Here’s good news. The president’s popularity is no longer in the stratosphere, and his policies are particularly unpopular:
When Gallup asked whether we should be spending more or less in the economic stimulus, by close to 3-to-1 margin voters said it is better to have spent less than to have spent more. When asked whether we are adding too much to the deficit or spending too little to improve the economy, by close to a 3-to-2 margin voters said that we are adding too much to the deficit.
Support for the stimulus package is dropping from narrow majority support to below that. There is no sense that the stimulus package itself will work quickly, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, close to 60% said it would make only a marginal difference in the next two to four years. Rasmussen data shows that people now actually oppose Mr. Obama’s budget, 46% to 41%. Three-quarters take this position because it will lead to too much spending. And by 2-to-1, voters reject House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for a second stimulus package.
Good. I hope that the Maine Mushheads and Arlen Spector end up regretting their stimulus support.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jen Rubin has a related piece over at PJM on the end of the honeymoon, but I thought that this comment really stood out in terms of incandescent asininity. And note that it doesn’t even have much to do with the topic: it’s an all-purpose turd for any punchbowl:
To all Republicans and Conservatives:
Please leave. Please just pack your stuff, your bibles, your guns, your racism, your intolerance, your greed, and your ignorance and leave. Africa is a great place for you, or perhaps South or Central America. I mean, isn’t that your dream scenario? Low taxes, all business, who cares if your surroundings are crap as long as you are getting paid?
You people must go. You live in a fantasy world devoid of any rational thought outside your own myopia. You think you “work so hard”. Most of you are completely full of **it. The only reason you haven’t lost your jobs (yet) or your home, is because thus far, you are lucky. You didn’t make any “wise” or omnipotent decisions that separate you from “all the losers who are losing their homes”. The housing market is over inflated everywhere. You didn’t, “stay within your means any more than anyone else”. You are so completely narcissistic that you think you are still safe because you are smarter, or work harder, or are somehow intrinsically better. You aren’t. You are greedy, ingnorant, and very “un-American”.
It doesn’t get any smarter after that.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Maybe this explains the fall in the polls. Frank J. says that Barack Obama is simply too awesome:
Before you grab the pitchforks and label me an apostate, hear me out. Now I am an enlightened individual who fully understands and appreciates President Obama (pbuh), but can we expect the same from other countries with non-Obama leaders? Those people have never produced a person like Obama, not to mention elected him, so it is natural for them to be scared and intimidated by someone so beyond their understanding. To them, meeting Obama must be like encountering Jesus riding a dinosaur — both reassuring and intimidating at the same time. It’s natural they’ll be confused.
Just look at the British reaction to Obama’s meeting with Gordon Brown. They seem to think their prime minister was snubbed by not getting the special reception they had become accustomed to when the troglodyte Bush was dictator. Many British reporters were also angry how Obama seemed hesitant to answer many questions. Such nonsense shows that the British are still stuck in pre-Obama thinking. Of course the unrefined Bush would make a big deal of meeting foreign leaders; to that simpleton, it must have been like being visited by advanced aliens. It would be silly for Obama, though, to act like it is an honor to meet with other countries’ non-Obama leaders, or for him to hold the pretense that speaking with them would give him knowledge he did not already possess. He is Obama; the British should not worry if Obama is listening, because he already understands their needs better than they do. As for the British press, they must learn to be more like the American press, which already knows there is no reason to question Obama. Obama is aware of what we need to know and when we need to know it, so there is no reason for the formality of questions. We simply must sit and wait for his wisdom, but the British have yet to come to that understanding. Also, it wouldn’t hurt if in the future they brought offerings of gold and silver.
It’s a trenchant analysis.
More from Jen Rubin, on Barack Obama’s liberal petri dish:
that’s apparently what the country is from Obama’s perspective – a liberal petri dish to grow the New Deal II. But the economy is not a political science lab experiment for most elected leaders and certainly not for voters who simply want things to get better. So why doesn’t the administration listen to these worried Democrats, the Republicans (who are still offering bipartisan solutions), and the “soured” punditocracy which is increasingly frustrated with the president?
This reminds me of the old joke from the Soviet Union. A teacher is instructing her students in Marxism, and one of them raises his hand and asks, “Is it true that Karl Marx was a scientist?”
“Oh, yes,” the teacher replied. “He was the greatest scientist in the history of mankind.”
“Well, then why didn’t he try this crap on rats first?”