Organizing for Action -- the old Obama campaign apparatus -- is out with its first TV ad, and it defends the federal health-care law.

"What the impact of ObamaCare?" the ad's narrator asks asks. "The truth is, Americans are already seeing the benefits. She's seeing more seniors for free wellness visits. He received a $150 rebate from his health insurance company. And next year, she can expand her small business -- thanks to tax credits that cover up to half of her workers' health insurance."

The ad concludes, "Better coverage and lower costs -- that's what ObamaCare means for them. Get all the facts at BarackObama.com/HealthCare." NBC News has learned the ad is airing on national cable news, and it's part of a seven-figure ad buy over the summer.

This ad comes as the most recent NBC/WSJ poll found that just 37 percent of Americans said the health-care law was a good idea, versus 49 percent who said it was a bad idea.

That 49 percent on bad idea was the highest negative rating on that question since the NBC/WSJ poll began asking it in 2009.

It also comes as the law's opponents have outspent supporters on TV ads by a 5-to-1 ratio since 2010, per Kantar Media CMAG.

The most recent NBC News/Wall Street contained plenty of revealing numbers -- on President Obama, the health-care law, immigration, even affirmative action.

But lost in those numbers and headlines is a noteworthy finding: The American public is extremely hesitant to intervene directly in Syria's civil war.

Asked to pick a response to stop the killing of civilians in Syria, just 15 percent in the poll say they favor U.S. military action, and only 11 percent want to provide arms to the opposition.

By comparison, a plurality of respondents -- 42 percent -- prefer to provide only humanitarian assistance, and 24 percent believe the U.S. shouldn't take any action.

Perhaps more significantly, those attitudes cut across party lines and almost all demographic groups.

"Whether you voted for Romney or Obama, they have the same opinion on Syria," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research.

"It explains the great reticence of the American public," McInturff added.

These numbers come as calls for U.S. intervention in Syria -- after the Syrian opposition's recent losses on the battlefield -- have once again increased.

The New York Times:

So far President Obama has steadfastly resisted even a modest involvement in the conflict, and there was no sign on Monday that a decision to use American force was imminent.

But Hezbollah’s large-scale entry into the fight in recent weeks and the Assad government’s firepower has tilted the battlefield in favor of the Syrian government.

“I think the rebels are in trouble,” said Jeffrey White, a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Speed is of the essence. The regime’s momentum needs to be brought to a halt.”

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted May 30 to June 2 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents), and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

Since last December, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has been measuring the favorability-unfavorability numbers for the potential 2016 candidates.

And here’s a fun little exercise First Read has undertaken: We've ranked the Republican possibilities by popularity -- among GOP respondents in the poll, as well conservatives respondents.

There are two big findings: One, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the former 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are leading the pack. And two, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- despite his crossover appeal -- is trailing among Republicans and conservatives.

And get this: Christie has better ratings among liberal Democrats (44% positive, 14% negative) than he does among Republicans (40% favorable, 16% unfavorable) or conservatives (33 favorable, 15% unfavorable).

Among Republican respondents in the NBC/WSJ poll:

Paul Ryan: 62% favorable, 13% unfavorable (Dec. 2012 poll)
Rand Paul: 53% favorable, 6% unfavorable (April 2013)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): 49% favorable, 6% unfavorable (April 2013)
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: 48% favorable, 7% unfavorable (May-June 2013)
Chris Christie: 40% favorable, 16% unfavorable (May-June 2013)
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: 21% favorable, 5% unfavorable (May-June 2013)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): 21% favorable, 6% unfavorable (May-June 2013)

And here’s the ranking among conservative respondents in our poll:

Paul Ryan: 58% favorable, 11% unfavorable
Rand Paul: 47% favorable, 5% unfavorable
Marco Rubio: 45% favorable, 6% unfavorable
Jeb Bush: 44% favorable, 7% unfavorable
Chris Christie: 33% favorable, 15% unfavorable
Ted Cruz: 21% favorable, 6% unfavorable
Scott Walker 19% favorable, 5% unfavorable

During to the 2012 presidential campaign, Republicans made this argument to Latino voters when talking about immigration reform: It was President Obama’s fault why any reform wasn’t signed into law during the president’s first term.

"I think one of the reasons Candidate Obama got so much support from the Hispanic community in the [2008] election is that he said in his first year, among his highest priorities would be to fix the immigration system," Mitt Romney said at a Univision-sponsored town hall in Sept. 2012. "But he never even filed a bill. He never tried to fix the immigration system."

The line of attack might have been somewhat unfair -- after all, Republicans in Congress who had previously supported comprehensive immigration reform backed away, even when it came to the more limited DREAM Act. And the president did take executive action to no longer deport qualified young illegal immigrants.

Still, the argument was something the GOP could wield to Latino voters (who still broke to Obama by a 71 percent-to-27 percent margin in 2012).

But after the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” immigration reform legislation by a 13-to-5 vote, and now as the bill heads to the Senate floor with prospects for passage likely, Republicans might not be able to use that argument any longer.

If the legislation goes down to defeat, Republicans would get the lion’s share -- if not all -- of the blame.

And that reality could provide the GOP with an additional incentive to help pass immigration reform, especially when the legislative action moves to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

"The onus is on the Republicans,” says Frank Sharry, a liberal-leaning immigration reform advocate. “If reform tanks, Republicans can try all sorts of excuses -- the president didn’t want to upset the unions, the Democrats demanded too much, the bill was too big and wouldn’t have worked -- but these won’t work outside the conservative media bubble."   

Indeed, Democrats have already swallowed omitting an amendment that would have granted immigration rights to gay and lesbian couples. Organized labor and big business are in agreement on the legislation. And Obama has largely remained on the sidelines to give Congress more breathing room to negotiate.

A Senate Republican aide whose boss supports immigration reform agrees that Republicans would be blamed for defeat of the immigration legislation.

"It would have negative ramifications for the party, absolutely.”

Yet the GOP aide adds that if the Senate “Gang of Eight” legislation gets as many as 70 Senate votes, it would force House Republicans to take up legislation -- even if it’s not supported by a majority of the caucus.

"The goal here with this effort is to get upward of 70 votes,” the aide said. “It would put pressure on them to engage and not find a reason to say no."

That said, getting 70 votes isn’t sure thing; it would require ensuring that the legislation attracts enough Senate Republicans without losing Democratic votes.

Perhaps more importantly, conservative opponents see no political upside to achieving immigration reform. Their argument: While they might get blamed for the legislation’s defeat, they would get little benefit from the bill’s passage.

"There is no evidence to support this idea that Republicans will pick up a lot of votes if we give amnesty to 11 million folks," Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) recently said, according to Reuters.

There’s also the possibility these members could receive conservative backlash from their constituents if they support the legislation.

And that’s the challenge for House Speaker John Boehner. What’s a bigger concern for him -- upsetting his conservative members or the party potentially getting blamed for the legislation’s defeat?

For now, he says the House “will work its will.”

“We’re not going to be stampeded by the White House or stampeded by the president,” Boehner told reporters last week. “The Senate is working its will, a lot of good work that’s gone on over there, but the House — the House will work its will.”

First Read has confirmed that Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) will run for re-election next year as a Democrat, according to a Democratic source with knowledge of the decision.

Before running as an independent during his successful 2010 gubernatorial bid, Chafee served served as Republican senator (from 1999 to 2007) before losing his Senate seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006.

*** UPDATE *** According to observers of next year's race for Rhode Island governor, it is very possible that Chafee -- now a Democrat -- might NOT win a potentially crowded Democratic primary that likely will also feature state Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras.

But these observers say Chafee made the switch from independent to Democrat to give himself a better chance of winning a state where President Obama got 63% of the vote in 2012.

Former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is narrowly trailing front-runner City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in New York's Democratic mayoral contest, according to a new Marist poll.

Quinn gets support of 24 percent of registered Democrats, Weiner gets 19 percent, City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio gets 12 percent, and former City Comptroller Bill Thompson gets 11 percent.

In a hypothetical Democratic run-off -- if no candidate gets 40 percent of the original vote -- Quinn tops Weiner (48 to 33 percent), de Blasio (48 to 30 percent), and Thompson (44 to 34 percent).

Strikingly, 53 percent of all NYC voters say Weiner deserves a second chance after resigning from Congress due to lewd Twitter messages he sent to followers. But registered Democrats have divided opinions about him -- 44 percent view him favorably, while an equal 44 percent view him negatively.

This story was originally published on Tue May 28, 2013 12:26 PM EDT

Yes, the last two weeks haven't been kind to the Obama White House. Yes, the administration has found itself on the defensive -- regarding the IRS, Benghazi and leak-investigation controversies. And, yes, those stories aren't going way.

But it's also unclear if these controversies are political winners for the Republican Party.

In addition to new polls showing that President Obama's approval rating remains above 50 percent after these stories first surfaced, a Washington Post/ABC survey suggests that Republicans are suffering from a focus deficit.

According to the poll, just 33 percent of Americans believe congressional Republicans are mainly concentrating on matters that are personally important to them, while 60 percent say they aren’t.

By comparison, 51 percent say Obama is mainly focusing on things important to them, versus 44 percent who disagree -- matching his approval rating in the poll

And 43 percent of respondents think congressional Democrats are concentrating on matters of importance, compared with 50 percent who say they're not.

Bottom line: The public believes that Obama and the Democrats are focusing more on the issues they care about than Republicans are. 

Conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru reaches a similar conclusion in his latest column.

[Republicans] have no real health-care agenda. Voters don’t trust them to look out for middle-class economic interests. Republicans are confused and divided about how to solve the party’s problems. What they can do is unite in opposition to the Obama administration’s scandals and mistakes. So that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to win news cycles when they need votes.

Congressional Republicans were right to press for hearings on all of these issues. But investigations of the administration won’t supply them with ideas. They won’t make the public trust Republicans. They won’t save them from themselves.

Political observer Charlie Cook adds:

But at what point do [Republicans] decide that maybe voters might be more interested in other issues or worries than about politicians on one side pointing fingers and throwing allegations at those on the other side?

Yet a problem for Republicans -- if they decide to turn their attention to other issues -- is that Republicans really care about these controversies.

According to a separate Pew poll, 37 percent of Republicans are following the IRS story very closely (compared with 21 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of independents), while 34 percent of Republicans are following the Benghazi investigation closely (versus 18 percent of Democrats and 26 of indies).

So Republicans might find themselves trapped in this box: They really want to focus on these controversies, and their voters do, too. But others want the GOP to concentrate their attention elsewhere.

The Associated Press reports that the Internal Revenue Service says it gave extra scrutiny to organizations with the names "Tea Party" or "Patriot" seeking tax-exempt status.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.

Many conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They said the agency asked them an inordinate number of questions to justify their tax-exempt status.

Certain tax-exempt charitable groups can conduct political activities but it cannot be their primary activity.

UPDATE: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement calling for the Obama administration to conduct a review of "these thuggish practices":

“Today’s acknowledgement by the Obama administration that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups in the heat of last year’s national election is not enough. Today, I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not underway at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views.

Last year, amid reports that the Obama administration was using the levers of executive power to harass conservative political groups in Kentucky and elsewhere, I issued a very public warning to the administration that the targeting of private citizens on the basis of their political views would not be tolerated. Today’s apology by the IRS is proof that those concerns were well founded. But make no mistake, an apology won’t put this issue to rest. Now more than ever we need to send a clear message to the Obama Administration that the First Amendment is non-negotiable, and that apologies after an election year are not an sufficient response to what we now know took place at the IRS. This kind of political thuggery has absolutely no place in our politics.”

In another finding from the new NBC News/Marist poll, 55 percent of Virginia residents say they want stricter laws governing the sale of firearms, versus 36 percent who want them left the same.

Reflecting Virginia's status as a key national swing state -- President Obama twice won it by the same margin he won the national popular vote -- those numbers are virtually identical to the national ones from the April NBC/WSJ poll.

But there are fascinating political, demographic and geographic differences inside these numbers.

Eighty-two percent of Democrats in Virginia want stricter gun laws, compared with 56 percent of independents and just 29 percent of Republicans.

What's more, only 30 percent of gun owners and 38 percent of those living in households with guns favor stricter gun laws, suggesting a deep divide on this issue between gun owners and non-gun owners.

But that's not the only split: 68 percent of women in the state want stricter gun laws, versus just 41 percent of men who do.

And there's geography. A whopping 70 percent of those living in the Northern Virginian suburbs just outside of Washington, D.C., support stricter gun laws. That's compared with the Northern Virginian exurbs (49 percent), the central and western part of the state (49 percent), the Richmond area (49 percent), and the Tidewater region (59 percent).

The NBC/Marist poll was conducted April 28-May 2 of 1,218 adults in Virginia, and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 2.8 percentage points.

For the second time in the past two weeks, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has knocked President Obama for failing to pass his agenda through Congress. 

"The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership," she wrote. 

Dowd isn't alone. At the president's news conference on Tuesday, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked, "Do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?"

And in First Thoughts yesterday, we wrote about how the president's priorities -- outside of immigration reform -- have stalled.

But here's the simple truth for all political writers and armchair pundits to understand: This is what happens when you have divided government.

Indeed, the greatest legislative achievements in American history have come when one party controls the White House and Congress -- usually by overwhelming numbers.

In the 1930s, as Congress was passing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Democrats held between 69 and 75 Senate seats, as well as 300-plus House seats.

In 1965, during Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, Democrats controlled 68 Senate and 290-plus House seats.

Talk about supermajorities.

Even the top legislative accomplishments under Obama -- the stimulus, the health-care law, financial reform, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal -- came when Democrats held 60 Senate seats (or close to it) and a majority in the House.

But when there's divided government? That's typically a recipe for gridlock.

The exceptions have come when at least one party has had an incentive to compromise -- think Bill Clinton signing welfare reform into law before his re-election, or the tax cuts under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (who doesn't like tax cuts?), or immigration reform (so far) under Obama. 

They've also come when it's an absolute necessity to compromise -- think the Social Security fix during the 1980s, the debt-ceiling deal in 2011, and the fiscal-cliff deal at the end of 2012.

But that's about it under divided government. And Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) suggested why in a recent talk explaining the defeat of the gun-control compromise he co-authored. “In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it."

So why is there this misperception about a president's powers on domestic policy when there's divided government?

Much of it comes from the president's dual roles -- as both head of state (think a king or queen) and head of government (think prime minister or chancellor). As head of state, the president rallies the nation during times of adversity, consoles it during times of tragedy, and tries to shape public opinion when he can.

But as head of government, the president's powers are limited, especially when it comes to domestic policy. As the late academic Richard Neustadt put it, the president has the power to persuade, cajole, and bargain; outside of that, his powers in domestic affairs are surprisingly weak. 

And that's particularly true when a president's party doesn't control all the branches of government.

As Maureen Dowd said about a current Oval Office occupant: "The ... Presidency that began with such grandiose designs has become so becalmed, so shrunken, so defeated, so aimless, so anomic, so technical that George Bush now looms as a giant who bestrode the earth."

She wrote that about Bill Clinton in 1997 -- at another time of divided government just after a president's re-election.

In Virginia's still-early gubernatorial contest, the two major candidates both have their shortcomings.

Republican Ken Cuccinelli is attacked for being too conservative on social issues (especially in a state Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012), while the negative caricature of Democrat Terry McAuliffe is that he's a slick and wealthy politico who has tenuous ties to the state.

And both men are addressing their flaws -- head on -- in their first TV ads.

A week after Cuccinelli released his first advertisement with a testimonial from his wife ("My husband Ken has spent his life standing up for the vulnerable and those in need..."), McAuliffe is now up with his own ad.

"I’m the youngest of four boys and when I was fourteen I saw a chance to literally pave the way to my future and I started a business paving driveways," the former DNC chairman says in the ad. "That helped me pay for college."

He continues, "My wife Dorothy and I have lived in Virginia for over 20 and here we’ve raised five children of our own. I know nothing is more important to Virginians than creating good jobs that can support a family. That will be my focus every day."

Meanwhile, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is airing his first TV ad of his 2013 re-election bid -- a $1.2 million buy -- and it has a heavy emphasis on his role after Hurricane Sandy.

"But the most important thing he did has little to do with numbers, statistics or even politics, he made us proud to say we’re from New Jersey," the ad goes.

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expressed doubts that the nation's highest court should have ruled on the controversial Bush v. Gore case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.

"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"

The Tribune has more from O'Connor:

The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation."

"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

O'Connor, who was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was part of the 5-4 majority deciding to stop the recount in the crucial battleground state of Florida.