Poll: Bad News for GOP, Rep. Barton – 82% Approve of BP’s $20 Bil Victims’ Fund

If it struck you as odd that House Speaker-to-Be John Boehner and other top Republicans went into a full-bore panic over Rep. Joe Barton’s apology to BP on Thursday — normally they’d be high-fivin’ over Barton’s smearing the $20 billion victims’ fund the president brokered with BP as a “shakedown” — the answer may lie in a poll that came out the same day:

The poll’s Thursday release comes as top BP executives testify in front of Congress. At the hearing, Rep. Joe Barton, ranking Republican on the House Energy Committee, defended BP and slammed the White House for insisting that BP place $20 billion in an escrow fund to help compensate those affected by the oil disaster.

“I am ashamed of what happened at the White House yesterday,” said Barton at the hearing. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation would be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case a $20 billion dollar shakedown.”

But according to the poll, Americans disagree with Barton. Eighty-two percent approve of the creating of a fund of billions of dollars to compensate workers and businesses affected by the spill.

The CNN article on the poll offers another example of how the Beltway media outlets are in the bag for Republicans this year. CNN buried the lead, ignoring the fact that Republicans are on the wrong side of this issue by a huge margin — just 18 percent of Americans agree with Rep. Barton and and 115 of his 178 House colleagues who believe the victims’ fund is a bad thing — choosing instead to focus on the finding that approval of Pres. Obama’s performance relative to the crisis had dropped 5 points: “Rise in disapproval of Obama handling of oil spill.” This despite the fact that president’s overall approval remained constant at 50 percent.

“Liberal” media — riiight.

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One thought on “Poll: Bad News for GOP, Rep. Barton – 82% Approve of BP’s $20 Bil Victims’ Fund”

  1. Media Matters also pointed out on yesterday that the New York Times, once again, butchered the “cap and trade” data by interpreting it incorrectly . IMHO, this is another example of why many MSM outlets are struggling financially. Plus, many outlets never/seldom issue retractions when their mistakes are brought to their attention.

    Some media outlets are trying to revive the clearly proven lie that President Obama received over $70,000 in campaign contributions from BP in 2008. The majority of these contributions were from BP employees. Some media outlets are still trying to revive the other non-story of Blumenthal’s military record while paying zero attention to the increasing number of lies that Kirk has told about his military record and “teaching” career. I am especially offended by Kirk’s claim of “understanding” teachers and what they face because until I retired last year, I had taught for 33 years in a public classroom. It has been my experience that people like Kirk “think” they might like teaching as a career, but once they get the job and realize how difficult it is, they bail. I saw it many times during my career. Kirk didn’t have what it takes to remain in the classroom. He will say anything to garner support from teachers, but his attitude toward public education is not one of support. It is in line with the usual “conservative” politician’s attitude toward public education which is kill it, kill it quick, or if that isn’t possible, “starve the beast.”

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