Senate Republicans Lose Vote on Health Law

WASHINGTON – A Republican drive to repeal the year-old health care law ended in party-line defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, leaving the Supreme Court to render a final, unpredictable verdict on an issue steeped in political and constitutional controversy.
The vote was 47-51.

AP-GfK Poll: Raw feelings ease over health law

AP - WASHINGTON – As lawmakers shaken by the shooting of a colleague return to the health care debate, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds raw feelings over President Barack Obama's overhaul have subsided.

Ahead of a vote on repeal in the GOP-led House this week, strong opposition to the law stands at 30 percent, close to the lowest level registered in AP-GfK surveys dating to September 2009.The nation is divided over the law, but the strength and intensity of the opposition appear diminished. The law expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured, and would require, for the first time, that most people in the United States carry health insurance.
The poll finds that 40 percent of those surveyed said they support the law, while 41 percent oppose it. Just after the November congressional elections, opposition stood at 47 percent and support was 38 percent.
As for repeal, only about one in four say they want to do away with the law completely. Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.
Also, 43 percent say they want the law changed so it does more to re-engineer the health care system. Fewer than one in five say it should be left as it is.
"Overall, it didn't go as far as I would have liked," said Joshua Smith, 46, a sales consultant to manufacturers who lives in Herndon, Va. "In a perfect world, I'd like to see them change it to make it more encompassing, but judging by how hard it was to get it passed, they had to take whatever they could get."
His extended family has benefited from the law. A sister-in-law in her early 20s, previously uninsured, was able to get on her father's policy. "She's starting out as a real estate agent, and there's no health care for that," said Smith. The law allows young adults to stay on a parent's plan until they turn 26.
Congress stepped back last week to honor victims of the rampage in Tucson, Ariz., that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., facing a long and uncertain recovery from a bullet through her brain.
There's no evidence the gunman who targeted Giffords was motivated by politics, but the aftermath left many people concerned about the venom in public life. A conservative Democrat, Giffords had been harshly criticized for voting in favor of the health overhaul, and won re-election by a narrow margin.

House Republican leaders say they're working to keep this week's debate — and expected vote Wednesday from degenerating into a shouting match, but it depends on the Democrats, too. Republicans want a thoughtful discussion about substantive policy differences, said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 GOP leader. The AP-GfK poll was under way when the attack in Tucson took place Jan. 8.
Opposition to the law remains strongest among Republicans. Seventy-one percent of them say they're against it, as compared with 35 percent of independents and 19 percent of Democrats. Republicans won back control of the House partly on a promise to repeal what they dismissively term as "Obamacare."
"I just think that the liberal left is more going for socialized medicine, and I don't think that works well," said Earl Ray Fye, 66, a farmer from Pennsylvania Furnace, Pa., and a conservative Republican. "It just costs too much. This country better get concerned about getting more conservative."
One of the major Republican criticisms of the law found wide acceptance in the poll, suggesting a vulnerability that GOP politicians can continue to press.
Nearly six in 10 oppose the law's requirement that people carry health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Starting in 2014, people will have to show that they're covered either through an employer, a government program, or under their own plan.
Rich Johnson, 34, an unemployed laborer from Caledonia, Wis., said he thinks the heart of the law is good. "The problem I have with it is mandating insurance so that you have to have it or you'll get fines," said Johnson, an independent. "I just don't think people should be forced to have it. The rest of it, I have no problem with."
The individual mandate started out as a Republican idea during an earlier health care debate in the 1990s. More recently, Massachusetts enacted such a requirement under GOP Gov. Mitt Romney and the Democratic Legislature. Nowadays, most conservatives are against it, and GOP state attorneys general are suing to have the mandate overturned as unconstitutional.Other major provisions of the law, including a requirement that insurers accept people with pre-existing medical conditions, got support from half or more of the public in the poll.
Loralyn Conover, 42 a former music teacher with multiple sclerosis, says she hopes repeal goes nowhere. Senate Democrats say they'll block it.
The new law "opens the door for people like me to have some kind of pay-as-you-go health insurance," said Conover, of Albuquerque, N.M. "It's nice to be able to have something . and not be dropped in the cracks of society." She couldn't get health insurance when she was first diagnosed, but is now covered by Medicare.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted Jan. 5-10 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Obamacare Under the Knife

In the nearly 10 months since the Democrats' health care bill became law, bureaucrats have been feverishly writing new regulations, and the first wave of reform has arrived. There are tax credits for small businesses to cover employees; kids can stay on their parents' policies until they are 26; co-pays for preventive care went away. But to most Americans, the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has felt less like the dawn of a new era and more like the start of a long partisan war over whether reform should proceed at all.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will vote to repeal the entire health care reform law on Jan. 12. If (as expected) the Senate does not follow suit, the House will then try to dismantle it "piece by piece," in the words of Michigan's Fred Upton, the new chairman of the chamber's Energy and Commerce Committee. "We'll see if this thing will crumble," he says. Elsewhere, lawyers are challenging the constitutionality of central components of the law in federal courthouses and are likely to carry their arguments all the way to the Supreme Court. Republican governors are proceeding in kind, supporting those lawsuits and resisting the law inside their state borders, even as they take the millions in federal funds that come with it. (Read "After a Rocky Year, No Celebrating for Health Care Reform.")
While wholesale repeal is virtually impossible, there is no guarantee that the shaky coalition Obama glued together to get the landmark bill passed last year will hold. In the midterm-election campaigns, Democrats found themselves under fire for backing a new expansion of federal entitlements. Some of those who expect to face tough contests in 2012 may decide to hedge their bets on subsequent votes to defend or dismantle the law. One House Democrat, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, has already said he is "inclined to support the repeal." Physicians' groups, hospitals, insurers and drugmakers, which reluctantly got behind the measure last year, will stick with the law only if its implementation appears to be stable and predictable. Major legislative revisions, which are not impossible, may cause their support to evaporate. It is almost certain that the law will be changed before the 112th Congress adjourns next year.

How much? History may be a useful guide. The creation of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965 spawned lawsuits and promises of repeal too. Yet in the years that followed, neither program was scaled back. Both, in fact, were greatly expanded. Here's a look at the war on health care reform - and the fronts on which the battles of 2011 will be fought.  Leave your Comment on this story.

President Obama open to adding GOP ideas to health plan

Associated Press Writer Erica Werner,
reported this about 8 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said Tuesday he was open to four new Republican proposals on health care legislation, a gesture of bipartisanship meant to jump-start his stalled drive to overhaul the system.
Obama detailed the ideas, all of which were raised at a bipartisan health care summit last week, in a letter to congressional leaders. In a nod to his 2008 presidential rival, Obama also said he had eliminated a special deal for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries in Florida and other states that drew criticism at the summit from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The proposals Obama listed are: sending investigators disguised as patients to uncover fraud and waste, expanding medical malpractice reform pilot programs, increasing payments to Medicaid providers and expanding the use of health savings accounts.
"I said throughout this process that I'd continue to draw on the best ideas from both parties, and I'm open to these proposals in that spirit," wrote Obama, who will make remarks Wednesday at the White House on a path forward for his legislation.
He rejected the GOP's preferred approach of scrapping the existing sweeping overhaul bills and starting afresh with step-by-step changes.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Obama's letter "brings us just another step closer to passing the bill."
"We hope to incorporate some of the suggestions," she said.
Obama's announcement did not appear to win over any Republicans, who complained the underlying legislation remained fatally flawed, and the Senate GOP leader warned of reprisals in this fall's midterms elections if the Democrats go forward. But it could give wavering Democrats political cover by showing the White House has been willing to compromise in the wake of last week's summit.
"We're anxious to get health care done, which we will get done," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after Obama released the letter. Democrats proceed at their own political peril, said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
"I want to assure our Democratic friends that if they are somehow able to pass this bill in the House, it will be the issue in every race in America," McConnell said.
At its core the Democrats' legislation would extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans over 10 years with a first-time mandate for nearly everyone to buy insurance and a host of new requirements on insurers and employers. However, the package soon to reach the House will be less expensive than the one the House passed in November and will contain no government-run insurance program to compete with private insurers, making it more appealing to some moderates.

Democrats are eyeing a controversial procedure known as "budget reconciliation" to get the legislation to Obama. Under this process, the House would pass the Senate-passed overhaul bill, and both chambers would pass a package of changes to the legislation designed to appeal to House Democrats. The changes — they could include Obama's suggested Republican ideas — could pass under budget rules allowing a simple majority vote in the Senate. It's Democrats' only way forward because Republicans control 41 Senate votes, just enough block the 60-vote supermajority usually required for action.
But the approach infuriates Republicans, even though they've used it in the past, and makes some Democratic moderates uneasy. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel defended the tactic after emerging from a meeting at the Capitol with Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
"Reconciliation is a vehicle that's been used many times," Emanuel said. "This is a normal procedure, nothing different out of it."
Obama said he was open to these four GOP ideas:

Conducting undercover investigations of Medicare and Medicaid providers to search for waste, fraud and abuse, an idea put forth by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., at least week's summit.

 Experimenting with specialized health courts as an alternative to jury trials in medical malpractice cases to cut down on defensive medicine. That idea has been promoted both by Democrats and Republicans, including Coburn and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who attended the summit.
The approach calls for an expert judge — not a jury — to hear the evidence and make a final determination in cases where a patient has suffered harm. Trial lawyers are strongly opposed to the concept.
Months ago, Obama budgeted $23 million for states to experiment with alternatives to malpractice litigation, but at the time he stopped short of endorsing health courts. The president now says he wants to more than double the budget for state experiments to $50 million.
Obama also agreed that health savings accounts would be offered in new markets his plan sets up for individuals and small business to purchase coverage. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., brought up the idea at the summit.
The president said he's open to the tax-sheltered accounts, which go hand-in-hand with high-deductible health insurance policies. Premiums on those policies are lower than for regular health insurance, and people who have them use the health savings accounts to pay their out-of-pockets costs.
Obama also suggested increasing reimbursements to Medicaid providers, a concern raised by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
"That's just one thing," Coburn said of the president's desire to incorporate his proposal. "We need to start over," Coburn said, contending the bill doesn't address underlying issues of health care costs and quality.
Grassley said Obama's willingness to include his idea didn't change his opposition to the overall legislation. "There are other things more important," like its lack of caps on liability damages and its inclusion of an individual mandate, he said.
Democrats argue that the GOP calls to scrap the existing legislation and start anew further their argument that Republicans have been unreasonably opposed to almost any compromise, justifying the White House decision to push for passage with no GOP help at all.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said he hadn't seen Obama's proposal to eliminate the provision he championed to let about 800,000 Florida seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans keep their extra benefits. But, Nelson said, "I do not think it should be removed."

9 Dems who voted no on health bill may reconsider

Associated Press Writer Charles Babington, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Nine House Democrats indicated in an Associated Press survey Monday they have not ruled out switching their "no" votes to "yes" on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, brightening the party's hopes in the face of unyielding Republican opposition.
The White House tried to smooth the way for them, showing its own openness to changes in the landmark legislation and making a point of saying the administration is not using parliamentary tricks or loopholes to find the needed support.
Democratic leaders have strongly signaled they will use a process known as "budget reconciliation" to try to push part of the package through the Senate without allowing Republicans to talk it to death with filibusters. The road could be even more difficult in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi is struggling to secure enough Democratic votes for approval, thus the effort to attract former foes.
The White House said Obama will outline his final "way forward" in a Washington speech Wednesday, and he is expected to embrace a handful of Republican ideas for making health care more efficient.
Few in Washington think those gestures will be enough to persuade a single House or Senate Republican to embrace the legislation. But they could give wavering Democrats political cover by showing the party has been willing to compromise, ammunition against campaign accusations this fall that they rammed the bill through Congress with no regard for other views.
The proposal would impose new restrictions on insurance companies and order health insurance coverage for as many as 30 million Americans who now lack it, among many other changes.

Persuading lawmakers to change their votes is a tough sell. Elected officials are loath to vote two ways on a controversial issue, feeling such a switch draws more resentment than support overall. Democratic leaders stress that the legislative package soon to reach the House will be less expensive than the one that passed in November and will contain no government-run insurance program to compete with private insurers.
They hope those changes will give additional cover to party moderates thinking of switching from no to yes.
The House version of health care passed 220-215 in November, with 39 Democrats voting against it. Since then, defections, resignations and a death have taken away yes votes.

With four House seats now vacant, Pelosi would need 216 votes to approve the Senate-passed version, which replaces the jettisoned House bill. That's exactly the number she has now if no other members switch their votes.
In interviews with the AP, at least nine of the 39 Democrats — or their spokesmen — either declined to state their positions or said they were undecided about the revised legislation, making them likely targets for intense wooing by Pelosi and Obama. Three of them — Brian Baird of Washington, Bart Gordon of Tennessee and John Tanner of Tennessee — are not seeking re-election this fall.
The others are Rick Boucher of Virginia, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Frank Kratovil of Maryland, Michael McMahon of New York, Scott Murphy of New York and Glenn Nye of Virginia. Several lawmakers' offices did not reply to the AP queries.
Rep. Walt Minnick of Idaho will not change his vote from no, his spokesman, Dean Ferguson, said Monday night. Minnick had declined to state a position when contacted earlier by the AP.
Both parties have used the "reconciliation" strategy to pass big bills before, but Republicans call the health care push an unwarranted departure from standard practices.
Top Democrats are reminding colleagues and voters at home that the Senate already has passed its version of the health care bill on Christmas Eve with a super-majority of 60 votes, which squelched a GOP filibuster without resorting to reconciliation rules. The new plan calls for the House to pass that same bill and send it to Obama for his signature.
But that is contingent on a Senate promise to make several subsequent changes. Those would have to be approved under the special budget reconciliation rules, because Democrats now control only 59 of the Senate's 100 votes — one shy of the number needed to stop a bill-killing filibuster.
Democratic leaders have asked colleagues not to use the term "reconciliation" but instead to refer to the process as "majority vote," said Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa. They also are frequently using the term "up or down vote."
The political math in the House is daunting. Many lawmakers expect further defections, especially members who oppose legalized abortion and feel the Senate language is too permissive in regulating federal funds for those operations.
For every yes vote that switches to no, Pelosi and the White House must persuade one of the 39 Democrats who voted "nay" in November to switch to yes.
Obama's announcement on Wednesday is expected to be a freshened blueprint of what he wants to see in a final health care bill, updated with ideas that at least have the fingerprints of Republicans.
The plan will replace the one Obama posted one week ago, but will not be written in legislative language.
Obama's move underscores his ever-growing role in shaping what he hopes will be a far-reaching revision to the nation's health care system, a goal that has eluded other presidents dating to Theodore Roosevelt.
Politically, it would also allow him to say that he was listening to Republicans at his ballyhooed bipartisan summit last week and that he has since responded by including more areas of common ground.
But Republicans have shown no sign of backing his proposal no matter how it is changed.
Obama also will outline how he wants the process to unfold in Congress. Officials signaled it will involve Senate reconciliation rules unless there's a stunning last-minute overture from Republicans.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would not confirm that plan Monday. But he repeated that health care deserves an up-or-down vote and that Republicans have used reconciliation on major legislation.
When asked if the public cares about legislative process, Gibbs said: "I think the American people care about what's in the bill."
Since Thursday's summit, Obama has been involved in a series of meetings in which the new White House proposal is being shaped.
Gibbs said Obama has worked to get votes in every round of the health care debate. "I don't doubt that he will ... do the same thing this time to get the votes necessary to pass health care," Gibbs said.
Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House's second-ranking Republican, made it clear that Republicans see a Democrats-only bill as an election-year issue.
"If Speaker Pelosi rams through this bill," he said this weekend, Democrats "will lose their majority in Congress in November."
Meanwhile Monday, Obama's argument that private insurance plans serving one-fourth of Medicare recipients are significantly overpaid got support from a report to Congress by nonpartisan technical advisers. Democrats have targeted Medicare Advantage plans for a big chunk of the cuts that would free funds to cover the uninsured.
The report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission found that last year Medicare spent about $14 billion more for seniors enrolled in private plans than would have been the case if those beneficiaries had stayed in the traditional program. One consequence was that all Medicare recipients _whether in private plans or the traditional program_ ended up paying an additional $3.35 a month in premiums to cover the costs.
The Senate health care bill that Obama supports would replace the current payment formula for the private plans with an approach based on competitive bidding.

Obama, GOP fail to reach accord on health bill

Associated Press -
WASHINGTON – Giving no ground, President Barack Obama and Republican leaders fought forcefully for their competing visions of historic health care reform Thursday in an exhausting, often-testy live-on-TV debate. Far from any accord, Obama signaled the Democrats were prepared to push ahead for an all-or-nothing congressional vote.
The marathon, 7 1/2-hour session did reveal narrow areas of agreement on the topic that has vexed Congress for months and defied U.S. leaders for decades. But larger ideological differences overwhelmed any common ideas, all but cementing the widely held view that a meaningful bipartisan health care bill is not possible as time grows short in this election year.
Obama rejected Republican preferences for starting over, discussing the issue much longer or dealing with it in a limited, step-by-step fashion.
"We cannot have another yearlong debate about this," Obama declared. "I'm not sure we can bridge the gap."
Party officials said March is probably the last chance to act.
It has been more than a year since he proposed his overhaul, which would be important to virtually all Americans in remaking the way they receive and pay for health care. The version he embraces, basically tracking legislation passed by the Senate, would expand health coverage to some 30 million people who lack it and stop insurance companies from dropping people for questionable reasons or denying coverage to people who have certain illnesses.
Obama and the Democrats portray the current situation as a major crisis, with tens of millions of people left with no health insurance at all and health care costs threatening to bankrupt the nation. The Republicans see problems as well, but seek more modest steps to deal with them and say Obama's plan would run up the federal deficit — despite his claims to the contrary.
Obama strongly suggested that Democrats will try to pass a sweeping overhaul without GOP support, by using controversial Senate budget rules that would disallow filibusters. And then, he said, this fall's elections would write the verdict on who was right.
Democratic leaders tried to portray Republicans as hypocrites for denouncing parliamentary tactics they, too, have used. Democratic leaders hope to embolden colleagues who worry about re-election races in the face of polls showing substantial dislike for the party's approach.
The Democrats-only strategy could face particularly strong resistance in the House, where 39 party members voted against an Obama-backed health care bill last year.
Democratic officials confirmed Thursday that the White House has developed a slimmed-down health care plan as a possible "Plan B" fallback.
But that contingency also faces problems, including possible defections from House liberals who insist the overhaul must be expansive. Democratic officials conceded it's possible that no health care legislation will pass this year, which would leave their candidates with little to show while Republicans claimed a big win.
At Thursday's summit, Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, agreed with Obama that "we have a very difficult gap to bridge here." But he differed strenuously about resolving it. "We just can't afford this," he said of the $1 trillion, 10-year proposal. "That's the ultimate problem."
Cable news networks carried long portions of the summit, which featured 38 lawmakers sitting around a square table heaped with documents and notepads. They spoke of arcane issues such as insurance "rescissions" between sharp partisan exchanges. Moderator Obama, looking annoyed at times, interrupted Republicans fairly often, and a few of them interrupted him back.
At one point, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky accused him of shortchanging the GOP on opportunities to speak.
With the conversation veering between mind-numbing detail and flaring tempers, the two sides held onto long-entrenched positions.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., derided Obama's plan. "This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed," he said, "and we ought to start over."
Alexander challenged Obama's claim that insurance premiums would fall under the Democratic legislation. "You're wrong," he said. Responded Obama: "I'm pretty certain I'm not wrong."
Democratic officials said House and Senate leaders will confer with colleagues in coming days or weeks to see if they have enough votes to push a far-reaching bill through both chambers with no GOP help.
Republicans repeatedly pressed Obama to renounce the possibility of using "budget reconciliation" rules to push the Democratic plans through the Senate without allowing GOP filibusters. Obama brushed them off, saying they seemed more interested in process than substance.
Americans want a decision on health care, the president said, and most of them think "a majority vote makes sense." Democrats control 59 of the Senate's 100 seats, one vote short of the number needed to halt bill-killing filibusters.
Top Democrats described the summit as the beginning of the end of their long push to overhaul health care, a bid rocked by raucous, conservative-dominated forums last summer that threw Democrats on the defensive. Eyeing the November elections, rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers are desperate to resolve the debate and focus on jobs and economic revival.
"If nothing comes of this, we're going to press forward," Democratic Senate Whip Richard Durbin told reporters during a break in the summit. "We just can't quit."
One of the sharpest exchanges occurred between Obama and Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican he defeated for the presidency. As McCain criticized numerous provisions in the Democrats' plan, Obama said, "we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."
McCain laughed and said, "I'm reminded of that everyday."
At another point, McCain refused to yield to Obama, saying, "Can I just finish please?"
Obama ribbed Cantor, the House GOP whip, for bringing to the table the 2,400-page Senate bill, which the Virginia congressman described as too costly, bureaucratic and intrusive. Obama called it a political prop, and said health care is a complex issue that can't be reduced to snippets.
Republicans repeatedly noted that polls suggest Democrats are on the wrong track. A USA Today/Gallup survey released Thursday found Americans, by 49 percent to 42, lean against Democrats forging ahead without any GOP support. Slightly more than half oppose the idea of Senate Democrats using budget rules to bar filibusters to stop the bill.
Congressional aides said top Democrats will take a few days to gauge the summit's impact on the public and, perhaps more importantly, on moderate House members who are likely to determine whether any health care bill will pass.
If the effort fails, Democrats may try a scaled-back plan to insure about 15 million more Americans, rather than 30 million. Among other things, the plan would require insurance companies to let people up to age 26 stay on their parents' health plans.
The summit participants noted a handful of areas where the two parties seem largely to agree. They include barring insurers from dropping customers who become sick, ending annual and lifetime monetary limits on health insurance benefits and letting young adults stay on their parents' health policies to their mid-20s or so.
But Republicans stuck to their main talking points. "The American people want us to scrap this bill," said House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio, reaching over and touching the massive Senate legislation.
As darkness neared, McConnell also urged Obama to "start over with a blank piece of paper."

Esquire Poll - 78 Percent of GOP Leaders Think Obama is a Socialist

A full 78 percent of "Republican leaders" believe that President Obama is a socialist, according to a new poll conducted by Esquire magazine. The magazine says that the survey's respondents include high-profile politicos such as current and former members of Congress, former Cabinet officials, state elected officials, county party chairmen, and "GOP bigwigs from across the country." But the findings should be considered with a large grain of salt -- only 75 individuals were interviewed for the survey, all on the condition of anonymity. Set for official release on February 16, the magazine's survey represents a confirmation of sorts of the prevalent distaste for Obama that exists within the Republican Party. Earlier in the month, Daily Kos/Research 2000 released its own survey of GOP voters. And of the more than 2,000 self-identified Republicans interviewed for that survey, 63 percent said the president is a socialist (16 percent are not sure, 21 percent say he is not). It should be noted that the group surveyed by Esquire does not seem to come from the fringes of the party, at least based on their answers to other questions in the survey. Three out of every four respondents, for example, said the primary responsibility for Republicans should be to promote fiscal responsibility; only six percent said social conservative values should guide the GOP. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said that so-called "birthers" are the fringe of the Republican Party, only 12 percent said they are the mainstream. Sixty-seven percent said they would consider supporting a pro-choice candidate in a local, state, or national election; 33 percent said they would not. With that as a basis, here are some other remarkable data points taken from Esquire's survey: Given the opportunity to expel one member from the GOP, 30 percent said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), seven percent said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), 15 percent said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and 15 percent called for the ouster of bombastic conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. Pressed to choose which prospective Republican presidential candidate they'd like to see head the ticket in 2012, 31 percent said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, 13 percent said current Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and 12 percent said former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. As for Obama, 70 percent of Esquire's respondents said they thought Bill Clinton was a better president. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said Obama might be the "worst president we've ever had." According to Esquire, the survey, which is part of its March issue, was conducted over the "course of six weeks last fall and administered with a guarantee of anonymity to all participants."