Matt Frei’s commentary on the BBC News website, titled Washington diary: Obama’s slump, is so full of BS I don’t even know where to begin. Granted, it’s an opinion piece, but millions of people around the world watch or listen to BBC News every day, and the line between reporting opinions and facts is increasingly blurred, especially at the BBC.
Let’s skip by the “redefining the relationship with the rest of the world” – after all, it looks like Gitmo won’t be closed anytime soon and Iran hasn’t backed down on its nuclear threat. Instead, let’s start with Frei’s supposed neighbor, “Republican Dave”, who voted for Obama because “he could not stomach the thought of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the Oval Office”. How big a factor in President Obama’s election were voters like Dave? According to CNN, 9% of self-identified Republicans voted for Obama. Referring to President Obama, Frei states: “It is the wobbly Obama Republicans – like my friend Dave – that he really needs to worry about.”
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A new survey by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that the GOP has been unsuccessful to date in capitalizing on President Obama’s declining popularity. The nationwide poll of 2,010 adults was conducted between August 11-17, 2009
While the headline of the release is “More See White House and GOP Leaders at Odds”, the poll shows that Obama and the Democratic Party’s drop in favorability hasn’t resulted in favorability improvements for Republicans. The growing perception is that Washington is failing to deal with critical issues, and
While more people continue to blame Republican leaders than blame Obama, the percentage saying the president is at fault (17%) is higher now than in June (12%) and much higher than in February (7%)
According to Pew the percentage of Americans who believe that Republican leaders are most to blame has remained between 27% and 29% through the February to August period.
This is the most telling graphic, however:
Despite the precipitous fall in Democratic Party popularity, GOP popularity has flat-lined at 40%. Note the September 2008 post-convention jump: was it due to the fresh voice of Sarah Palin? What can be done to recreate that lost momentum?
(Graph Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press)