I was reading this article in Politico POLITICO-GWU Poll. FYI - As far as I know Politico is not a right-wing hack, it was started by men from the Washington Post and nothing on Wikipedia talks about bias.

Anyway, the numbers: The voters are very unhappy. Here's what I find very troublesome for the Dems, BO creates a great deal of strong responses, he is highly-polarizing. Now this can be OK if your enemies hate you but more of your friend love you. With BO, that is not the case.

There are a category of responses that are called strongly agree or strongly disagree. These are your most hard-core voters and political grass-roots supporters. In two different sets of economic question Obama has four times (4X) the strongly disapproving to the strongly approving. In both cases the numbers are about 44% strongly disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy while 11% approved.

And since basically 3 out of 4 voters state the economy is their number one priority that's a big hurdle to overcome.

The economy was borked by forces that were in play long before Obama even thought of running for President. The people that blame him for the state of the economy (or give him credit for saving it) are idiots. A President is simply not that powerful.

Sure but they're the voters. Just pretty strong negatives to overcome.

Look at the President's smiling face on November 3/2012,after he's defeated
the Switch Hitter/Combo ticket of: Palin/Gingrich or Romney/Perry or Rowe/Cheney or Christy/Bush...

The 'Baggers / Birthers / "R"ecidivists Can't/Won't be able to field anybody
even the most "Foaming at the Mouth" Conservatives would support.

AND if they're crazy enough to nominate ANY of the above mentioned "Gang of
Eight" there will be a Democratic Landslide.

The American Electorate is Pissed Off AND (Most Importantly) they know where
the Blame for All Our Ills Lies.[AND it Ain't 1600 Pensylvania's current Resident!]

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'84 300SD sold
124.128

Absolutely true and it goes back further.

Clinton got credit for a balanced budget, but he was pulled kicking and screaming into passing the budget passed by a Republican Congress.

Bush2 gets blamed for the Great Recession, but it was the Democratic Congress that set the pace for the budgets of 2007 and 2008.

Now Obama reaps the wirlwind. The Republicans are doing what they should have done ten years ago, but not now. Obama gets the blame.

Keynesian economics, like communism, works great in theory. The trouble is human nature. Nobody wants to work their ass off to support a bunch of leeches, so communism doesn't work. No politician has the cajones to say "times are great, time to cut spending and build a government surplus." So Keynesian economics doesn't work.

If the US government (run by Republicans until 2006 then Democrats to 2008) had shown responsibility and cut spending from 2003 to 2008 and balanced the budget, we would have no problem running a deficit now.

The Bush bailout prolonged the suffering. It rewarded the perps and punished the victims.

Obama's bailout was totally misdirected. At a cost of 700 billion dollars, somewhere between 1.0 to 2.6 million jobs were created or saved based on Democratic claims. The best case scenario for Obama is that it cost almost $300,000 for each job, most of which are now gone.

The voters in the US are left with two choices: Vote Republican and get no results at a low cost or vote Democrat and get some results at a very high price.

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Perry could possibly win. He does the manly thing much better than Romney, and the right thinks they've found a real Texan this time.

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cmac

1986 300SDL, 351K
1984 300D, 133K

Exactly.

But it makes no difference. It's unfair, no question. But people blame the president for floods, crop failures, and wars between foreign people.

Not just this president, whomever is in office.

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'Government is like a baby:
An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and
no sense of responsibility at the other'
- Ronald Reagan

In modern history, I think only two sitting presidents managed to weather economic crisis and doom to gain a second term, FDR and Reagan, however they both shared at least one common element that President Obama does not, signs of an improving economy that they could point to on the campaign trail.

Doesn't most of the policies come from Congress basically? Short of Executive Orders, the President still needs congressional approval so he can run the best of ideas thru them but the perversion still comes from Congress. Nothing he can do about that since he is not dictator. So to blame him for no signs of an improving economy is really not a fair or correct thing. Yes, it is nice to elect some Bozo for 4 years, forget about it and expect that things are going to be good but I don't see that as reality.

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Draft Hillary.

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The Republican controlled House has an approval rating of 12%.

The fact that the Republicans have stated that their number one goal is to defeat Obama in 2012 is not helping anyone, including the Republicans.

I have spoken to hard right types that were giddy over the zero jobs growth rate since it is bad for Obama. When I pointed out that it is also bad for everyone, including them, they just laugh it off. If it brings down the US the cost will be worth it if it also brings down Obama.

How can you reason with someone who has abandoned logic?

Every group's objective is to defeat the other group whether stated or not. After all, when you go into a competition, what is your objective? To get 2nd place? Each group will feel that in the LONG TERM, their objective will be met better with some SHORT TERM sacrifice. Kinda like me going applying to college. Take a short term loss, get a long term goal.

I mean, you aren't so naive that you believe whoever gets into office has your only your best interests in mind, do you?

__________________
01 Ford Excursion Powerstroke
99 E300 Turbodiesel
91 Vette with 383 motor
05 Polaris Sportsman 800 EFI
06 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Red
03 SeaDoo GTX SC Yellow
04 Tailgator 21 ft Toy Hauler
11 Harley Davidson 883 SuperLow

I have never heard any group say that their main goal was to defeat the other party. Not jobs, which the Republicans ran on, not the economy, not making the US a better place, not anything you can name. The welfare of the American people is a distant second to the importance of defeating Obama.

During the first two years of Obama's term the Republicans decided that since they could not vote down anything that would improve the country they would shoot it down with Senate Holds. Tom Coburn (R-OK) put a hold on some bills and they were stopped dead. It worked so well he did it 326 times. And each time he said it did not matter what the bill was about (Several of them were bills that improved the lives of members of the US Military.) he was going to put a hold on anything that made Obama look good. Why? Because defeating Obama was more important to the Republicans than anything else.

In the past one party defeated another by doing a better job. For the Republicans those days are gone, and the only reason I can come up with is because they understand that they do not have the ability to do a better job. Last election they were reduced to begging for votes. After declaring that they knew they did a terrible job in the past and promising to do better in the future they begged the voters for one more chance.

They got their chance, and so far have done none of what they promised.

Now the question is: Will the Republican voters hold them accountable for their poor job performance like the Republicans begged them to do?

From what I have seen so far there is little chance of that. Apparently Republican voters expect very little out of their elected ones, but if they are happy with these folks just cashing their checks and ignoring the US then I guess I have no choice but to live with it.

But I will never understand it.

Yup.

Rs have hit on a winning formula. They refuse to entertain even slight participation with the POTUS and then use it as an indictment against him: well, of course, if he wasn't such an extremist, we might be able to work with him. After it's been said a few hundred thousand times in hundreds of settings, people begin to wonder why Obama is so inept at compromise, etc.

Nothing he could say or do would win Republican participation. Short of adopting in toto the R platform.

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cmac

1986 300SDL, 351K
1984 300D, 133K

Pooka,

Also remember that in he past, the party in majority of power, worked with the minority party. After Obama's election, the dems showed no interest in anything other than imposing their will. It was said that elections have consequences, and the dems won, so they did it their way.
Don't get all mushy about how the big bad GOP thwarted the poor dems. They may have played around the edges, but Pelossi, and Reid and Obama did not want, did not need their help, and excluded the repubs from any meaningful discussions.

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