Zogby: Best 2012 Option Is Obama-Pawlenty

Pollster John Zogby updates our weekly Obama Report Card with a grade on the president's performance. Zogby uses his polling, expert analysis, and interaction with major players to come up with a grade and some comments that capture how he sees the president's week ending.

John Zogby on Week: 123

"Has there ever been a worse political calculation than the vote by House Republicans to end Medicare as we know it? Due to that vote, a Democrat won a special election in a super-solid Republican congressional district in Western New York; and that may be just the beginning of damage for Republicans. Their presidential candidates are stuck between disavowing the Medicare proposal and losing Tea Party support, or sticking with it and losing the GOP's most reliable voting bloc, older whites. With Mitch Daniels the latest to drop out, Mitt Romney should be the likely presumptive nominee. But in our polling, Romney is the first choice of only 11 percent of primary voters, putting him eight points behind Herman Cain. Tea Party opposition to Romney will make it very difficult for him. Does that leave an Obama-Tim Pawlenty match-up as the GOP's best option? The president's stiffest opposition last week was Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who bristled at Obama's urging that Israel return to its 1967 borders. Obama's decision to take out Osama bin Laden makes it safer for him to take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

This week's grade: B+

Last week's: B

John Zogby is Chairman of the Board and Chief Insights Officer for IBOPE Zogby International, a non-partisan public opinion, research, and business solutions firm with experience working in more than 70 countries around the globe. IBOPE Zogby International specializes in telephone, Internet, and face-to-face survey research and analysis for corporate, political, nonprofit, and governmental clients. The firm is headquartered in Utica, N.Y. John Zogby is also the author of The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House).

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