Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty
March 23, 2010
In This Issue . . .
1. Don't Use Arranged-Marriage Slogans to Sell Legislation
2. Is That a Thread or a Tripwire?
3. Let's Keep This Guy Out of the House
4. Addenda
My back aches. Why hasn't the president fixed it yet?
Jim
1. Don't Use Arranged-Marriage Slogans to Sell Legislation
CNN lifts our spirits, showing Obama underwater and by more than just a percentage point or two: "According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday, 51 percent of respondents disapprove of Obama's job performance and 46 percent approve of it. Obama's approval rating has dropped steadily each month since December, when it was 54 percent. His highest approval rating in a CNN poll was 76 percent in February 2009 shortly after he took office. The new poll was conducted before the House on Sunday narrowly approved the Obama administration's signature domestic policy proposal: health care reform. . . . On the economy overall, 54 percent disapprove of his work and 43 percent approve. He scored well for his handling of the environment and education, as well as on national security. 'Obama scores some of his best numbers on "commander-in-chief" issues -- Afghanistan, Iraq, and terrorism,' said Keating Holland, CNN polling director. 'In January, 51% approved of Obama's handling of Afghanistan; that number is now 55%, an indication that the public has a positive view of the latest military offensive in that country.'"
In other words, on areas where his policies are most consistent with that oh-so-unpopular predecessor, the public approves. Hm . . .
The ever-pessimistic AllahPundit is confident this will change: "Wait until voters get a snoutful of 'history' from the media and finally have a chance to breathe it in. Go ahead and smell it. Can you smell it?"
Ace: "The difference between 1994 and now, Obama pronounced with typical modesty, is that now Democrats have him. Yes, they have him. And that may make a difference . . . but perhaps not the difference he thinks it will."
CNN also tells us that "A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that 59 percent of those surveyed opposed the bill, and 39 percent favored it. All of the interviews were conducted before the House voted Sunday night, but the contents of the bill were widely known. In addition, 56 percent said the bill gives the government too much involvement in health care." Any time your slogan on a piece of legislation is "In time, you'll learn to love it," it begins to remind people of an arranged marriage.
The poll triggers Left Coast Rebel to wonder if the GOP has found their man for 2012: "I've always thought that the candidate for the conservative cause in 2012 would come out of nowhere and surprise a lot of people. This person would likely be someone that not many are aware of, other than conservative political junkies like me and that he (heck, she too), would be the person of the time, the moment, the 'man of the hour' so to speak. I really think that is the way that it will unfold -- we still don't know who this person is. After yesterday's disastrous 'f'-you to to 59% of the country (I kid you not in a CNN poll from today, no less), from the Obamanation and Congress; Obamacare's defunding, repeal or dismantling will be the forefront issue for us. Don't you agree? It is simply the most urgent, pertinent issue to conservatives and the nation now. . . . Who does get pushed to the front of the line though? After watching Paul Ryan's remarks in opposition to Obamacare I have to ask -- Paul Ryan for President? Think about it. This guy is no RINO (TARP support being a glaring wound, though I admit). He's young. He's brilliant on the economy. He's well spoken and articulate. He's precisely right about the course that we are on. Is he tough enough to command this country back to its proper course? Could he be the man for the times? Should we start a Draft Paul Ryan 2012 campaign?"
Meanwhile, the approval ratings of Pelosi and Reid are on par with syphilis, as they should be, but I'm struck by how many Americans have no opinion: Eleven percent approve of Pelosi, and 8 percent approve of Reid, but 36 percent haven't heard enough about Pelosi to have an opinion, and 50 percent haven't heard enough about Reid. For some reason, "undecided" is a separate option on CBS News's poll, so the unfavorable rating for Pelosi is 37 percent and for Reid 23 percent. That's an appropriate three-to-one ratio (considering that there's no separate option for "Please deport them to a country we don't like"), but I wonder what these two would have to do to really get the public riled.
2. Is That a Thread or a Tripwire?
Rush, beginning his program yesterday: "Today, as we start the radio program, America is hanging by a thread. So we have to see what we can do with a thread. At the end of the day, our freedom has been assaulted. This is the kind of change that people did not think they were going to get when they voted for Barack Obama. Freedom must win the day. . . . They won because they held Congress and the presidency, and therein lies the lesson: We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out. We need to chase them out of town. But we need to do more than that. We need to elect conservatives. If there are Republican primaries, elect conservatives and then defeat the Democrats -- every last one of them -- and then we start the repeal process. And by 'repeal,' I mean use every single legislative and bureaucratic tactic we can muster to obstruct, derail, and defeat them. Just saying 'repeal' does not make it happen. We're going to have to turn out en masse in November and stop these people. As you have seen, the law will not stop them, the Constitution will not stop them, hoping that they will do the right thing will not stop them because their definition of 'the right thing' has nothing in common with ours. They must, my friends, be hounded out of office. Every single Democrat who voted for this needs to know, safe district or not, that they are going to be exposed and hassled and chased from office. We now have leftist radicals in charge of your health care decisions rather than doctors. I got up today and I said, 'We're hanging by a thread,' and there's a difficult balancing act on this program today: Dealing with the reality of what has happened, which can't be candy coated, with the need to fight on. The need to fight on and the urging to fight on must have some substance to it and not just be rhetoric and language and lingo. It has to have some substance behind it, because we really are facing the prospect that our country will never be the same after yesterday, if this stands. It will never be the same, and a majority of the American people understood it."
I await some irate lefty declaring that the imagery of hanging by a thread is a scale model of a racist metaphor.
3. Let's Keep This Guy Out of the House
The next special election in the House is April 13 in Florida's 19th Congressional District, a tough climb for GOP candidate Ed Lynch. But the Democrat who stands to inherit the seat from Robert Wexler, Ted Deutch, is one of those guys who's (surprise!) not living up to his own hype. As a brilliant correspondent writes, "The district -- encompassing a narrow, non-coastal strip of Palm Beach and Broward counties -- has one of the most heavily Jewish voting populations in the country, and so naturally, the Democrat who seeks to be Wexler's successor, state senator Ted Deutch, heavily emphasizes his pro-Israel bona fides. On his campaign website, Deutch emphasizes 'security and peace for Israel' along with the economy, education, and health care. The first line of his biography declares, 'Senator Ted Deutch is an accomplished legislator who has passed legislation on critical issues benefiting seniors, public education, national security and victims of the Holocaust.' He counts as one of his two landmark legislative initiatives in the state legislature a measure to require that state workers' pension funds be divested from investments in Iran's oil-and-gas sector."
So naturally, on the recent diplomatic mega-mess between the administration and the Israelis, Deutch says . . .
. . .
. . .
. . . nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. "Bupkis", as they say in his district. He hasn't issued a statement, he ignored my multiple requests for comment, he hasn't responded to Lynch's words on the subject, and he hasn't been quoted with any comment anywhere else. This guy's really pro-Israel, until we witness what the Israeli ambassador calls the "worst crisis in 35 years" for U.S.-Israeli relations, and then suddenly he's got less to say than Marcel Marceau.
4. Addenda
Anybody think this public anger will dissipate by November? Nah, I didn't think so either. . . . How's the administration's much-touted "pivot to jobs" going? |
