Tea Party teams with union leaders to fight Obama’s trade plan

By Alexander Bolton – 02/04/14 06:00 AM EST

Normally the bitterest of enemies, labor unions and the Tea Party are reaching out to each other to defeat President Obama’s trade agenda.

The groups are at separate poles when it comes to taxes, ObamaCare and who should be the next president, but they agree that making it easier for the administration to negotiate and win congressional approval of trade deals is a bad idea.

“This is one of those issues that 90 percent of the left and 90 percent of the right agree on,” Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation, said. Continue reading

Poll: Major damage to GOP after shutdown, and broad dissatisfaction with government

By Dan Balz and Scott Clement, Published: October 21

Video: Will voters remember the shutdown next year? Incumbents usually win elections. But after a shutdown, near-default and historic lows in Congressional approval, voters are claiming they’ll reverse that trend in 2014. The Post’s Aaron Blake weighs in.

The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP’s image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey highlights just how badly the GOP hard-liners and the leaders who went along with them misjudged the public mood. In the aftermath, eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove. Continue reading “Poll: Major damage to GOP after shutdown, and broad dissatisfaction with government”