Are the GOP numbers surging?
Too good to check? I get why the Democrats’ lead on health-care might have eroded; the GOP’s congressional leadership and righty pundits have finally started to make some noise. I get why the national security spread might have widened too; thank Dick Cheney for that. What I don’t get is the spread on ethics. Why the huge swing? Murtha’s been in trouble lately for his lobbyist sleaze but that’s hardly a major national story. Pelosi’s hedging about waterboarding probably hurt but that would seem to speak more to national security than to a classic ethical issue. Smells like Rasmussen simply might have gotten a bum sample here. Am I wrong? Convince me, please; I want to believe. Exit quotation from via Frank Fleming: “If the GOP is smart, they should build on this to create or save a political party.”
Now, I’m not going to get too excited about this until we see it replicated over time and across polling instruments. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, the results of any given poll can be junk. (It’s more complicated than that but, essentially, the probability that any given poll is completely off the charts is around 5 percent. It has to do with confidence intervals and math that only Nate Silver understands.)
Still, this result isn’t fantastically unbelievable. Yes, Bush and the Republicans made a lot of mistakes. But the Dems have had the Congress now for more than two years and the White House for several months. At some point, regardless of what they’ve inherited, they own this thing.
John Hinderaker at Powerline
dcastillo82 at Daily Kos
Now I know that Rasmussen is known for being GOP friendly, but Gallup is also showing that public support for Obama’s handling of the economy and federal spending is on the decline. Heck, even Dick Cheney is looking a little better these days. Knowing how the Republicans and Cheney conducted the last eight years, it is maddening to think that some in the population would be ready to get back into bed with them after only four months of Obama. This, coupled with the fact that Europe’s recent elections yielded victories for the center-right parties, and in some cases extreme right parties, indicates that now is not the time to be complacent. Conservatives around the world are fighting right now, and they are doing a good job of winning the message war. At least for the time being.
1 Comment
June 9, 2009 at 4:58 pm
This party will continue to remain irrelevant as long as they focus on nonsense instead of actual issues. This http://theentropyeffect.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/democratic-socialism/ is a good example of what I am refering to, and why I hope they, or another party become meaningful again soon.