It Doesn't Mean What You Think
Our dear friend Brother Hinderaker has made note of something that, astonishingly, has gotten zero coverage in the Enemy Media: the Democrat-led 110th Congress is both less popular than President Bush and as unpopular as its Republican predecessor:
I was thinking about how these numbers could be spun on the commute this morning. The most obvious interpretation is the one Rocketman came up with:
I'd love to believe that, but there's one thing getting in the way of such comforting thoughts: The Democrats didn't have a positive agenda during last year's mid-term election campaign, either. Or in 2004, or 2002, or 2000. The last time that party had a coherent agenda of any kind, much less one they could publicly tout without risking political suicide, was Bill Clinton's 1992 "Putting People First" manifesto; and as you'll recall, it was an utter fraud that didn't last ten minutes beyond George H.W. Bush's concession speech, and was replaced by Hillary's borderline Stalinism. After that bait & switch produced the first Republican Congress since mid-century, the Clinton presidency became a substanceless personality cult masking the undiminished extremism of the party from which it parasitically leeched its political life force.
When Mr. Bill slithered off into the netherworld that spawned him and his dimwitted understudy got his reason for existing ripped from his man-tit-bedecked chest, that radicalism crystalized and metastasized into a six-year paroxysm of mass, unmasked, Ameriphobic, partisan rage. A spectacle so overpowering that many of us believed it rendered the Democrats unelectable until they left it behind and started following Joe Lieberman's honorable example of what a "loyal opposition" used to be.
Until last November, when that paroxysm of mass, unmasked, Ameriphobic, partisan rage was finally rewarded with victory at the ballot box.
After that election, I did some brutal reassessing of where the American political landscape truly lay. Clearly it would be petulant excuse-making to dismiss the majority that went with the Donks as "stupid" or "gullible." Not only is that meme intellectually lazy, but it is inevitably two-edged, as the next time the GOP wins (if there is a next time) you can then hardly say that the voters "came to their senses". What you're left with is an endless series of periodic bouts of temporary mass insanity. It's incoherent, and besides that, it's just silly.
Instead, I took several deep breaths and admitted the possibility that the American people - whether through Dem persuasion or the GOP's inability to sell its policies or the Bushies' refusal to defend itself, or just to shut the Donks up - knowingly and willfully turned the the Left. Knowingly and willfully chosen tax increases, runaway federal spending, geysers of earmarks, an orgy of corruption, economic decline, endless anti-Bush/anti-GOP scandalmongering, and, of course, surrender in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism and the meek acceptance of dhimmitude and/or death at the Islamists' hands.
I appear to be in the minority on the center-right in that realization. But I see no logical alternative explanation for how the Democrats could have been restored to power after the seditious, treasonous, despicable display they've put on throughout the Bush years. I see no possible way that the voters could have been fooled into voting the way they did. It had to be an endorsement of what the Democrat party has become - in Hinderaker's words, "hardcore haters." Hatreds that a majority of Americans now share.
So, then, how do I explain how that Democrat Congress could be as unpopular as its GOP predecessor this quickly? Let me put my reply in the former of a few questions: Has the war been defunded? Have Bush and Cheney been impeached? Has the last helicopter lifted off from the Baghdad green zone with Iranian tanks right behind it?
These are the things the Democrats were elected to accomplish, the instant they had power back in their grubby little hands. It's almost three months later, and none of them have been done. All there's been is empty, flailingly half-hearted anti-war posturing and scheming while "the surge" surges on in Iraq, inexorably quelling the sectarian violence just as the Islamist "insurgency" was crushed before it. The Bush White House is being harassed, but the Conyers Committee hasn't begun its impeachment inquiry. And domestic stalinization languishes on the back-burner.
Maybe the voters got fooled last fall and Gallup is picking up a lot of scales from a lot of opened eyes. Or maybe voters knew exactly what they were doing and are mad that they're not getting what they voted for.
The modest uptick in approval of the job being done by Congress has dissipated for the most part after only two months.
According to Gallup's monthly update on job approval of Congress - in a March 11-14, 2007, national poll - 28% of Americans approve of the job being done by Congress and 64% disapprove.
I was thinking about how these numbers could be spun on the commute this morning. The most obvious interpretation is the one Rocketman came up with:
I attribute this to the fact that the Democrats have no positive agenda. They patently have no interest in doing the people's business, and, similarly, show no interest in appealing to any element of the electorate other than the hard-core haters who form their base.
I'd love to believe that, but there's one thing getting in the way of such comforting thoughts: The Democrats didn't have a positive agenda during last year's mid-term election campaign, either. Or in 2004, or 2002, or 2000. The last time that party had a coherent agenda of any kind, much less one they could publicly tout without risking political suicide, was Bill Clinton's 1992 "Putting People First" manifesto; and as you'll recall, it was an utter fraud that didn't last ten minutes beyond George H.W. Bush's concession speech, and was replaced by Hillary's borderline Stalinism. After that bait & switch produced the first Republican Congress since mid-century, the Clinton presidency became a substanceless personality cult masking the undiminished extremism of the party from which it parasitically leeched its political life force.
When Mr. Bill slithered off into the netherworld that spawned him and his dimwitted understudy got his reason for existing ripped from his man-tit-bedecked chest, that radicalism crystalized and metastasized into a six-year paroxysm of mass, unmasked, Ameriphobic, partisan rage. A spectacle so overpowering that many of us believed it rendered the Democrats unelectable until they left it behind and started following Joe Lieberman's honorable example of what a "loyal opposition" used to be.
Until last November, when that paroxysm of mass, unmasked, Ameriphobic, partisan rage was finally rewarded with victory at the ballot box.
After that election, I did some brutal reassessing of where the American political landscape truly lay. Clearly it would be petulant excuse-making to dismiss the majority that went with the Donks as "stupid" or "gullible." Not only is that meme intellectually lazy, but it is inevitably two-edged, as the next time the GOP wins (if there is a next time) you can then hardly say that the voters "came to their senses". What you're left with is an endless series of periodic bouts of temporary mass insanity. It's incoherent, and besides that, it's just silly.
Instead, I took several deep breaths and admitted the possibility that the American people - whether through Dem persuasion or the GOP's inability to sell its policies or the Bushies' refusal to defend itself, or just to shut the Donks up - knowingly and willfully turned the the Left. Knowingly and willfully chosen tax increases, runaway federal spending, geysers of earmarks, an orgy of corruption, economic decline, endless anti-Bush/anti-GOP scandalmongering, and, of course, surrender in the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism and the meek acceptance of dhimmitude and/or death at the Islamists' hands.
I appear to be in the minority on the center-right in that realization. But I see no logical alternative explanation for how the Democrats could have been restored to power after the seditious, treasonous, despicable display they've put on throughout the Bush years. I see no possible way that the voters could have been fooled into voting the way they did. It had to be an endorsement of what the Democrat party has become - in Hinderaker's words, "hardcore haters." Hatreds that a majority of Americans now share.
So, then, how do I explain how that Democrat Congress could be as unpopular as its GOP predecessor this quickly? Let me put my reply in the former of a few questions: Has the war been defunded? Have Bush and Cheney been impeached? Has the last helicopter lifted off from the Baghdad green zone with Iranian tanks right behind it?
These are the things the Democrats were elected to accomplish, the instant they had power back in their grubby little hands. It's almost three months later, and none of them have been done. All there's been is empty, flailingly half-hearted anti-war posturing and scheming while "the surge" surges on in Iraq, inexorably quelling the sectarian violence just as the Islamist "insurgency" was crushed before it. The Bush White House is being harassed, but the Conyers Committee hasn't begun its impeachment inquiry. And domestic stalinization languishes on the back-burner.
Maybe the voters got fooled last fall and Gallup is picking up a lot of scales from a lot of opened eyes. Or maybe voters knew exactly what they were doing and are mad that they're not getting what they voted for.
posted by JASmius at 10:21 AM
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