While President Barack Obama is likely to experience a short-term “bump” in his poll numbers from Thursday’s Supreme Care ruling on healthcare, InsiderAdvantage head and pollster Matt Towery tells Newsmax that the decision is also likely to re-energize the tea party and Republicans in the final months of the presidential campaign.
“I think that Obama will have a good day today and he’ll celebrate — and his people will celebrate,” said Towery in an exclusive interview on Thursday. “It probably will guarantee that the tea party will get so energized they won’t know what to do.”
With the Fourth of July holiday typically marked by tea party events, this year’s rallies promise to feature bigger fireworks than usual over healthcare — just not the kind people have to look up into the night sky to watch.
“They’re going to be furious,” predicted Towery of the tea party. “I think that calling it a tax and using that as an excuse to uphold this legislation is just nuts.”
Even so, the president is likely to benefit in the short term from positioning by mainstream media organizations, which tend to have an inherent bias toward universal healthcare.
“We’ve all got to understand the mainstream media — the three big networks that people watch,” he explained. “They put a spin on things that it takes a long time for the public to discern what the truth is.”
Towery predicted that GOP nominee Mitt Romney will be able to capitalize on the Obamacare ruling with the proper positioning.
“If the Romney campaign does what they're supposed to do — and that is not spin things, but cast things in the proper light — then they’ve got a campaign issue that they can run with and win with,” said Towery, giving some examples of how the campaign might use the ruling to its benefit.
“Do you need another tax? How many more taxes do you have to pay,” he advised. “And I would use that phraseology right out of the decision.”
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