Majority Of Americans Favor Keystone XL Pipeline

By Susan Duclos


Gallup has released the results of their annual Environmental survey and found that a majority of Americans favor moving forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline which Barack Obama has refused to approve.

57 percent of Americans believe Obama should approve Keystone, which is a pipeline to transport crude oil from Canada to multiple locations throughout the United States. 29 percent of Americans do not want Obama to approve Keystone and 14 percent have no opinion.

That numbers changes greatly among more informed Americans with 78 percent of those following the issue closely wanting Keystone approved and only 22 percent taking the opposite stance.



Gallup's Bottom Line:

President Obama this week set out on a two-day multistate trip to promote his energy strategy, including reducing America's dependence on foreign oil. As part of his trip, Obama on Thursday will visit Cushing, Okla., the place where the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline would begin. There he will announce that his administration will expedite the permit process for the southern half of the pipeline, which does not need his specific approval.

TransCanada says this part of the pipeline will help it relieve a bottleneck of oil in Oklahoma. But Republicans in Congress have already criticized the president's yet-to-be-made announcement, with a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner telling MSNBC it is an "attempt to take credit" for the pipeline, and that the southern part "is being built in spite of the president, not because of him."

Regardless, the northern part of the pipeline, which does require the president's approval, has still not been approved. The majority of Americans, though, say they want the government to allow the pipeline to be built. So, most would likely support any attempt by the president to move the pipeline forward.

Emphasis mine.

Barack Obama has attempted to justify his refusal to approve the full pipeline by claiming Republicans boxed him with an arbitrary timeline but the application for the Keystone Pipeline has been in the works since the beginning of 2009.

Obama has also actively lobbied Senate Democrats to reject proposals that would expedite the building of the full pipeline.

A significant portion of Obama's base, the environmentalist part, has been lobbying Obama to reject Keystone and critics maintain that Obama's refusal to approve the full pipeline is political in nature since this is his reelection campaign season and proof of Obama putting his reelection campaign ahead of the best interest of the country and the will of the majority of Americans.

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Conservatives Still Largest Ideological Group In The U.S., Liberals The Smallest

By Susan Duclos

For the third straight year Gallup finds conservative ideology to be the largest group in the U.S. with 40 percent of Americans self identifying as having conservative views. 35 percent of Americans identify as moderate and only 21 percent self identify as liberals.

Gallup also finds that among Democrats, 29 percent consider themselves liberal and only 10 percent say they are "very" liberal". Total: 39 percent of Democrats list themselves as liberal.

51 percent of Republicans consider themselves to be conservative and 20 percent identify as "very" conservative. Total: 71 percent of Republicans list themselves as conservative.


The breakdown for Independents is what should concern Democrats in this election cycle.

Independents -- who make up the largest political group in the country -- have been steadier ideologically than either major party group over the last decade. However, since 2008, the proportion describing themselves as moderate has declined slightly, from 46% to 41%, and the proportion who are conservative has increased slightly, from 30% to 35%.

Currently, the largest segment of independents describe their views as moderate, while significantly more identify as conservative than as liberal, 35% vs. 20%.

Recently a CNN Opinion Research poll found that 50 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Barack Obama has handled his job as president. 38 percent of those that disapprove listed the reason as his being "too liberal" and only 9 percent said he wasn't "liberal enough."

Icing on the cake for Republicans is the recent US News and World Report article that states by 2-to-1 Americans fear an Obama reelection:

As we enter the presidential election year of 2012, what potential news event do you fear the most?

President Obama wins reelection 33%

Taxes will increase 31%

Iran will get a nuclear weapon 16%

Obama will lose reelection 16%

North Korea will attack South Korea 4%

All together: A five percent decrease in moderates coupled with a five percent increase in conservatives added together with another recent Gallup poll showing that Barack Obama is seen as the furthest away from American's ideological views than any of the GOP candidates, and Americans listing an Obama reelection as what they fear most, translates into a huge Democratic headache during this presidential election cycle.

(Changes were made to this post)

Gallup: Americans Far More Concerned About Big Government Than Big Business

By Susan Duclos

• • In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future... big business, big labor, or big government?


One chart says it all.

(Click image to enlarge)

Gallup


64 percent believe big government, which has gotten far bigger over the last three years, especially with Obamacare being passed by Obama and Democrats when they controlled the House of Representatives, Senate and the White House, is a bigger threat to the country in the future.

Only 26 percent feel big business in the bigger threat and just 8 percent said big labor.

More concerning to Democratic leaders and Obama should be the Gallup finding a little farther down in the report.

While top Democratic leaders and Obama continue to try to grow big government bigger, Democratic voters are starting to fear big government more and more.

Since 2009, there has been a 16 percentage point increase in Democrats believing "big government is the biggest threat to the nation." In 2009 that number was only 32 percent, now it is 48 percent.

Gallup's bottom line:

Americans' concerns about the threat of big government are near record-high levels. The Occupy Wall Street movement, focused on "fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations," has drawn much attention and a large following. Still, the majority of Americans do not view big business as the greatest threat to the country when asked to choose among big business, big government, and big labor. In fact, Americans' concerns about big business have declined significantly since 2009.

Over the last few decades Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been guilty of expanding government but in the 2010 midterm elections, GOP politicians were handed control of the House of Representatives and given a net gain in Senate seats, because they campaigned and promised to spend less, fight tax increases, and limit big government expansions.

They have fought to keep those promises in the last year and Conservative voters have held their feet to the fire to make sure they continue to do so.

Democratic leaders, led by Obama, continue to try to raise taxes and push for more stimulus aka government spending or "investment", showing they did not learn the lesson of the 2010 midterms or simply chose to ignore it.

The White House has raised the stakes in the negotiations over the renewal of $200bn in stimulus measures for the US economy, seeking to link their fate to separate legislation to fund the government.

The move by Barack Obama, the president, marks a high-risk attempt to corral Republicans into a compromise in Washington’s end-of-year fiscal warfare, since it increases the odds that some federal agencies could shut down as early as Saturday.

The White House has been pressing Congress for months to pass an extension of payroll tax cuts and emergency jobless benefits that are due to expire at the end of the month, on the grounds that if they lapsed it would do serious damage to the US economy.

Republicans have accepted the need to preserve these forms of stimulus in 2012. But the bill they proposed – and will be voting on Tuesday in the House of Representatives – does so in a way that the White House and many congressional Democrats reject. It pays for the measures by curbing the pay of federal workers, rather than imposing higher taxes on wealthy Americans as Democrats want. It also includes several other provisions – primarily an expedited approval process for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project – that Democrats are opposed to.

The Obama experiment has failed. It is time for Democratic lawmakers to start listening to the people they are supposed to be representing and stop pushing for bigger government or they risk losing control of the Senate and the White House in November 2012.

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