The favorite American past time. I sometimes find myself defending Bush just because I feel kind of sorry for the man. I know that makes me a Bushbot but the recent approval numbers are not good.
Bush was up to about 40 on his approval rating a week or so aga, now he is down to about 35. Of course as always the numbers are all over the place ranging from 31 to 45 in the last few weeks, but over all the trend is down since the election. Rasmussen has him at 41.
Why? Iraq? Maybe. But then again it might be that Republicans are blaming Bush for the loss of the election. Over at JOM someone told me it was Bush's fault the GOP lost because he should have held their feet to the fire and made them act like conservatives because he is their leader.
Bush is not the CEO of Congress. The Congress made their Contract with America years before George Bush came to Washington from Texas where he had been known as a compassionate conservative. He could and did work with Democrats and his attitudes toward issues like education and immigration were well known. No, the Republicans in Congress do not work for Bush, they work for the People and the People fired them. As often happens.
Now the issue of immigration is raising its ugly head again and as AJ notes, these hardliners are just not getting it. After destroying the gains Bush had made in terms of the hispanic vote and alienating moderates they are trying to throw their weight around. That ship sailed, they should have come up with a tough compromise when they had the votes.
Who hurt who? Did Bush hurt Congress or was it the other way around? Well right before the election Hastert and Pelosi both had approval ratings lower than Bush's are now. What does that tell you?
Bush's numbers may have a chance of going up if he can find away to create a bipartisan consensus on the issues that face the country and if there is a sense of some stability coming to Iraq.
Right now people are more interested in stability than they are in democracy. Right now people just want some good news for a change.
5 comments:
Sailer's got a lovely theory there. It's a shame that all three Tancretins ran second, otherwise some actual validation of his would exist.
I wonder why in the world immigration ran a distant fifth in the exit polls?
I think it's interesting what Webb said about the immigration issue. He said it was made up of three distinct parts: border security, guest worker program, and what to do about the illegals who are already here.
Webb said the three should not be conflated and that the best way to deal with the immigration issue was to deal with the parts separately.
And the first part that needs to be solved is, ahem, border security. Accomplish that, THEN tackle the other issues.
FWIW, that was the Democrat who said that, and won.
I think it was about tone myself. So many of the hardliners just turned people off.
In other words people responded to Bush's speech on immigration because he talked about border security and comprehensive reform. But when the hardliners refused any compromise I think they just pissed people off because I think most people felt that there was basic agreement that something needed to be done and the Tancredo people were actually obstructing the process because they had to have everything their way.
And then they got so ugly about it, it turned people off.
It just became one more thing they could not get it together to do.
Coisty:
The Minute Men lost in their own neck of the woods, they were wiped out. Finit.
syl:
There was never any doubt the wall and the border would be first. It is just a wall, a barrier..the kinds of programs they are talking about would take time to set up.
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