Category: Republicans

According to Rasmussen polling:

For the first time in recent years, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports. The GOP holds double-digit advantages on five of them.

Granted that this is Rasmussen, not the most credible source. But as they note, even they haven’t found this much Republican lean in years.

49 to 35% on economic issues
54 to 31% on national security
50 to 31% on Iraq
33 to 29% on government ethics
46% to 40 on health care
50% to 35% on taxes
43% to 38% on eductation
45% to 37% on Social Security?

Etc… Oh, and on healthcare?

Separate polling released today shows 49% of voters nationwide say that passing no health care reform bill this year would be better than passing the plan currently working its way through Congress.

Trying to pass an unclear dog’s breakfast, easily demonized, instead of something clear, has had its cost.

And it takes real talent to be less trusted on social security, considering Bush tried to privatize it not so long ago.

On the generic Congressional ballot, Republicans are now favored 42% to 37%. No wonder the Democratic Congress is becoming less and less willing to follow Obama’s lead. He may not have to face voters till 2012, most of them will be staring down the barrel of voter discontent in 2010.

But the worst number is this: 73% of GOP voters nationwide think Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their voting base.

In other words, Democrats are right. Republicans aren’t trusted. It’s just that Democrats are trusted even less.

Trust is earned. By making the economy work for banks and not for Americans; by refusing to put through a clean health care bill; by repeatedly not coming through on campaign promises and by not providing a clear alternative to Republicans, Democrats have lost the trust of Americans.

If Democrats want to turn this around they should simply start doing what they should have always done. Break up the big banks, institute real bankruptcy reform and other help for real Americans, pass a medicare-for-all bill, get out of Afghanistan and push through a real and effective stimulus bill immediately paid for it with a tax on America’s rich.

If not, as I’ve been saying for some time, they will pay a heavy price in 2010. Americans expect results for them, not mealy mouthed platitudes, trillions for the rich and broken promises.

Dave Johnson’s got an excellent piece up in which he points out that laughing at the right is stupid. They’re doing now exactly what they did to Clinton in the 90’s, and it worked then.

In fact they’re back to being as crazy and paranoid as they were when Clinton was President. Remember the accusations that Clinton and Hillary were murderers, that Hillary personally killed Vince Foster, that Clinton ran a drug-smuggling operation out of an airstrip, that he was looking through FBI files, that he fired the travel office to put a cousin in, that he “sold” plots in Arlington cemetery, that he held up runway traffic to get a $500 haircut, that he used cocaine in the White House, that he hung obscene ornaments on the White House Christmas tree and the other fabrications that came daily?

We laughed then, too, and how did that work out? They took over the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they started wars. They tortured people. They appointed corporate lobbyists to run every agency. They filled the courts with Federalist Society judges that rule for the corporations and religious right every time. They stole billions…

Let me add two more facts:

For ordinary people, the economy is never going to fully recover, ever (well, not in the next 4 years anyway). The administration’s own numbers show this, with an overoptimistic model that assumes tax cuts will have the average effect of the last thirty years, rather than the effect they had when Bush did them (a big fat flop). But even if you don’t think they’re overoptimistic, it doesn’t matter. Again, their own numbers show employment will not recover before the next recession.
Obama and co. are doing a huge giveaway to the richest people in America. By the time they’re done it will probably be as large or larger than anything Bush did. Since it will not work in the sense of helping ordinary people enough, it will be used by Republicans to fuel populist rage. Sure, that’s hypocritical, but does that matter? We all know it doesn’t.

So I’m with Dave. Enjoy mocking Republicans all you want, but in your cold hard calculating heart, take them very very seriously.

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Republicans

Republicans Now More Trusted than Democrats on Every Issue

Just the Facts, Ma’am