Posted on 08/01/2011 11:29:38 PM PDT by lbryce
By rights, Barack Obama should be emerging as the big political winner in the debt ceiling debate. For months, he’s positioned himself near the center of public opinion, leaving Republicans to occupy the rightward flank. Poll after poll suggests that Americans prefer the president’s call for a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to the Republican Party’s anti-tax approach. Poll after poll shows that House Republicans, not Obama, would take most of the blame if the debt ceiling weren’t raised.
Yet the president’s approval ratings have been sinking steadily for weeks, hitting a George W. Bush-esque low of 40 percent in a recent Gallup survey. The voters incline toward Obama on the issues, still like him personally and consider the Republican opposition too extreme. But they are increasingly judging his presidency a failure anyway.
The administration would no doubt blame this judgment on the steady stream of miserable economic news. But it should save some of the blame for its own political approach. Ever since the midterms, the White House’s tactics have consistently maximized President Obama’s short-term advantage while diminishing his overall authority. Call it the “too clever by half” presidency: the administration’s maneuvering keeps working out as planned, but Obama’s position keeps eroding.
Start with the first round of deficit debates this winter. After the Republican sweep, the White House seemed to have two options: double down on Keynesian stimulus or pivot to the center and champion deficit reduction. Instead, Obama chose to hover above the fray, passing on his own fiscal commission’s recommendations and letting the Republicans make the first move.
The strategy worked, in a sense. Goaded by the president’s evasiveness, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans put forward a detailed long-term budget proposal of their own, whose Medicare cuts proved predictably unpopular.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No fork yet, there’s more cooking ahead for Zero.
No, poll after liberal poll may have shown that, given the loaded questions the NYT fed the idiots they polled.
Do not confuse what NYC believes with what the US believes. Quite different.
More of the Big Lie. So says the liberal asshats at the NYT.
Let's all remember that Obummer was the one to blow up the stupid Boner compromise talks when he asked for massive tax increases. That moved him to the left of Reid and the Senate Rats for crying out loud. The jig is up. Obummers radicalism and incompetence is on display now for all to see. No one is buying anymore.
We’ll see how events play out. But when we get to next year’s campaign, the Obamabots will not be able to portray this debt ceiling thing as some Profile in Courage in presidential leadership. Heck even lotsa liberals are mad at him, both for the results, and because he didn’t take the bull by the horns.
The polling right now for Obama among moderate and independent voters is alarming for the Obamabots. His base is unenthusiastic, but will turn out to vote for him on Nov. 6, 2012. But election related matters such as fundraising and get out the vote drives will not be done with the same enthusiasm, or the same number of people, in 2012 as they did in 2008 for Obama.
The Obammunist appoints a blue ribbon committee to take the heat on proposed economic legislation. Then he tells them to pound sand.
The NYSlimes this is a positive for The Kenyan?
yitbos
Any way they spin it, Obama = EPIC FAIL!
Obama is the compleat idiot.
com·pleat
[kuhm-pleet]
–adjective
highly skilled and accomplished in all aspects; complete; total: the compleat actor, at home in comedy and tragedy.
I heard a snatch of some KGO-radio show this evening in which they were discussing (in the context of the debt-reduction legislation) why BO hadn’t accomplished anything. I cringed as I heard the callers chime in about how BO was “so intelligent” and “I really like him” and the host was raising questions about how BO had started out with so much, “we gave PRESIDENT! [BO] the White House, we gave PRESIDENT! [BO] both houses of Congress, and yet he hasn’t really accomplished anything.”
I suspect all these headlines of Obama being defeated are deliberately being planted to try to give the GOP the ownership of the economy between now and the 2012 elections.
There's no way he'll get the percentage of his secure voters out this time. The extent and intensity of that effort just cannot be duplicated.
Why does the NY Times still pretend Obama is a moderate? What shills
Can we ban newsprint yet??
Obama has been tirelessly huckstering himself, whereas George W. Bush didn’t really try to make himself appealing to the American people in his second term. For Obama to end up in the same doghouse as Bush in spite of great effort, has to say something.
Their political barometer is their newsroom staff. Obama would be about “center” to them.
Not to mention the voter ID laws being added across the country. Should reduce the dead and illegal votecounts.
he isn’t a president he is a cumunity organizer and Ayers Buddy.
Could be.
But I am actually starting to think that certain portions of the media apparat have realized that Obama is a lame duck and are trying to cut ties with him in time to line up behind a primary challenger — which would have to be Hillary, although Sanders is trying to make a splash now in the hope of gaining some traction.
I expect the damage to Obama because of this is a lot more subtle than we as Conservatives can understand because it reflects deeply on what passes as Liberal core values, which are inexplicable to anyone who does not view the world through their lenses.
“FAIL”
Very succinct and very apt.
I love your posts. ;o)
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