Opinion: Poll finds voters not impressed with Republicans’ House takeover that hasn’t happened yet

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Premature Emasculation

With Republicans still 20 days away from taking control of one chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives, the Washington Post could no longer resist delivering the polling news that Americans are not yet convinced the GOP is the party for them.

The bold headline: ‘Public is not yet sold on GOP’

Imagine, waiting for the 63 new House Republicans to actually take the oath on Jan. 4 and perhaps find their seats before polling on what dismal failures they are. With Democrats controlling merely the presidency and the Senate, the newly elected Republicans have yet to accomplish a single meaningful thing. And clearly the public knows it.

As a result, ‘just 41%’ of those polled by the Post-ABC News survey regard the GOP takeover as a ‘good thing,’ 30% say it doesn’t matter and 27% have already decided it’s a ‘bad thing.’

Next week’s media poll: How pathetic the 2012 Republican presidential nominee already is.

That’ll Show Them

The U.S. Air Force has tracked 25 major news organizations around the world that ....

... also published the secret government documents released by WikiLeaks. And it’s closed access to them from Air Force computers. Not in retaliation, of course. But so that classified information improperly on the news sites won’t be improperly on the military service’s non-classified computers and require sanitizing, a spokeswoman explained. The network, which is used by tens of thousands of Air Force personnel daily, now cannot access sites such as Der Spiegel in Germany, the Guardian in Britain and Le Monde in la France. Also, some daily publication in New York with a name similar to the parent newspaper of this website. But that’s classified.

First Things First

Just because you didn’t see President Clinton in the White House Briefing Room on Tuesday, don’t think the nation’s chief executive wasn’t on the job.

Last Friday the nation was treated to the remarkable sight of the last two Democratic presidents heartily endorsing all of the last Republican president’s tax cuts as the best way of salvaging the country’s economy. We published the full delicious transcript here with our very own photo captions.

Everyone will be relieved to learn that, although tardy for that afternoon’s holiday party, President Obama did not appear to get into serious trouble with his wife.

Tuesday, Obama’s press office announced, the current president was diligently signing lots of legislation, 12 pieces in fact.

Thanks to his workday, the federal building in Baltimore known as the Social Security Administration Operations Building is now called the Robert M. Ball Federal Building; the United States Postal Service Building in Eureka, Calif., will be henceforth known as the Sam Sacco Post Office Building; and, thanks to the American Eagle Palladium Bullion Coin Act of 2010, the Treasury Department is now authorized to produce palladium bullion coins for sale to investors if an independent marketing study demonstrates adequate demand to ensure that the coins could be minted and issued at no net cost to taxpayers.

Phew! Time for another party.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Feels Troubled, as does Kathleen Sebelius

According to the byline atop an op-ed article Tuesday, Holder and Sebelius jointly penned the piece saying they are seriously troubled by about 20 legal challenges to the Obama healthcare law that have sprung up around the country, filed by silly people.

It seems that numerous states and organizations can’t find anything in the U.S. Constitution that permits Washington to force every American to buy a certain product, i.e. health insurance, as swell as that would be for covering hospital costs and justifying 59 Obama healthcare town halls.

On Monday a federal judge in Virginia agreed with a challenge, declaring that part of the new law unconstitutional. Arguments resume Thursday in a similar Florida suit.

Tuesday, Virginia’s victorious attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, likened the new Obama requirement to forcing every American to buy a gun, as swell as that would be -- for Smith & Wesson, Remington, Sturm, Ruger & Co. and the rest of the nation’s homicide industry.

The Holder-Sebelius op-ed follows the usual ghostwritten PR format, beginning with the sad story of a real person somewhere that the alleged authors never really heard of and then launching into the bureaucratic talk of skyrocketing premiums, policy discrimination and outlandish ‘new constitutional theories’ that allegedly prohibit such reach by a new federal bureaucracy. ‘None of us is a bystander when it comes to healthcare,’ they declare.

Sebelius and Holder obviously didn’t have room to go into any detail on the more than 220 large companies already exempted from the wonderful law because, despite all the assurances last year, its costs would actually close thousands of workers out of health insurance. Maybe next week.

And You Thought It Was Still 2010

Word out late yesterday that there are only 174 days left until the first primary debate for New Hampshire Republicans.

Seriously.

Those quadrennially familiar names WMUR and the Union-Leader, plus the former cable home of Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Rick Sanchez, will co-sponsor the televised debate in Manchester on June 7, 2011.

The big question: Will they admit good, even older Ron Paul?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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