Polling Report-- Obama's Job Approval:
Gallup Poll. Three-day rolling average.
N=approx. 1,600 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack
Obama is handling his job as president?"
Approve Disapprove
% %
2/10-12/09 66 21
2/9-11/09 64 21
2/8-10/09 63 22
2/7-9/09 63 23
2/6-8/09 66 21
2/5-7/09 64 22
2/4-6/09 65 20
2/3-5/09 63 21
2/2-4/09 65 20
2/1-3/09 65 20
1/31-2/2/09 66 19
1/30-2/1/09 66 19
1/29-31/09 67 18
1/28-30/09 67 17
1/27-29/09 66 17
1/26-28/09 64 17
1/25-27/09 64 16
1/24-26/09 65 15
1/23-25/09 67 14
1/22-24/09 69 13
1/21-23/09 68 12
Obama's "disapproval" number increased 8 points in 11 days after his inauguration--hardly a surprise, as he moved from national ceremonial celebration to actual politics. But since then? Just one additional point of disapproval. So, definitely not polarization people in hordes.
And, by way of comparison (Polling Report--Bush Job Approval)
The last time Gallup had Bush at or over 60%:
1/2-5/04 60 35
The last time Gallup had Bush at or over 66% (Obama's current approval):
5/19-21/03 66 30
The last time Gallup had Bush's net approval at or over 45% (Obama's current net approval):
7/29-31/02 71 23
So, no. Not back to where we were just three weeks ago. More like six-and-one-half years ago, well before Bush started the Iraq War, based on lies.
And, of course, Bush never had numbers anywhere close to that before 9/11.
But, of course, there's more to this Newt story, which comes from an interview reported at the Daily Beast:
The GOP's New Populists
by John Avlon
In an exclusive interview, Newt Gingrich talks about Republicans bashing business, Obama's rough start, Judd Gregg's departure, and his master plan for a GOP comeback.
Newt Gingrich is getting ready for his second act with a vengeance. Always the smartest man in the Republican Party (and never shy about admitting it), he led the GOP to its unprecedented Contract With America-driven congressional resurgence in 1994 and then yelled plays from the sidelines during the disastrous Tom DeLay-George W. Bush combination of this decade.
Now with the Republican Party in the wilderness under President Obama, Newt's ideas are again in demand. The party faithful want their spiritual leader back. And Newt's happy to comply, throwing punches whether the topic is Obama, big business, or Bush.
Throwing punches, all right. And missing by a mile, same as it ever was.
But there's more:
When I question whether he governed so inclusively as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, he quickly counters. "When we passed welfare reform, we got exactly half the Democrats to vote with us, 101 to 101. When we passed the Balanced Budget Amendment, we got about half the Democrats to vote with us. When we passed the actual balanced budget itself, we had a majority of Democrats vote with us. If you go back and look, you'll see we consistently picked fights that were very popular with the American people and the American people convinced Democrats to vote with us."
Fights that were popular with the American people? Oh, you mean, like shutting down the government? Well, that was never going to be very popular:
When the previous fiscal year ended September 30, the president and the primarily Republican-controlled Congress hadn't passed a budget. Congress wanted additional cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental controls, and the EITC, which Clinton thought were unnecessary to balance the budget.
As I've repeatedly pointed out, drawing on data from the General Social Survey, even a majority self-identified "extreme conservatives" don't favor these sorts of cuts.
Of course, the GOP had a substantial propaganda advantage to try to over-ride that. But then Gingrich made sure to undermine that advantage:
Effect
During the shutdown, major portions of the federal government were inoperative. The Clinton administration later released figures detailing the costs of the shutdown, which included losses of up to $800 million in salaries paid to furloughed employees.[2] The first budget shutdown was resolved with the passage of a temporary spending bill, but the underlying disagreement between Gingrich and Clinton was not resolved, resulting in the second shutdown.
Result
The Republicans tried to blame Clinton for the shutdown, but Clinton got a break two days later when Gingrich made a widely-reported complaint about being snubbed by Clinton; Tom DeLay called it "the mistake of his [Gingrich's] life".[1]
Delay writes in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender:[3]
"He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One...Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child..The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same."
Gingrich's complaint resulted in the perception that he was acting in a petty, egotistical manner, and Clinton defended the seating arrangement as a courtesy to Gingrich, the back of the plane being closer to his pickup car.[1] Later polling suggested that the event badly damaged Gingrich politically.[4]
And as for the underlying, implicit claim that he was acting in a bipartisan manner and spirit? Well, again, not so much.
Remember? There was this:
REMARK PUTS GINGRICH ON HOT SEAT;
The Associated Press. St. Louis Post - Dispatch St. Louis, Mo.: Nov 8, 1994. pg. 13.A
Rep. Newt Gingrich came under fire Monday for using the South Carolina child-murder case to urge voters to back Republican candidates....
In an interview Saturday with The Associated Press, Gingrich was asked how the campaign was going in the final week.
"Slightly more moving our way," he replied. "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. . . .
"How a mother can kill her two children, 14 months and 3 years, in hopes that her boyfriend would like her, is just a sign of how sick the system is, and I think people want to change. The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days.
And this:
Gingrich revises history in partisan attack
KENNETH J. COOPER. Houston Chronicle Houston, Tex.: Mar 8, 1995. pg. 9
Monday, Gingrich condemned liberal Democrats for "the monstrosity they have created, their public housing projects that are death traps for the poor, their public schools that are illiteracy traps for the poor."
But neither public education nor public housing were the legislative products solely of Democrats, as Gingrich partially acknowledged Tuesday when reporters pressed him to explain his remarks. But he insisted the blame for failures in both systems belongs to Democrats.
The nation's oldest public school, Boston Latin School, was established in 1635 -- long before either of today's major political parties was formed. It was Whigs who pushed universal public education in Northern states before the Civil War, and Republicans who opened schools throughout the South afterward.
"The public schools don't belong to one party or another," said Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University. "It's foolish. One would expect more of a former college professor."
Tuesday, Gingrich revised his remark to blame Democrats for ""the modern, unionized, big city school system with work rules that make no sense, with very big bureaucracies, with a tremendous amount of money wasted and with buildings that don't function.''
Amd this:
Gingrich blames welfare for woman's death: Speaker's remarks on people who killed pregnant woman enrage Democrats
McCollum, M.J.. Philadelphia Tribune. Philadelphia, Pa.: Nov 24, 1995. Vol. 112, Iss. 94; pg. 1-A
By M.J. McCollum
Tribune Staff
House Speaker Newt Gingrich blamed welfare for the murder of a pregnant Illinois women and her two children.
Gingrich said the killing of 28-year-old Debra Evans, 10-year-old Samantha and 8-year-old Joshua was "the final culmination of a drug-addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilization and no sense of the rules of life, in which human beings respect each other."
A woman and two men are accused of killing Evans to get to her unborn baby. The suspects allegedly killed Evans, then used scissors to cut out the baby who was due the next day.
It has not been revealed whether or not any of the assailants are welfare recipients. They have no prior convictions or drug violations.
Gingrich also blamed the criminal justice system and the education system for the murders.
Amd This:
Gingrich under fire for murder claim Speaker uses horrific killing to attack welfare state
MARTIN WALKER IN WASHINGTON. The Guardian Manchester (UK): Nov 23, 1995. pg. 014
AN INTER-RACIAL murder, in which a pregnant woman was murdered so that the father could steal the child from her womb, triggered a political row yesterday as Democrats denounced a claim by the Republican House speaker, Newt Gingrich, that the killing was the fault of the liberal welfare state.
The slaughter in Chicago last Friday of Deborah Evans, aged 28, and two of her children, has stunned an America which had thought itself beyond shock at crimes of sexual violence. Mr Gingrich's use of the case to draw a political moral has made it a national issue.
"The speaker is out of control," said David Eichenbaum for the Democratic National Committee.
"Last week he shut down the government because he got a bad seat on Air Force One. This week he blames his political opponents for a most brutal murder that has revolted the whole of America. Where does it end?"
Deborah Evans was a white welfare mother, with two white children of 10 and 8, and all three were found stabbed to death. Her former lover, Laverne Ward, a black man and father of her 19-month-old child and father of the child in her womb, has been arrested and charged with her murder. He is further charged with then cutting open her uterus with a pair of household scissors, and taking away the baby to give it to his cousin, who had tried and failed to have a baby.
"Let's talk about the moral decay of the world the left is defending. Let's talk about what the welfare state has created," Mr Gingrich told a conference of Republican governors. "We end up with the final culmination of a drug-addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilisation."
Deborah Evans was on welfare, but there is no evidence that drugs were involved in the crime, Illinois police said. That did not stop Mr Gingrich before, when he last year blamed "liberal values" in the case of Susan Smith, who drowned her two children in her car so that she could go off untrammelled with a new lover. At the trial, she blamed her behaviour on sexual abuse by her father, a prominent member of his local Republican Party.
Already criticised for damaging the Republican case in the budget battle with the White House by complaining of being snubbed on the presidential plane, the accident-prone Mr Gingrich was sticking to his combative guns yesterday, insisting that the case was a parable of the social decay caused by the welfare state.
"What's going wrong is a welfare system which subsidised people for doing nothing; a criminal system which tolerated drug dealers; an educational system which allows kids to not learn and which rewards tenured teachers who can't teach, while destroying poor children who it traps in a process with no hope," Mr Gingrich said.
"This happened in America. It happened because for two generations we haven't had the guts to talk about right and wrong. We've talked about situation ethics. We've talked about victimisation. We've talked about our needs. We've had soap-opera-like television shows where people get on and describe the most disgusting behaviour."
That's bipartisanship? A standard that Obama has failed to live up to?
Right!
The man is a sociopath, pure and simple. And he's been a leader in the Republican Party for over 15 years now. They have become a party of sociopaths. Just look at Gingrich's fantasy revealed in these quotes about liberalism destroying America, and then look at what the GOP has just done these past three weeks, trying to obstruct a desperately needed financial stimulus package, because if the Democrats succeed in saving the country, they know that there goose will be cooked. They are the ones intent on destroying America, and they project all their destructiveness on to their political opponents. In short, they are no longer a political party in any sort of normal sense. They have become a delusional political cult.
And who is this writer who reports on Gingrich as if he were a sane and sober political figure?
Well....
John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. Avlon also served as director of speechwriting and deputy director of policy for Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign. Previously, he was a columnist for the New York Sun and served as chief speechwriter and deputy communications director for then-Mayor Giuliani.
Oh, right! Because Rudi Guiliani is such a sane and sober centrist! |
