Word: gop
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...encouragement that Republicans took from the angry health-care town halls of August, the fall has not been kind to the GOP. A Washington Post-ABC poll found that only 1 in 5 voters now identifies as Republican. And the "Party of No" label might be starting to stick: a recent CNN poll found that GOP favorability has slipped to its lowest point in a decade - just 36% (though Democrats don't rate much higher). Former Republican heavyweights such as Bob Dole and Bill Frist have been pushing current party leaders on Capitol Hill to work with Democrats on health...
...Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, hopes to change all that. In an effort to counter the criticism that the party doesn't stand for anything but opposing President Obama, Cantor has reconvened the working group that came up with the GOP's alternative to the White House's stimulus plan. That wasn't exactly a big success - the proposal was widely panned for relying too heavily on tax cuts - but Cantor is convinced that taking the long view is the path to success: health care and global warming may be the topics du jour, but "the narrative next...
...worker per year by 2012. "Eric's correct, in my opinion, to place an emphasis on trying to make our nation more competitive and prop up the private market - a place which has been kind of under assault the last year or so," says John Feehery, a GOP strategist and former adviser to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. "He's obviously geared toward the small-business sector. The big guys can handle a high unemployment rate, but the small guys get killed by it, so that's a good thing - getting back to Republican roots." Still, fixing these holes is going...
...Cantor surely knows this, which is why he's still busy working at overhauling the GOP's Party of No image. When asked if House Republicans will be unified in their opposition to the health-care bill, he instead focuses on all the areas in which Republicans and Democrats agree, such as emphasizing preventive medicine, electronic records, medical-liability reform and helping those with pre-existing conditions get coverage. It's a striking change of tone from a similar interview with TIME shortly before the stimulus vote, when the minority whip was cocky in his boast of unified opposition. Still...
...that Florida is a net "donor" state: it sends more money to the Federal Government than it receives. "Why shouldn't we get our fair share?" the governor asks. And as for his Obama hug, "He is the President of the United States. You honor the office." (Read "GOP Governors: Split over Obama's Stimulus Plan...