

At issue is reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, the landmark 1994 law central to the nation’s efforts against domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.

In May, 15 Senate Republicans joined with the chamber’s Democratic majority to approve a strong reauthorization bill. Instead of embracing the Senate’s good work, House Republicans passed their own regressive version, ignoring President Obama’s veto threat. The bill did not include new protections for gay, immigrant, American Indian and student victims contained in the Senate measure. It also rolled back protections for immigrant women, including for undocumented immigrants who report abuse and cooperate with law enforcement.

Negotiations on a final bill are in limbo. Complicating matters, there is a procedural glitch. The Senate bill imposes a fee to pay for special visas that go to immigrant victims of domestic abuse. This runs afoul of the rule that revenue-raising measures must begin in the House. Mr. Boehner’s leadership could break the logjam — but that, of course, would also require his Republican colleagues to drop their narrow-minded opposition to stronger protections for all victims of abuse.

Unless something changes, Republicans will bear responsibility for blocking renewal of a popular, lifesaving initiative. This seems an odd way to cultivate moderate voters, especially women, going into the fall campaign.

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Presidential Race Pits Government Against Business

An Obama campaign video shows the president’s national political director, Katherine Archuleta, tearfully crediting Mr. Obama with having saved her daughter’s life. She portrays the president as a hero of government whose health care law assures her daughter, a cancer survivor, insurance coverage forever.

A video by a political committee backing Mr. Romney follows a nearly identical tack: evocative music and a tearful description of Mr. Romney as “the man who helped save my daughter.” But the testimonial, from a former partner at Bain Capital, depicts Mr. Romney as a hero of business who once shut down his firm to aid search efforts until the partner’s missing teenager was found.

Those competing stories are rooted in more than the biographies of the Democratic incumbent, a former professor and community organizer, and his Republican challenger, a onetime financial industry titan. They also reflect the divergent ideologies and core constituencies of the two parties.

Mr. Obama champions government as a linchpin of future economic growth and the average American’s protector from the excesses and failures of the free market.

Mr. Romney condemns government as a menace whose excesses and failures imperil the free market’s ability to enhance individual opportunity and make the nation prosperous.

Each has more negative than positive material to work with. Their back-and-forth is a clash between institutions reduced to equal levels of public disdain after years of economic weakness, Wall Street’s collapse and bailout, high unemployment levels and shifting election outcomes.

A Pew Research Center poll found in February that only 22 percent of Americans rated the federal government as having a positive effect on American life — precisely the same proportion who rated banks and other financial institutions positively.

“It’s clearly a standoff,” said Pew’s pollster, Andrew Kohut, though one involving coalitions of different shapes.

Blacks and Hispanics were twice as likely as whites to rate government positively, for example, and nearly four times as likely as white evangelicals. Mr. Obama’s argument draws stronger support from single women, Mr. Romney’s from white men and married women.

The contours of the partisan debate have grown familiar since Ronald Reagan called government the problem, not the solution, and the 2000 election established how closely it divides the nation.

But each side sees an opening for a breakthrough in November.

For the Romney team, it is the juxtaposition of a Democratic incumbent struggling with hard times against a Republican candidate uniquely suited to extend the arc of conservative ascendancy that began with Reagan’s antigovernment campaign in 1980.

“We haven’t had a candidate that’s been as successful from a business standpoint as Romney has been,” said Carl Forti, a strategist for the pro-Romney “super PAC” that produced the advertisement featuring his business partner. As hostile as swing voters may be toward Wall Street and big corporations, he added, “they absolutely know government’s worse.”

For Mr. Obama’s advisers, the opening lies in their ability to tie Mr. Romney to the market’s generation-long failure to deliver rising living standards to average Americans. “The country tried everything Romney says, and it brought the economy to the brink of collapse,” said Mr. Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson. “The American people know our country has a big role to play in investing in education, in R&D to produce new industries and in infrastructure.”

That explains the Obama campaign’s recent attack on Mr. Romney’s record at Bain Capital. An Obama campaign video with sorrowful former steelworkers cast Mr. Romney as a corporate “vampire” who with his partners bought a Missouri manufacturer, siphoned away profits for themselves and bankrupted it. Mr. Obama’s defense this week of his campaign’s Bain attacks underscored the ideological clash. The president asserted that pursuit of private-sector profits was insufficient preparation for service as chief executive of government, who is obliged to consider the interests of all constituents, including workers.

The Romney campaign answered that tale of villainy with one of heroism. Its ad highlighted a different company that “Mitt Romney’s private-sector leadership team” helped start, creating 6,000 jobs.

“If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is,” a grateful worker concluded.

The route to the American dream sketched by Mr. Obama involves critical assistance from the government. In an interactive Obama campaign graphic, the fictional character “Julia” benefits from programs like Head Start, small-business subsidies and the new health care law. The campaign recently spent $1 million on a targeted mailing to women in swing states trumpeting benefits they would lose if Mr. Romney won a repeal of the health law.

Mr. Romney dismissed the “Julia” device as an illustration of the centrality of government to Mr. Obama’s vision. He said at a rally this year, “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for, vote for the other guy.”

Mr. Obama promotes the two-year-old financial regulation law as protection against the depredations of Wall Street, with all the more urgency after JPMorgan Chase’s recent multibillion-dollar trading loss. Mr. Romney insists that the law inhibits private-sector-led growth and supports its repeal.

He takes the same view of the government’s involvement in bailing out auto companies, saying it rewarded unions friendly to Democrats at the taxpayers’ expense; his campaign’s new Web video features nonunion workers complaining that Washington had not helped them. Mr. Obama says the government bailout saved the industry.

Both sides supplement philosophical arguments with practical ones. Mr. Romney casts the administration’s interventions as simply ineffective; Mr. Obama’s campaign says Mr. Romney failed to deliver on jobs and government-slimming promises as governor of Massachusetts.

Yet they consistently offer voters a fundamental contrast of outlook.

Mr. Obama wants government to enhance opportunity and temper inequality through investments in education, research, infrastructure and new energy technologies — paid for with help from higher taxes on the wealthy. Mr. Romney, speaking in Des Moines last week, articulated the opposite view.

“The private sector is by far the most efficient and cost-effective” at generating economic growth, Mr. Romney said. “As President Obama and old-school liberals absorb more and more of our economy into government, they make what we do more expensive, less efficient and less useful.”

“They make America less competitive,” he concluded. “You do not owe Washington a bigger share of your paycheck.”

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Hatch Finds ’76 Tactics Now Used Against Him

Now overlay that image with plaid leisure suits and shaggy sideburns, and a different firebrand emerges in a much different time: Senator Orrin G. Hatch.

In 1976, in his first Senate race, Mr. Hatch led a one-man conservative uprising in Utah and helped shape the very idea of the insurgent candidacy in modern politics. Now he is the latest Washington veteran hoping to fend off the fate that took down Senator Richard G. Lugar in a Tea Party challenge in Indiana this month, and upended the Senate race in Nebraska with Deb Fischer’s Tea Party-tinctured victory over the Republicans’ handpicked candidate.

That Mr. Hatch finds himself in this position at all makes for a strange — others might say just — plot twist of history. Mr. Hatch, now 78, was a complete unknown six months before his first election. Then in a bolt of energy and rhetorical swordsmanship against his opponents, he wrested the United States Senate nomination from his own party’s establishment candidate and went on to beat a well-financed three-term Democratic incumbent.

Even at the time, his rise was seen as a signal flare of something completely new. In the American West, Democrats, who had been electable in significant numbers through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, even in Utah, were heading for a generation in the dustbin. With Mr. Hatch — and only a few years later, to even greater effect, Ronald Reagan — leaping from the trenches, Democrats here still have not fully recovered.

Now Mr. Hatch is facing his first primary challenge since that pivotal first election 36 years ago, and a little-known conservative former state senator, Dan Liljenquist, is studying everything Mr. Hatch did and said back then, trying to use Mr. Hatch’s own ’70s show against him in next month’s party vote.

The result is a closely watched, and for many Republicans here, deeply emotional contest that is raising profound questions about whether Mr. Hatch is still the man they have loved long and well, or whether he was right back then when he said voters should throw out the bums if they hang on too long.

“I’m torn,” said Richard McMillan, 73, a retired high school history teacher who said he had voted loyally for Mr. Hatch every six years and now is not sure what to do. “I don’t dislike Hatch, but I kind of wish he’d go away gracefully and we could all applaud.”

Mr. Hatch, for his part, in asking Utahns for what he has said would be a final, seventh term, denies that anything now feels remotely like 1976. “It’s quite a bit different,” he said in an interview. “I ran against a Democrat,” he added. “I would never run against another Republican.”

But in getting to the November election and the Republican nomination in 1976, Mr. Hatch did vanquish a Republican primary opponent who was better known and widely favored to win, and Mr. Liljenquist, 37, in facing what he admits are uphill odds, said that that is the race to study. In heavily Republican Utah, the party’s nomination, decided by primary voters, is the crucial contest since Democrats are so deeply outnumbered.

Mr. Liljenquist (pronounced LILian-quist) said in an interview: “When we look at 1976, there are a lot of parallels. You have a country that was reeling from threats around the world. That’s the same case now, and the economy, too, wasn’t going particularly well.”

A surge of electricity was pouring into conservative ranks as well in 1976, he added — not unlike the Tea Party movement today — partly in reaction to the liberal post-Watergate end-zone dance by the Democrats, whose fortunes rose after President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in 1974. This year, a Tea Party-affiliated group called Freedom Works has backed Mr. Liljenquist.

“Senator Hatch rode a wave of discontent with the establishment people — people who had been there years and years and were part of the system, and then after 36 years he has become the system,” said Mr. Liljenquist, who was in diapers when Mr. Hatch took office.

But to many Utahns, even some Democrats and independents who said they would never vote for him, Mr. Hatch is almost an institution. Through his seniority, longevity and impact on the state — and the campaign’s message that if Republicans take control of the Senate, he will become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee — Mr. Hatch has become, in a way, bigger than party or ideology.

“A vote for Hatch is a vote for Utah,” said Matt Tyler, 45, a bank asset liability officer in Salt Lake City, who was on his lunch hour on a recent afternoon. Mr. Tyler said he leaned more toward the Democrats and would probably not vote for either Mr. Hatch or Mr. Liljenquist in November. But since a Republican is almost certain to win the Senate seat, he said, it should be Mr. Hatch because of his clout.

Mr. Hatch has also refused to be a sitting duck. Through months of intensive groundwork before last month’s state party convention, his campaign staff groomed and recruited party delegates, and back-bench supporters of those delegates, aiming to head off the challenge he knew was coming. The effort, though not successful enough to avoid a primary, created a bank of about 70,000 likely Hatch votes, said the campaign’s manager, Dave Hansen. That number, Mr. Hansen said, is about half the total, from a standing start on the day after the convention, needed to win based on assumptions of likely turnout.

The Hatch campaign has also agreed to only one debate before the June 26 primary, on a local radio talk show, a fact that Mr. Liljenquist is using in a new television ad to argue that Mr. Hatch is hiding in plain sight.

What was wrought in the ’70s in Utah — now seen by historians as one of the first breaking waves in what became the Republican tide of the Reagan era — is now simply the background of political life in Utah, unquestioned because so many residents have never known anything else.

But it was Mr. Hatch and his imitators, historians say, who helped forge that system. In the State Legislature, Democrats who controlled the House and Senate in the mid-’70s have now been in the minority since the era of hip-hugging disco pants. The last Democrat to represent Utah in the Senate was the man Mr. Hatch defeated, Frank Moss.

Mr. Hatch’s fight this year, facing a threat in a primary rather than the general election in November, is a measure of how much the state has become a de facto one-party system, historians say, with the spoils of power fought over not between Democrats and Republicans, but between Republicans of varying conservative stripe.

“That’s how far to the right Utah has turned,” said W. Paul Reeve, an associate professor of history at the University of Utah.

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Republicans still need to make the case against ObamaCare - Washington Post

A Quinnipiac poll reports that by a 52 to 39 percent margin voter think Congress should repeal ObamaCare. By a 50 to 39 percent margin they think the Supreme Court should overturn it.

This is problematic for the Democrats on many levels. First, should the Supreme Court not strike down the law, the Republicans will not only have conservative ire to propel them in the election, but a solid clarion call that will resonate with a majority of voter. Second, it suggests that Obama won’t be able to use his “historic” achievement to rally voters. Republicans can accurately claim that the president devoted years to passing an unpopular (and possibly unconstitutional) bill, rather than tending to the economy. And finally, it puts all the Democratic senators who voted for it (they are all the 60th vote) on the hot seat. Be prepared to see a lot of “60th vote” ads in key senate races.

Now, if Mitt Romney is the nominee, the unpopularity of ObamaCare makes his job in attacking it easier. He can honestly say that in his state the majority of people liked the healthcare plan that they got, but in the country at large a majority is unhappy with ObamaCare.

This does not mean, however, that the argument should stop there.

In the debate Romney stated his objections to ObamaCare: “One, I don’t want to spend another trillion dollars. We don’t have that kind of money, it’s the wrong way to go. Number two, I don’t believe the federal government should cut Medicare by some $500 billion. Number three, I don’t think the federal government should raise taxes by $500 billion and, therefore, I will repeat Obama Care.” That’s a start, but there are three other policy arguments to make.

First, ObamaCare is not doing and won’t do, by the administration’s own admission, what it was intended to do: Bend the cost curve on health care downward. Just as we now all understand that the CLASS Act was unsustainable, we now can agree that healthcare costs won’t be tempered by ObamaCare.

Second, the methodology on which the administration is relying — empowerment of the 15-person Independent Patient Advisory Board — will not cut costs. It will simply eliminate or curtail care. It’s hard for some on the left, it seems, to understand that cutting how much the government pays for something won’t affect the underlying, real cost of the service. It is for this reason that such health care schemes eventually must rely on rationing to survive.

And finally, the mandate on contraception is the perfect example of why ObamaCare inevitably leads to government overreach and diminished personal liberty. Once the government tells you to buy insurance and that it must be more than a catastrophic, high-deductible plan, every medical service — not simply contraception — is micromanaged by the government. What you must buy, what your employer and your insurance company must cover and what the taxpayer must subsidize then become bureaucratic decisions by the federal government. If this wasn’t apparent to some at the inception of ObamaCare (conservatives certainly understood it, but others plainly didn’t), it surely is now.

Conservatives shouldn’t bank on the Supreme Court to do their work for them. ObamaCare, or parts of it, could well survive the Supreme Court’s review. It is important therefore to continue to make the policy arguments as to why the legislation is unwise, unworkable and unaffordable. Moreover, conservatives need to let the public know what the alternative to ObamaCare may be. If, unlike Obama, Republicans care about getting a mandate for their agenda, they would be wise to start laying out what a market-oriented alternative to ObamaCare would look like.

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GOP rivals turn Romney's jobs record against him (AP)

By KASIE HUNT and CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Kasie Hunt And Charles Babington, Associated Press – Mon Jan 9, 10:42 pm ET

NASHUA, N.H. – Mitt Romney's Republican rivals accused him Monday of exaggerating his successes and coldly laying off thousands of workers while heading a profitable venture capital firm, an effort to turn the presidential front-runner's biggest asset into a liability.

The heightened focus on the firm Bain Capital threatens to slow Romney's cruise-control campaign because it goes to the heart of his No. 1 appeal to voters: the claim that he knows far more than President Barack Obama about creating jobs.

Romney's takeover-and-restructuring firm "apparently looted the companies, left people unemployed and walked off with millions of dollars," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on NBC's "Today" show. A group friendly to Gingrich is preparing to air TV ads of laid-off workers denouncing Romney.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry joined in. He cited South Carolina companies that Bain bought and downsized, and he practically dared Romney to ask for voters' support there in the name of easing economic pain. "He caused it," Perry said in Anderson, S.C.

Romney points to thousands of jobs created at companies that Bain bought, invested in or restructured. But he struck a discordant note Monday, just as attention to the Bain jobs history was spiking.

Speaking of insurance options before a New Hampshire audience, Romney said, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

He remained favored to win Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. But his rivals might improve their hopes of halting his momentum in South Carolina's Jan. 21 primary if they can persuade voters that his jobs legacy is not what he claims.

Thanks to millions of dollars from a Las Vegas casino owner who supports Gingrich, TV ads in South Carolina will try to do just that. Like many attack ads they are emotional, one-sided and not subtle. They show angry victims of layoffs from Bain-controlled companies, according to excerpts shown to reporters.

"We had to load up the U-Haul because we done lost our home," a woman says.

On the campaign trail, Romney rarely mentions his four years as governor unless asked. But he constantly touts his time in the private sector, asking voters to trust his instincts and experience in creating jobs.

The claims rely on Romney's career at Bain, a Boston-based private equity firm that poured investors' money, and Bain executives' expertise, into more than 100 companies in the 1980s and `90s. Some of the companies thrived and expanded. Some took on unsustainable debt and went bankrupt. Some became leaner or were broken into various parts, shedding jobs and improving profits.

In a recent debate, Romney repeated his claim that the Bain-run companies netted a total increase of 100,000 jobs.

Studies by The Associated Press and other news organizations conclude that the claim doesn't withstand scrutiny. That alone, however, hardly suggests Romney was an unsuccessful business executive. He became wealthy, a hero to many entrepreneurs, and the leader of the much-praised 2002 Winter Olympics.

The 100,000 jobs claim comes from activities at only three companies, all of them successes: Staples, Domino's and Sports Authority. However, it counts many jobs that were created after Romney left Bain in 1999. And it ignores job losses at many other firms that Bain invested in or took over.

The Wall Street Journal, which examined 77 businesses that Bain invested in during Romney's tenure, concluded Monday that the record is mixed. Twenty-two percent of the companies closed down or filed for bankruptcy reorganization within eight years, "sometimes with substantial job losses," the Journal reported.

"Bain produced stellar returns for its investors," the paper reported. But 70 percent of the profits came from 10 deals.

A separate AP analysis found that at least 4,000 workers lost their jobs at 45 companies bought by Bain between 1984 and 1994, according to company reports, news releases and news coverage. The tally probably is higher, because it does not include other jobs lost in bankruptcies and other store and factory closings.

Like any venture capital company, Bain's main purpose was to generate profits for investors, not to create jobs. So it is easy for political campaigns to find dazzling success stories and heartbreaking plant closures in the company's history.

A new 28-minute film, "King of Bain," portrays Romney as a profit-driven predator. A pro-Gingrich super PAC bought the film and plans to use excerpts for the attack ads in South Carolina. The group says it will post the entire film online.

Gingrich's struggling campaign has been helped by $5 million given to the super PAC by casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

Obama's campaign aides have long considered the Bain record to be Romney's weakest spot, more damaging than his much-discussed flips on abortion and other issues.

Romney told reporters Monday in New Hampshire that the attacks from Gingrich and Perry surprised him.

"Free enterprise will be on trial" in the 2012 election, Romney said. "I thought it was going to come from the president, from the Democrats, from the left. But instead it's coming from Speaker Gingrich and apparently others, and that's just part of the process. I'm not worried about that."

Romney's record at Bain has both helped and hurt his political career for nearly two decades. Bain was a pioneer in the often lucrative practice of "leveraged buyouts," which involve heavy borrowing against the assets of a just-purchased company, and sometimes aggressive restructuring. Romney's role there is generally lauded in corporate circles.

But in his unsuccessful 1994 Senate bid, Democrats ran ads featuring a worker who lost his job after Bain bought and restructured American Pad & Paper.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal generated $102 million in investment gains. But Ampad filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000.

___

Babington reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Stephen Braun in Washington and Brian Bakst in South Carolina contributed to this report.

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Perry Wouldn’t Stand a Chance Against Obama (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | CBS News reports Gov. Rick Perry of Texas told Republican leaders at a conference in Michigan that he's "authentic." He claims it's a stark contrast to his opponents such as Mitt Romney who seem polished but flip-flop on issues.

Even though Perry is authentic and tells it like it is, he won't stand a chance against President Barack Obama as he seeks re-election. The reason is simple. Republicans and independents don't want another governor of Texas in the White House after the last time one was elected. President George W. Bush got the United States involved in two costly wars, raised the national debt, destroyed the economy in 2008 and increased the size of the government .

Even though Perry claims to be even more conservative than Bush, independent voters are the ones who need to be swayed in order to win a nationwide election. What works in Texas won't work all across the country.

Case in point is Rep. Michele Bachmann's campaign. Business Insider reports Bachmann sent out an email to supporters trying to solicit funds for the third quarter. At the end, she sent a postscript stating she is running for president. No one needed to be reminded of this fact except perhaps Bachmann. She raised a record $5.4 million in one quarter for just her House re-election campaign in 2010. However, she needs to have a more widespread appeal and much more money to run for president.

Bachmann doesn't have the clout of being a business person who can have her own money to devote to a campaign. She works for voters and will need voters to give money in order to win against her opponents.

Romney has the advantage of money left over from his 2008 primary run. He's had much more time to raise money and has a strong network of supporters nationwide. Both Bachmann and Perry need to work for a fundraising network that Romney already has.

Recent polls bear out how Perry would do against Obama in a head-to-head matchup. Real Clear Politics reports Obama leads Perry by an average of 8.2 percentage points. The average is a culmination of six polls taken from early to mid-September. The highest margin was 11 points and the smallest five. Obama garnered an average of 49.5 percent of likely voters whereas Perry gets an average of only 41.3.

Despite low presidential approval ratings, Obama is still seen as more electable than Perry. Maybe it's because many voters feel the country will be even worse with Perry in office thanks to his predecessor. When it comes to Perry vs. Obama, the current commander-in-chief seems to be the lesser of two evils for likely voters.

It doesn't help that Republicans are fractured. Ultra-conservative tea party candidates may draw votes away from mainstream candidates in primary elections. If more controversial candidates go against Obama it will be even worse for the GOP during the general election.

William Browning is a research librarian specializing in U.S. politics. Born in St. Louis, Browning is active in local politics and served as a campaign volunteer for President Barack Obama and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.

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