Huntsman Outlines Strategy as Feud Simmers
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 4th, 2011 4:39 am by HL
Huntsman Outlines Strategy as Feud Simmers
In a confidential memo circulated to donors this week, Jon Huntsman’s campaign manager “mapped out a nomination strategy that relies heavily on raising the former Utah governor’s profile among primary voters and drawing contrasts with his “very weak” field of Republican opponents,” CNN reports.
A separate polling memo dismissed early national polls as “utterly useless” tools for predicting the Republican nominee.
Meanwhile, a “blistering internal feud” in the Huntsman campaign “is erupting into public view, with dueling camps trading charges and an exodus of campaign officials,” Politico reports. A longtime family friend says that Huntsman’s wife and father “fret that his presidential prospects have been threatened by the turmoil — and he places the blame on John Weaver, Huntsman’s controversial chief strategist.”
Obama Crashes in Florida
A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida finds President Obama’s job approval rating is a negative 44% to 51%. Florida voters also say by a 50% to 42% margin that the president does not deserve to be reelected.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “President Obama’s numbers in the key swing state of Florida have gone south in the last two months. The debt ceiling deal is not making any difference in that decline and any bounce he got from the bin Laden operation is long since gone. The president’s drop off is huge among independent voters who now disapprove almost 2-1.”
In the 2012 presidential race, Mitt Romney ties Obama 44% to 44%, though the president has double-digit leads over other top Republicans, except for Texas Gov. Rick Perry who trails Obama 44% to 39%.
Opposition Research Moves Out of the Shadows
Politico: “Opposition research, long vilified and romanticized as a kind of political dark art, has stepped out of the closet for the 2012 presidential campaign, in which current and former opposition researchers are taking prominent roles, the self-described ‘high road’ candidate has an extensive research operation and the climate couldn’t be better for dropping negative stories small and large.”
Geithner Pressured to Stay
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “is expected to stay through the president’s term after intense White House pressure,” the New York Times reports.
President Obama and White House chief of staff William M. Daley have been urging Geithner to stay, “not only for continuity when the economy has weakened and to avoid an all-but-certain confirmation fight in the Senate over a successor, but also because Mr. Obama has developed a close rapport with Mr. Geithner. Whether the president persuades Mr. Geithner to stay will be a central development for the White House as it girds for a re-election race expected to turn on the economy and the continuing battle of the budget with Republicans.”
