Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) is out to a 15-point lead over current Gov. Chet Culver (D), a new Public Policy Polling survey finds (May 25-27, 1277 RV, MoE +/- 2.7%). Culver also trails two other Republicans, Rod Roberts and Bob Vander Plaats, but by far narrower margins.

Branstad 52
Culver 37
Und 11

Roberts 40
Culver 38
Und 22

Vander Plaats 43
Culver 38
Und 19

Branstad is favored to win the Republican primary, with a PPP poll out this week showing him up 15 points.

“Chet Culver is in big trouble, and while Terry Branstad isn't massively popular, he takes advantage of Culver's vulnerability with his own party to take a large lead a week before the primary,” said PPP president Dean Debnam.

After his lead dropped to just 3 points following revelations about past exaggerations of his military record, Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal's lead over Republican Linda McMahon is back over 20 points in Rasmussen polling (June 1, 500 LV, MoE +/- 4.5%).

But not only did his margin increase by 8 points since the May 18 poll, McMahon's dropped by 12 points -- perhaps in part due to questions about her work as CEO of the WWE. Voters are split over whether the Blumenthal revelations are important in deciding how to vote.

Blumenthal 56 (+8 vs. last poll, May 18)
McMahon 33 (-12)
Und 7

Blumenthal leads by 22.4 points in the RCP Average

On RCP, Mike Memoli reviews the president's schedule since the beginning of the oil disaster in the Gulf, highlighting the many activities that have competed for his attention. Carl Schramm, Robert Litan and Dane Stangler of the Kauffman Foundation argue that economic growth is the key to ensuring peace and stability in Afghanistan and Iraq. Victor Davis Hanson writes about the myriad challenges facing European society.

On RCM, Gary Shapiro argues that the country is in desperate need of political leaders with business experience, and Diana Furchtgott-Roth writes about how raising the minimum wage and limiting the availability of unpaid internships hurts teens.

Todd Crowell writes on RCW about the downfall of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

On RCS, Art Spander writes about the Los Angeles Lakers' long history of struggles against the Boston Celtics, and the RCS staff weighs in on the NBA Finals.

According to the Washington Times, a new Suffolk University poll (June 1-2, 400 LV) finds Tea Party-favorite Sharron Angle leading the Republican Senate primary in Nevada. Perhaps most surprising is that one-time frontrunner Sue Lowden finished third behind Danny Tarkanian.

Angle 33
Tarkanian 26
Lowden 25

Last week RCP looked into the GOP establishment in Nevada and found divergent opinions about Angle's candidacy. Nevertheless, two Mason-Dixon polls out last month showed Angle gaining on Lowden, and, with the primary coming up on Tuesday, Angle may be peaking at the right time.

For more polling on the race, click here.

A new EPIC-MRA poll conducted for Michigan outlets including the Detroit Free Press puts Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R) and state House Speaker Andy Dillon (D) atop their respective primary fields.

Republican Primary Election Matchup
Hoekstra 30
Cox 18
Snyder 17
Bouchard 16
George 2
Und 17

Democratic Primary Election Matchup
Dillon 29
Bernero 23
Und 48

As yesterday's PPP (D) also found, Republicans are leading in all November matchups.

General Election Matchups
Hoekstra 47 -- Dillon 35 -- Und 18
Hoekstra 47 -- Bernero 34 -- Und 19

Cox 46 -- Dillon 37 -- Und 17
Cox 46 -- Bernero 36 -- Und 18

Snyder 50 -- Dillon 31 -- Und 19
Snyder 51 -- Bernero 28 -- Und 21

Bouchard 49 -- Dillon 33 -- Und 18
Bouchard 48 -- Bernero 32 -- Und 20

RCP rates the race as Lean Republican. The primary is August 3.

Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff's primary challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet has caused headaches for the White House -- headaches it hoped to avoid last September.

In the wake of the controversy over whether Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak was offered a job by the administration to stay out of the Senate race, Romanoff said yesterday:

In September 2009, shortly after the news media first reported my plans to run for the Senate, I received a call from Jim Messina, the President's deputy chief of staff. Mr. Messina informed me that the White House would support Sen. Bennet. I informed Mr. Messina that I had made my decision to run. Mr. Messina also suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race. He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions. At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina's assistance in obtaining one.

The jobs the White House mentioned included two jobs within USAID and one needing Senate confirmation, Director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs released the following statement early this morning to explain the sequence of events surrounding the Romanoff controversy:

Andrew Romanoff applied for a position at USAID during the Presidential transition. He filed this application through the Transition on-line process. After the new administration took office, he followed up by phone with White House personnel.

Jim Messina called and emailed Romanoff last September to see if he was still interested in a position at USAID, or if, as had been reported, he was running for the US Senate. Months earlier, the President had endorsed Senator Michael Bennet for the Colorado seat, and Messina wanted to determine if it was possible to avoid a costly battle between two supporters.

But Romanoff said that he was committed to the Senate race and no longer interested in working for the Administration, and that ended the discussion. As Mr. Romanoff has stated, there was no offer of a job.

Greg Sargent reports yet another admission by the Kirk campaign that the candidate's bio contained incorrect information regarding his service record.

The Post's Chris Cillizza follows upon Kirk's troubles:

Regardless of whether Kirk, his staff or a press corps on the hunt for other resume inflaters in the wake of Blumenthal's revelations are to blame, it's clear that the Congressman has made two key political errors.

First, he has taken what should be a clear positive for his campaign -- his military record -- and turned it, at least for the moment, into a net negative.

"Why he wouldn't be clear and accurate in his already extremely classy resume is beyond me," said one senior Illinois Republican. "A little bit of arrogance unfortunately shows through here."

Kirk's second problem is that he is now knee-deep in a process story of who said what to whom when (got that?) that is almost unwinnable from a political perspective. (Need evidence? See the White House's ongoing struggle to put the Rep. Joe Sestak (D) job offer story behind them.)

By turning it into a process story, Kirk has lost some of the high ground on the matter he tried to claim when he sent out an email to supporters last week noting that state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) had never served in the military and was in no position to criticize.

"Because of that record he has made a strategic decision to attack my military service record," wrote Kirk. "I understand politics is a tough business -- but this attack orchestrated by Alexi Giannoulias is a disgrace."

But now, Giannoulias has a wide opening to raise questions about Kirk's past statements about his military service that focus solely on why the GOP Congressman wasn't entirely truthful in explaining his resume rather than the resume itself.

Meanwhile, Kirk's vote against repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell has reignited rumors about his sexuality - rumors Kirk flatly dismissed at a recent appearance.

Thus in the span of a few days, this has gone from a race that Republicans were feeling fairly confident about, to a contest that they are now increasingly worried about.

Public Policy Polling's (D) latest survey in Michigan (890 RVs, 5/25-27, MoE +/- 3.3%) finds the GOP well-positioned for a pickup there.

General Election Matchups
Bouchard (R) 39 -- Bernero (D) 34 -- Und 27
Bouchard (R) 38 -- Dillon (D) 29 -- Und 33

Cox (R) 38 -- Bernero (D) 36 -- Und 27
Cox (R) 40 -- Dillon (D) 32 -- Und 27

George (R) 30 -- Bernero (D) 31 -- Und 39
George (R) 32 -- Dillon (D) 31 -- Und 38

Hoekstra (R) 41 -- Bernero (D) 34 -- Und 25
Hoekstra (R) 41 -- Dillon (D) 32 -- Und 27

Snyder (R) 44 -- Bernero (D) 28 -- Und 28
Snyder (R) 46 -- Dillon (D) 26 -- Und 28

Rick Snyder, of "one tough nerd" ad fame, performs best in the field, notable given he is the only candidate not serving in elected office. PPP's poll of the primary showed him leading the GOP pack as well.

PPP finds that the field of Democrats looking to replace Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) "suffer from their lack of name recognition and attention paid to the primary." More than 70 percent of voters haven't heard of either -- Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero or state House Speaker Andy Dillon.

RCP rates the race as Lean Republican.

Apropos my post the other day about Obama's attitude toward bipartisanship, today in Pittsburgh President Obama took a shot at his "friends in the other party" by saying this:

From our efforts to rescue the economy to health insurance reform to financial reform, most [Republicans] have sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers. They said no to tax cuts for small businesses; no to tax credits for college tuition; no to investments in clean energy. They said no to protecting patients from insurance companies and consumers from big banks.

This is a fairly standard political knock. Republicans would argue that Obama is distorting the substance of their votes, but this is how the game is played. There have been a number of votes taken over the past year, and heading into a midterm the GOP will cast those votes in the best possible light while the President and his party will do their best to use them against the GOP. Nothing new here.

But then President Obama said this:

But to be fair, a good deal of the other party's opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about government. It's a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges. It's an agenda that basically offers two answers to every problem we face: more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations.

This is classic Obama: a rather blatant misrepresentation of the GOP's agenda that impugns its members' motives but which the President offers as a "fair" take on Republicans' "sincere and fundamental beliefs." This is the kind of duplicitous rhetoric that isn't winning Obama any "friends in the other party," - in part because it's also the same kind of sharply personal partisanship he promised to rise above as President.

But we are in an election year, and Obama remains - as he has been for at least the last few months - in campaign mode, as evidenced by the rest of his slam of Republicans today in which he explicitly began framing the vote in November:

As November approaches, leaders in the other party will campaign furiously on the same economic argument they've been making for decades. Fortunately, we don't have to look back too many years to see how it turns out. For much of the last ten years, we tried it their way. They gave tax cuts that weren't paid for to millionaires who didn't need them. They gutted regulations, and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight. They shortchanged investments in clean energy and education; in research and technology. And despite all their current moralizing about the need to curb spending, this is the same crowd who took the record $237 billion surplus that President Clinton left them and turned it into a record $1.3 trillion deficit.

So we already know where their ideas led us. And now we have a choice as a nation. We can return to the failed economic policies of the past, or we can keep building a stronger future. We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward.

I don't know about you, but I want to move forward.

The problem with this theme is obvious: Obama and his party have controlled all levers of government for a year and half. Blaming the GOP or the previous administration is only going to get Obama so far, and at some point it will increasingly be seen as diversionary, perhaps even desperate. The reality is that in November voters are going to be judging the President and his party on how competently they've led the country and the direction in which they've taken it over the previous two years. And right now, if the latest Gallup generic ballot test is any indication, the public isn't terribly thrilled with either.

In a bold move, Sarah Palin is endorsing the primary challenger to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R). This just a year after Palin's political action committee made a $5,000 donation to the Alaska incumbent. More over at Politics Nation.