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DC Journalists Love GOP Obstructionists, But Americans Don't
There appears to be a pretty big gap between what DC journalists think Americans think, and what Americans actually think. No better example of this can be found than the "winners" and "losers" that DC media are proclaiming in the wake of the passage of the stimulus bill, and what DailyKos/Research 2000 polling on the subject indicates.
DC opinion: It's good for the Republicans!
- MSNBC's First Read lists among its winners "the Republican Party (which demonstrated unity after its big losses in November), and No.2 House Republican Eric Cantor (who raised his profile during the debate)." Reid gets a win, Pelosi gets a loss.
- Chris Cillizza also declares Eric Cantor a victor for maintaining party discipline (although he tags him a loser too for the AFSME ad). Reid gets a "win" here too, and House Democrats are deemed losers, because "it appeared as though this was a Senate-run production."
- Fox News unsurprisingly says "Republican lawmakers may turn out to be winners. Most of them voted against the package, and in their largely unified opposition, they found an issue to galvanize the party after two consecutive dispiriting electoral defeats." Reid and Pelosi don't exist.
- Liz Sidoti also says the Republicans win: "Adrift after back-to-back electoral losses, they found their voice against a Democratic speaker and an expanded majority. They held to the GOP's cornerstone of fiscal conservatism as they led the effort to define the package as too costly and too quick." Likewise, Jon Boehner: "He strengthened his hold on his job, keeping his rank-and-file united against the House version." Again, Reid gets a win. She gives Pelosi and Mitch McConnell losses.
According to Daily Kos polling, however, the change in public opinion from a poll taken from Feb. 2-5 to the latest one taken from Feb. 9-12 indicates that Pelosi, Reid and the Democratic Party have actually gone up in public approval -- all had a net change of +2 points, while the Congressional Dems scored a +3. Conversely, Republicans went down -- the Republican Party had a net change of -2, while McConnell, Boehner and Congressional Republicans all had a loss of -3.
And if you go back to the beginning of the year and track how the public is viewing the political situation in Washington DC, the changes are even more dramatic:
Pelosi and the Democratic Party are the big winners, scoring a +5. Congressional Dems score a +3, and Reid has actually lost two points.
But contrary to beltway opinion, the Republicans are getting hammered. While the Republican Party has only had a net change of -2, those directly involved in the stimulus battle are taking huge hits: McConnell and Boehner at -11, and the Congressional Republicans who are getting such applause from the beltway denizens score a -10.
As Markos notes:
The supposedly hated "San Francisco Liberal" Nancy Pelosi not only has the only net-positive favorability rating of the bunch, but she has a net favorability advantage of 40 points over her hapless and clueless Republican counterpart. The 18-point gap in the net favorability ratings in the Senate leadership is less dramatic, but still significant. Especially since Democrats are stuck with the ineffective Harry Reid as their leader.
The "Reid wins, Pelosi loses" narrative only seems to stick with people who believe what Joe Lieberman thinks matters.
And what about those cherished "independents" that Davids Brooks and Broder always claim to speak for? Congressional Republicans have only a 15% favorability rating, with a 70% disapproval rating. (You can find the crosstabs here.) I eagerly await columns from both reflecting this irrefutable consensus that by anyone's measure falls well outside the margin of error.
DC lives in an economic bubble and remains largely insulated from the troubles hitting the rest of the country. No matter who is in power, no matter who is on the receiving end of taxpayer largesse, the money finds its way there. Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in VA and Howard County MD (where lobbyists and contractor beneficiaries of the defense/homeland security boon of the past 8 years live) are the top three wealthiest counties in the country, and seven more DC suburbs chart in the top 20.
The people who live in DC, who pretend to speak for the rest of the country, have no direct experience with what is happening there -- and their attempts to handicap DC politics have more to do with the inside baseball games that seek to protect their own interests above all else. The fact that three and a half million Americans will have jobs as a result of the passage of this bill, or that people who are unemployed or living on food stamps will continue to be able to eat, doesn't seem to graze their analyses.
The American public looked at DC, they saw the Democrats trying to do something, and they liked what they saw. People who are deeply worried about staying employed and taking care of their families do not seem to have the universal high regard for House Republicans who stood together to oppose helping them out that the DC establishment do.
16 Comments so far
Show AllNot to defend the Democrats, who are mostly craven, feckless, and corrupt, I feel pity for anyone who has not figured out by now that virtually all Republican politicians are kooks, crackpots, or crooks, or some combination of the three.
It is simpler than that.
The republicans want to starve government of funds until there are NO funds.
Tax cuts are an effective way to systematically starve government to death.
The dems took the bait once again.
kivals____You were too complimentary to the Repugnant politicians. How about also fools, liars, hypocrites, robots, warmongers, party hacks, etc. At least the Dems are making some effort to save the country, while the Repugs are making every effort to continue destroying it.
I still like using the expression "liars, thieves, and whores" to describe republicans.
Unfortunately, you are correct about the Dems. They need to find out where their spines are hidden.
q
The term, "humanitarian Republican," is an oxymoron. That party has never, to my knowledge tried to help the poor and needy. That there are SO MANY who cling to that kind of conservatism astonishes me. The late uncle of my former wife was a Republican in a rural community. Those who knew him used to jest, "Morris, you don't make enough money to be a Republican!" He never swerved, died intestate. May we all be protected from Republicans.
qblman February 17th, 2009 12:31 pm, there were once 'liberal' Republicans such as Jacob Javits, John Lindsay, Edward Brooke, and Margaret Chase Smith, who cared about poverty and the lot of the indigent, but that was over 35 years ago, 'pre-Reagan'.
Today's Nixon-Reagan-Atwater-Rove-Bush-Cheney-Abramoff-Norquist-Coulter-Limbaugh-Fox News GOP has been purged of dissident voices (except Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both senators from Maine) -- they are all a bunch of corrupt, twisted neocons now.
I do not understand why, in all the hoo-ha about "bi-partisanship", no one has reminded the Republicans of their ramming through legislation for the past 8 years, and their lack of bi-partisanship then. Apparently, in their language, bi-partisanship means doing what they want. The media does not appear to understand this, either.
dude/dudette, during the bush era, repubs never had a big enuff majority to 'ram' thru anything.
everything the repubs did during bush, they had plenty o' helpin' from your sainted democrats.
correct me if i'm wrong somebody, i deliberately lose track of this kind of stuff, but during w's 1st two years, dems had the majority in the senate. and for the next 4 yrs, repubs only had the slimmest of majorities in the senate, which they then lost.
and none of it mattered.
But Republicants know how tough it is to put food on your family.
Just two faces of the same old AIPAC sock puppet.
Jane Hamsher wrote:"DC lives in an economic bubble and remains largely insulated from the troubles hitting the rest of the country. No matter who is in power, no matter who is on the receiving end of taxpayer largesse, the money finds its way there."
I am occasionally entertained by paying attention to the initial release of some right-wing talking point or question-that's-really-a-statement and then clicking around the cable news stations to see how long it takes until every anchor/pundit/reporter/analyst has adopted it as his or her own. I've never had to wait more than four hours before the Chris Cillizza's and the John Harwoods, the Andrea Mitchell's and the Chuck Todd's are obediently wondering aloud if the average American will really be helped by Obama's pork-filled stimulus package, reasserting that America is inherently a center-right nation dedicated to the miracle of a free market economy, or resharpening the old saw that at least Bush's policies helped keep us safe from terrorists, except 9/11, (But they never add those last two words, of course.) The Big Media, in both DC and New York, is run and populated by wealthy elites or yuppie wannabes who lust after GOP tax cuts and are, indeed, entirely insulated from the way most of the country lives. On the few times they venture out from their offices, such as during primaries, they avoid the locals as much as possible but, on those times when they are forced to deal with the rabble, they do so with the same affably-smiling regard someone might use for a circus freak show -- then retire to their hotel and motel rooms to aristocratically tap out gleeful emails about how dumb these rubes really are and snicker like school girls over the regional cuisine and dress.
Like the Republicans, they are incredible hypocrites peddling a product which they know doesn't work, and reading copy they know isn't true, but they don't care -- they are 'insiders' who delude themselves into thinking they won't sink with the rest of the ship.
I will exempt some of the lower-ranking bubbleheads at Fox News and the various beauty contestant entrants at some of the other news outlets -- these people wear boots to avoid the challenge of shoe laces.
i fail to see what this article has to do with anything. omg, fox news says repubs won in the end! politico calls reid a winner and pelosi a loser!
who gives a crap? this is the kind of inside the beltway chatter (speaking as one who lives inside that beltway) that 99.99% of the population could care less about b/c it's meaningless.
"who gives a crap? this is the kind of inside the beltway chatter (speaking as one who lives inside that beltway) that 99.99% of the population could care less about b/c it's meaningless."
If only that were genuinely true. Unfortunately, it is not, and many Americans still listen to this crap, and still want to believe it.
rush limbaughs taint February 17th, 2009 10:39 pm, my advice is to move as soon as possible and avoid the coming deluge. Years of all of those political animals pissing outside the tent will cause the Potomac to overflow its banks any day now.
Besides, who wants to reside within some politician's 'beltway' anyhoo? (Well, unless you happen to be a treatment for crabs.) Damp, sweaty, wrinkled, smelly, with festering pus-filled sores -- and that's just Mitch McConnell's office!
Move before it's too late!
History is repeating itself. In 1932, FDR defeated Hoover by a pretty comfortable margin. At that time, FDR was brand new to the national scene and people had no idea of what kind of president he would be. Once Americans had a chance to see Roosevelt in action, through his First Hundred Days, and then his First Four Years, FDR was re-elected in 1936 by what was then the greatest landslide in American history. Obama is following the same trajectory. As in Roosevelt's time, people are now seeing what a great president we have in the White House, and what Damn Fool Obstructionist Destructionists the Republicans are. Following the same path, Obama won comfortably in 2008, and he is now on track to be re-elected in 2012 with an overwhelming rout of the GOP.
Please visit my Blog: "Conservatives Are America's Real Terrorists"
http://conservativesarecommunistss.blogspot.com/
CJP February 18th, 2009 1:17 am, I think you may just be right. Every time Obama speaks he makes the carping righties look like a bunch of ignorant toads and the usual neocon flag-waving and defamation tricks just aren't working anymore.
I think the biggest problem the GOP has is that they have run out of credibility, run out of ideas, run out of answers, and, most of all, in deadly serious times they don't seem to be taking what's happening to the country seriously. IMO, they'll become the minority party of the rural south for generations to come -- might as well just change the name to the Confederate Republicans of America Party now, and then they'd have an appropriate new acronym -- CRAP.