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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (11010)	4/9/2009 6:52:26 PM
From: pompsander	1 Recommendation Respond to of 103300

The American Conservative points out that the Republicans are not doing much to attract disillusioned Obama supporters ______________________________ Polarized Posted on April 9th, 2009 by Daniel Larison It would have been relatively easy for President Obama to divide the Republican coalition, peeling off less-partisan Republicans with genuine outreach. ~Michael Gerson This would be an interesting point, except that Obama already did this during the election campaign. The Republicans and right-leaning independents he could reach have already been reached, and they are part of the 60-65% of the population who approve of Obama so far. The remaining Republicans who oppose him are for the most part all those Republicans who are quite partisan if not hard-liners. Andrew and Nate Silver have already made similar observations. What is completely missing from so many of the Republican responses to the Pew survey showing such great “polarization” is any acknowledgment that the roughly two-thirds of Republicans who disapprove of Obama make up not much more than a sizeable minority. That doesn’t make their views irrelevant, but it does mean that they do not define the national response to the President’s first months in office. Neither can we primarily characterize Obama’s Presidency in terms of partisan polarization. Republicans have been clear from fairly early on that, at least when it comes to domestic policy and budget debates, they have decided on a course of pure rejectionism and the embrace of fiscal austerity. As the minority party, that is their prerogative, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of policies that are vastly increasing the debt (it would help even more to have alternative budgets that don’t invite mockery!), but if a party has opted to go down the rejectionist route it is silly to complain the President is having a polarizing effect as if this were a bad outcome. If the GOP is to have any chance of reviving anytime soon, it will be by peeling off disillusioned and dissatisfied Obama supporters. Even if Obama were driving people away (so far, there is little evidence for this), the GOP still has to be able to attract them. At present, the GOP’s powers of repulsion remain far greater. So far, everything the GOP has been doing in Congress and in the media has reinforced all the habits that have pushed so many people into Obama’s arms. Shouting fascism and tyranny in ever-louder voices is not going to change this pattern, but will probably ensure that it keeps getting worse for Republicans. No one outside the Beltway cares whether the post-partisan utopia has been realized, and many of us outside the Beltway understand that Washington does some of its greatest damage when the parties collaborate to give us the worst of both worlds. In the GOP’s worst-case scenario, Obama will become even more unpopular among Republican rank-and-file while the rest of the country remains favorably inclined, which means that Obama will technically become a more “polarizing” figure by Pew’s odd measurements, but this will only widen the considerable gap between how the GOP sees the political landscape and how everyone else sees it. The real danger for the GOP is that the Democrats are in the process of turning the idea of positive polarization around on them, and they might then be able to divide the country and come away with the much larger portion on a more permanent basis. amconmag.com

To: pompsander who wrote (11010)	4/9/2009 7:59:45 PM
From: GROUND ZERO™	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 103300

obama's poll numbers will always be high because all he does is play the polls... he has no self guiding principles, he just follows the polls, he does whatever is popular at the moment... when he sees poll numbers tick downward, he adjusts his policies to fit... if you think I'm making this up, then watch what he does and how he changes his views on things, most recently the issue on coal to make electricity... clinton also did this, but obama is very obvious about it, he has no backbone... On the day north korea fires a missile over Japan he cuts the missile defense program... iran says they will press ahead to make their nuclear reactors, obama says we should talk with them, again, what for? He now imposes special fuel pumps that will cost the station owners more than $80K a piece, he does this when they're just barely paying their bills to stay in business... there are already millions of people out of work, he's going to grant amnesty to illegals so they can take available jobs... Does he really hate America that much or is he just plain stupid? GZ