The Left Turns Off Obama

by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann at Townhall.com

While the smoke rises from the Capitol building where the health care debate proceeds, Obama is losing his political base on the left.

His decision to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an odd move for a peace candidate, his failure to close Guantanamo, our continued military presence in Iraq, and his failure to act on liberal priorities like gays in the military and immigration reform are all sapping his support from those who voted for him.

And, even in the health care debate, the under-30 voters are learning that they are targeted — just like the elderly — for special punishment in Obama’s health care bill. When they realize that they must spend $15,000 on average per family for health insurance or face a fine of 2.5 percent of their income or go to prison, the bill loses its appeal. And, when they find out how shallow the subsidies are (only after they spend 8 percent of their paychecks if their household income is $45,000 a year and 12 percent if it is $65,000), they begin to turn off both the bill and the president for whom they were once so enthusiastic.

Then there is the loss of popularity that has nothing to do with ideology. It all begins with unemployment. While voters still believe by 50-42 (Rasmussen) that George W. Bush is more at fault than Obama for the economy, Bush is not on the ballot. The high jobless rate nurtures a belief that Obama doesn’t really know what he is doing. This discontent need not take the form of ideological opposition to the stimulus package or the deficit spending. It can merely be a sense that things aren’t going right.

And then come the adjectives. Voters are increasingly complaining that Obama is weak, vacillates, does not keep his promises, spends too much time on other priorities than jobs and seems egotistical.

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Mr President, this isn’t the change Americans wanted!

Just ask them!

Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50 years

from by Toby Harnden at telegraph.co.uk

The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.

His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.

The bad polling news came as Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail to prevent his Democratic party losing two governorships next month in states in which he defeated Senator John McCain in last November’s election.

Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: “The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.

“Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent.”

Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey is in severe danger of defeat while Democrats are fast losing hope that Creigh Deeds can beat his Republican opponent in Virginia. Twin Democratic losses would be a major blow to Mr Obama’s prestige.

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Support for Health Care Plan Falls Back To Pre-Speech Levels

Last week President Obama delivered his lie-laden speech to Congress in an effort to regain ground lost in his campaign for a government takeover of our nation’s health care system. Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) correctly pointed out the President’s lie that Obamacare wouldn’t cover illegal aliens, but was attacked by Democrats and the MSM for speaking the truth.

The speech and the coordinated Democrat/media attack on Congressman Wilson seemed to have its intended effects for the first few days. But now things are falling back into place as the American people once again refuse to be deceived by the Democratic demagoguery of conservative Republicans who point out the truth about Obama’s bid to hand control of life and death decisions over to government bureaucrats.

From RasmussenReports.com

Following President Obama’s speech to Congress last week, support for his health care reform plan increased steadily to a peak of 51% yesterday. However, the bounce appears to be over. The latest daily tracking shows that support has fallen all the way back to pre-speech levels. Forty-five percent (45%) of all voters nationwide now favor the plan while 52% are opposed. A week ago, 44% supported the proposal and 53% were opposed. (see day-by-day numbers). The latest figures show that 23% Strongly Favor the plan and 41% are Strongly Opposed.

The President can lie all he wants now. It appears the American people aren’t buying his bull anymore!

Even silence can’t him help now

Update: New low for Obama approval–9/1/09

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Late last month, we indicated President Obama might help himself by backing off the health care debate. That was back when he was at the forefront, staging town hall meetings with planted questions from children of supporters. It was a little over a month after his ABC infomercial from the White House. It was around the time Democratic leaders in Congress were calling those of us who opposed the bill un-American and just before the White House asked supporters to turn in Obamacare opponents.

Obama’s poll numbers showed a slight uptick when his administration floated a trial balloon for health care reform without a public option, but a threatened mutiny from his far left base quickly shot that down. He then went back to a full court press, insisting there would be a public option and introducing the idea of using the “nuclear option” (a procedural technique for getting around the need for 60 votes in the US Senate) for the first time. Basically he went from trying to sell his plan to telling Americans if they didn’t buy it, he’d cram it down their throats.

No, the President didn’t drop back and punt. In fact, he didn’t drop back at all until last week when he took his family on a millionaire’s retreat on posh Martha’s Vineyard. With Obama in search of a “news free week,” health care almost dropped from the headlines. But it may have been too late.

Yesterday, Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll showed Obama with his lowest overall approval rating among likely voters since taking office. With only 46% supporting the President and 53% disapproving of the job he’s done thus far, one might infer the quiet period came too late. Americans have now recognized this man will lie without conscience to get what he wants.

A majority of likely voters have finally realized Obama’s change wasn’t what they had in mind last November.

When will he learn?

We don’t want government run health care!

Rasmussen’s Presidential Approval Index has Obama hitting his lowest point ever today!

Obama Approval Continues Decline

Today’s Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll numbers are out and things aren’t looking too rosy for our Socialist President and his policies.  Last month we saw Obama’s Presidential Approval Index^* reach zero for the first time since taking office, then go negative.  Today marks yet another first for the President–the first time the Index has remained negative for 3 consecutive days.

After dipping to new lows last month, the President received a boost for several days that sent the Index well into positive territory.  The Index spiked following Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo early last month and rose as high as +9 immediately after his deceptive announcement that he would implement a pay-as-you-go system in his administration.  But the public couldn’t be fooled long as the true effects of his policies continued to come to light.

The CBO announced his health care plan would cover fewer and cost more than Obama led the country to believe.   Iran erupted in a wave of pro-democracy demonstrations and the President responded with silence, then ambivalence, and then only half-hearted support for the repressed freedom seekers.   These events led to the erosion of the President’s approval and the Index again began slipping.

The bad news for Obama outweighed the events that helped him last month.  The GOP stumbled and Obama’s numbers temporarily recovered when Senator Ensign (R-NV) and Governor Sanford (R-SC) admitted to betraying their wives.  And after ABC donated airtime to help Obama sell his Socialist policies to the American public, the Index perked up a bit for the President.  But these gifts weren’t enough in the end to bring a halt to the downward trend of Americans approval for the Socialist President.

I’ve updated the trend lines based on Rasmussen’s data and you can see the new graphs below.  You can see the Strongly Approve/Disapprove lines have now crossed.  The overall Approve/Disapprove lines have drawn slightly closer together.  Last month’s lines predicted convergence around the 228^th day of Obama’s presidency.  This month’s updated lines now indicate those who approve will equal those who disapprove on the 208^th day.

With the battle over health care reform coming up and Cap & Trade legislation now in the hands of the Senate, it’s important for conservative Republicans in Congress to keep up the pressure to maintain our momentum.  Though we don’t yet have the upper hand, we’re gaining ground.  Let’s keep it that way.

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^*Rasmussen’s Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of those who Strongly Disapprove of the President’s job performance from those who Strongly Approve.

John Allison III Cabot, AR US
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Obama’s Approval Ratings Falling

The latest Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll shows Americans are waking up to the fact that President Obama is leading us down the road to ruin.  Though the MSM still showers him with praises and makes every effort to cast him in a good light, his numbers are slipping.  Today’s numbers have 34% strongly approving of the President’s performance and 34% strongly disapproving.  These numbers are a far cry from the 44% to 16% margin he enjoyed the day he took office.

Mike’s America has a great post on this where he digs a little deeper and has some issue-specific numbers as well.  I went ahead and plotted the data in Excel and did the math to find the trend lines to compare.  These first two graphs are just plots of raw data from Rasmussen.  The first compares those who strongly approve vs. those who strongly disapprove for the first 136* days of Obama’s presidency.  The second compares all who approve, not necessarily stronger, vs. all who disapprove over the same period.

I did a regression to find the line that best estimates the data in the two graphs above and plotted these trend lines in the next two graphs.

It’s obvious from the graphs that, if the trends continue, Obama won’t long be enjoying the approval of a majority of Americans.  In fact, around his 228^th day, those who approve and those who disapprove of the President’s performance will each make up 50% of the US population unless he can turn things around.  That should be somewhere in the neighborhood of Labor Day.  We’ll keep an eye on Rasmussen’s poll to see what happens.

If he doesn’t put the brakes on this downward plunge in his approval ratings, we can infer the President misjudged the American people’s willingness to accept his Socialist change.

John Allison III Cabot, AR US
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*Though this data covers the first 136 days of the Obama presidency, only 135 data points are present because polling was not conducted on Mother’s Day.

Poll: How should the Republican Party proceed?

After the crushing defeat in last month’s election, most agree the GOP needs to reorient itself. The overwhelming Democratic victory signals an utter lack of trust in the Republican Party on the part of the American electorate.

Bloggers everywhere are voicing their opinions on both cause and cure for the illness that has befallen the party and these opinions vary from one extreme to the other. Some claim Conservatism has failed and cannot be revived, others claim the party must return to its core principles, and still others believe the remedy lies somewhere in between.

If you’ve read my previous posts, you’re probably already aware of my position. But, I thought I’d leave it up to readers of this blog to have their say. Please answer the poll question in the upper right hand corner to give your input.

I’ll run one of these polls each week, later addressing specific issues. Feel free to comment on this post to elaborate on your position or suggest future poll questions.