Rasmussen follows up its head-to-head polling of last week for the presidential race to add one more late entrant to the list, Donald Trump.  As in the previous poll, Barack Obama can’t get a majority to support him for re-election, not even against a publicity stunt — although he does better against Trump than everyone else in the Republican field:

President Obama leads Donald Trump by 15 percentage points in a hypothetical 2012 match-up, but the president is unable to top the 50% level of support even against an opponent some are deriding as a joke.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that the president earns support from 49% of Likely Voters nationwide, while Trump attracts the vote from 34%. Given that choice, 12% would vote for some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Trump does even worse among independents, but Obama doesn’t pick any of them up, either:

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 48% prefer Obama, 25% Trump, and 20% would opt for some other candidate.

This doesn’t exactly give a lot of life to the idea of The Donald as a GOP savior.  At 34%, Trump scored lower than most of the established Republican field in last week’s poll, with only Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman, and Herman Cain scoring lower.  Obama scored higher against Trump than any other Republican except Newt Gingrich, where he also got 49% of the vote.  Obama actually did worst against Mike Huckabee in Rasmussen’s survey, tying at 43%.

Independents in both surveys break for Obama, with a couple of exceptions.  Huckabee wins in that demographic 43/35, as does Ron Paul at a lower level (37/32).  Three other Republicans are within a point of Obama among indies: Mitch Daniels (32/32), Herman Cain (24/25), and Haley Barbour (33/32).   None of these numbers indicate a great deal of enthusiasm one way or the other among independents, but Trump’s 25/48 is the worst performance of all.

The enthusiasm for Trump won’t increase much as other Republicans challenge his record — and there is plenty to challenge, according to the Club for Growth.  The pro-free market organization blasted Trump today in a press release, calling him a liberal with a long track record of supporting tax hikes and universal government coverage for health care:

Trump: “We must have universal healthcare”: We must have universal healthcare. Our objective [should be] to make reforms for the moment and, longer term, to find an equivalent of the single-payer plan that is affordable, well-administered, and provides freedom of choice.  (Source: The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p.206-208 & 218)

Donald Trump favors a massive tax hike on Americans that would kill jobs and investment: I would impose a one-time, 14.25% tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth over $10 million. For individuals, net worth would be calculated minus the value of their principal residence. That would raise $5.7 trillion in new revenue, which we would use to pay off the entire national debt [and shore up the Social Security Trust Fund].
(Source: The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p.170-74)

Still, it says something about Obama’s standing that he can’t even clear 50% against a sideshow like Trump.