The American Spectator

mike| 4.22.09 @ 5:41PM

you are whistling past the graveyard. break down the natural family and you must replace it with something. generation x has grown up in increasingly nontraditional families and thus look to the government for solutions first.

Mary| 4.22.09 @ 7:27PM

As always, Rasmussen polls need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Why?

I know this represents just one presidential election, but it's still pretty impressive. I know they had some bad results before, though I don't remember how many cycles they lost.

Gallup placed 17th.

I know Ras had some bad results before, though I don't remember how many cycles they lost.

Obama first 100 days are equal part disaster and campaign. If his approval rating is truly anywhere near 70%, I think you'd see greater improvement in the right/wrong direction numbers.

He was elected with slightly less than today's Rasmussen approval rating. Unless a president does something spectacularly stupid that has a stink of permanency about it, or deeply insults the electorate, a populace that just elected him is not going to turn on him. And I think that's normal and good.

But there's an aggregate now that can convincingly make both democrats wary and republicans hopeful. He hasn't surrounded himself with quality people. Like Clinton, he’s luckier in his opposition than he is in his cohorts.

The people I know who voted for him are not walking or talking with confidence about him. They hope, more than anything else.

Pew came in second in accuracy in the Fordham analysis. Is there really disparity beyond the margin of error between Pew and Rasmussen's most recent numbers?

And I agree with the courageous and classy Dorothy Rabinowitz.

His stint overseas was something that no one can feel good about. He was a president leading a Country whose history, one that you could feel proud of anyway, began with his election. As a citizen, it was like watching your president have an out-of-body experience as it relates to his own sense of belonging to America. That would be America, past, present and future. His representation didn't feel good at all. It felt like a son rising against his father before those whom his father had aided at great cost and sacrifice. It was a break in a 100-year continuum.

Byron York's recent piece on the perpetual and seething anger of the Left was spot on: their win in 2008, despite predictions of some great realignment, is really precarious. Their win is based in large measure on the unpopularity of the prior administration, and an economic collapse that was ushered in with terror tactics. Their continue hold on power depends as much on the fecklessness of the opposition as it does on the "hope and change."

A pre-emptive war that no longer held any meaning; soldiers dead and that losing meaning; millions of dollars being spent daily to wage the war; a collapse in which Paulson and Bush are screaming fire; McCain and Palin, an opposition that’s out of touch and out of time, where can that lead except to the election of Obama? We're just now beginning to settle in to this presidency. The goodwill that accompanied him into power has dissipated because it has to; he has to rule. And he's married now to the economy because of his own terror-sell and priorities.

Because I‘d like to see a blowback against his bone-deep hubris, I'm almost hoping Congress takes up the cause of prosecuting the Bush administration for its conduct in the war. I say almost, because I know that tactic will most likely lead to ruin. I don't want the next Republican administration going after the administration that preceded it. That's folly; and youthful folly at that.

One last thought here, though: I'd really like to know why our info on Iraq was wrong. Noonan wrote a piece around the time we invaded Iraq. She addressed the issue of whether it was possible that GW was acting out of some sense that his father had failed to achieve a necessary goal during Desert Storm. She said that a president couldn't afford such pique, and I thought to myself, why not? He's only human, and not protected by the Office from acting out of good intentions but using faulty reasoning. Nothing oedipal really needs to apply, does it?

Obama is at 54% approval; that number makes a lot more sense to me than those numbers coming from Gallup, CNN and CBS/NYTimes.

Mary| 4.22.09 @ 7:38PM

Oh, and at the risk of overstaying my welcome, per George Will the American electorate is philosophically conservative but operationally liberal. And if that's true, no poll will reveal that and we'll continue to slide left.

What remains unknown is whether "The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people" will "speedily bring about ruin;" and whether "our nation, weary of its representatives and of itself," will "create freer institutions or soon return to stretch ourselves at the feet of a single master."

2Anglico| 4.22.09 @ 8:24PM

Leftists are cowards. They use the power of government force to get what they want. The day people fight back they'll tuck their tails between their legs and run. Remember how BAD the "battle hardened" Iraqi army was said to be? Until they got a taste of fuel air explosive, then they came crawling out of their holes, begging for mercy on their hands and knees!
Just imagine Barney Frank coming into your neighborhood pub and demanding you eat cauliflower instead of a burger, for your own good, don't you know! He wouldn't last 30 seconds.

GeronL| 4.22.09 @ 9:24PM

The political elite and the bureaucracy are much much more statist than the public as a whole. There is not one pro-freedom person in that small club.

Bob| 4.23.09 @ 9:53AM

Philip -- again, you have the audacity to post something on which I completely agree. Shame on you! You are so factual and objective I don't know why they let you post here!

As we both know, the only way to balance the budget is through entitlement reform which represents 53% of the budget. If I were Axelrod, my strategy would be to wait until next year when job losses abate and then start the reform project.

Even if Obama does that, which I would support, you are absolutely correct that government is still too large. Furthermore, when people say "government is the problem", it is aligned more with partisanship than the presidency as the details of many polls have suggested.

The Republicans only chance is to become the party of "solutions" rather than the party of "no". I also think it would be a good strategy to take a couple of items that are a close call and support Obama showing that Republicans are not partisan. This does not mean rolling over, but voting as a block does more harm than good.

jojo| 1.11.10 @ 2:11AM

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