Americans Trust Obama Nearly 2 To 1 Over Repubs On Economy
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Democrats, Polls, RepublicansUsually you can read numbers a couple different ways, but not when the margins are this wide…
And here’s how the party IDs break out…
What does it say about the GOP when they can’t even get 2/3rds of their own party to trust them on the economy?
To me, this points to one thing and one thing only…Republicans need some new ideas and fast. Otherwise they risk slipping into irrelevancy. They think that because they’re out of power they can simply be the opposition , but I think the numbers we’re seeing tell a much different story.
What do you think?
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April 13th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
I suspect that if you asked the Repulicans who don’t trust “their own party … on the economy” why that is, they would say that it’s because they don’t feel that the Congressional GOP is their own party. They would say that the Congressional party went off the reservation in the early part of the century, abandoning the commitments that brought them to power. And if that is so, it is entirely misguided to conclude that the polling data “points to one thing and one thing only…Republicans need some new ideas and fast.” To the contrary: the ideas that brought them into power a decade and a half ago are still sound, leading one to wonder why they didn’t implement them in the first place.
Or, you know, we can continue to saddle the country with a legacy of ruinous debt and debt-incurring social spending. I’m sure that will work out real well.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
A newly elected president inherits a recession, begins a program of massive debt and government spending, along with the federal reserve arbitrarily lowering interest rates. Does it really matter what the political party is anymore?
April 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
I think it’s possible that people don’t trust the Republicans on the economy because the Republicans did to the economy what Toothless Hillbilly #2 did to Ned Beatty in Deliverance.
Just thinking there might be some kind of connection there.
(Cue “Dueling Banjos.”)
April 14th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Justin-
You mentioned – “To me, this points to one thing and one thing only…Republicans need some new ideas and fast. Otherwise they risk slipping into irrelevancy.” I believe the R party is already irrelevant, and has been for quite some time – and no amount of new ideas will help at this point. The R’s need to jettison the condescension, the hypocrisy, and the large group of very untalented legislators they have elected. There are a few good people in the Senate and Congress but they are hobbled by rest of them. In this case a few good apples are ruined by the whole bushel. The majority of the American people aren’t nearly as dumb as the R’s and the right wing media think they are.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:34 am
JG, part of something that you may not comprehend regarding the “tea parties” is that they’re not a GOP thing. Fiscal conservatives are mad as hell at the GOP for Bush’s fiscal policy, McCain’s spineless leadership no-show during the campaign and a clear lack of economic thought leadership on the Republican side of the aisle. The public outcry is about fiscal irresponsibility in BOTH parties, so these numbers don’t surprise me at all.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think it’s a honeymoon. The goldenboy has some legs. If we are looking at the end of summer or heading into winter, and we have seen a few false starts on an economic rebound, and things are still bad, then the whole “new idea versus old idea” thing will have lost much of its luster.
I don’t think the GOP necessarily needs brand new ideas. I think they need to rebrand their principles for the current context and for the attitude of the current audience. A very good example of this is the way that Mitt Romney recently claimed that the GOP is not reflexively opposed to regulations, he just wants them to be focused, effective, and expedient. That’s a good start. Too bad Mitt has been cast in the role of the smart insincere guy that the salt-of-the-earth folks distrust.
The longer the honeymoon lasts, the more emboldened progressives will be to overreach. When they do overreach, the GOP will be ready to bounce. I don’t think that conservative notions are without any validity, I just think some of them got carried too far, and the pendulum is swinging back round now.
As a committed centrist, I am certain that the economic events of the last 6 months or so absolutely did NOT turn progressives into prescient geniuses. But if you are a democrat or a progressive or both, feel free to believe that. Because the limited effectiveness and the negative side effects of current progressive policy prescriptions WILL manifest themselves as soon as they move past correctives and into the land of visionary zeal.
That’s the thing about policies, and mechanisms, and markets, and human behavior in response to such things. The outcomes of these policy changes are not dependent upon what advocates THINK will happen. If we spend way more money than we have, we’ll fall way further into debt and suffer the consequences. If we change policies to substantially effect peoples various motivations, people will respond to those changes in ways driven by personal self-interest, not idealistic expectations about our better nature.
As Michael loves to say, this is not my first rodeo. Progressives are sowing the seeds of their eventual expulsion from majority status even as I blather. Count on it. Not today, not this year, probably not even by 2010 or 2012. But the longer current trends go on, the more folks who dislike these trends will find common cause, That’s how it works.
Over time, the list of additional unaffordable entitlements and nannyish regulations and behavioral taxes will grow. This is how a new majority writes the script for its own demise.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
@ Simon – “I suspect that if you asked the Repulicans who don’t trust ‘their own party … on the economy’ why that is, they would say that it’s because they don’t feel that the Congressional GOP is their own party.”
I find your reasoning convenient at best. While I agree there is nothing whatsoever conservative about the current Republicans, a hypocrisy which has surely let to it’s rather low reputation (to say the least), I find it laughable that you blame the failures on the “Congressional GOP”, as if the politicians materialized out of thin air. You imply that rank and file Republicans have been held hostage. Wasn’t it the rank and file and their values that elected these people? Isn’t it the average Joe Repub who forces their pols to bow to a shifty-eyed, bile-spewing radio host? Isn’t it the Republicans in general who’s values and ideals have materialized into the policy of their elected leaders. Yes. Of course it is, that’s the system in America – we vote. The part you’re missing is the part where we must accept responsibility for the people we vote in and their actions. Responsibilty – Accountability. Say it with me. I’d have a helluvalot more respect for the right if they showed one single ounce of owning up to the mess they’ve created. Until you/they do, I/we cannot take you seriously, and I suspect you/they will have a log slog back to respectability.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Mike, so, you concede that my point is correct (”there is nothing whatsoever conservative about the current [Congressional] Republicans”) but criticize me for raising the point because it’s “convenient”? Well, that’s a novel tactic.
Your contention that the “values and ideals” of “Republicans in general … have materialized into the policy of their elected leaders” fares little better. Clearly they have not, because, notwithstanding lip service paid to those values and ideals on the campaign trail, neither have “materialized into … policy” in significant ways. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to think of a significant conservative administration of the Bush-DeLay-Frist axis, unless one believes that federal spending and regulatory efforts such as NCLB are conservative values and ideals.
Lastly, appeal to to the electoral system is misplaced, and in fact undercuts your point rather than supports it. In many cases, the attempt to ouster Arlen Specter for example, conservatives have tried to cut away the deadwood (although I concede, as I must, that efforts to oust other miscreants have been scattered and disorganized) in the primary. Once the primary is over, however, the choice presented is usually stark: given a choice between an imperfect GOP candidate and a Democratic candidate, between someone who is right 70% of the time and someone who is right 10% of the time, one selects the lesser of two evils. The great virtue – and the great problem – with the American electoral system is that it forces rational voters to compromise, to vote for the better rather than the best. I had thought moderates and centrists regarded that as a boon – at least when it gives them de facto control of the outcome.
April 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
This obsession with popularity polls to prop-up Obama domestic policy is really a nausiating business. I’m really curious as to what “story” you believe these numbers reflect.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Simon, your schizophrenic post sure shows what a conundrum all of you true-blue republicans face. You acknowledge both that elected national GOP figures do not represent conservative values, AND that you remain quite willing to vote for them anyway. Does one reuqire a visit to the aluminum haberdasher to keep down the internal cognitive dissonance from holding both of these views concureently?
The only part that’s missing is where you explain why congressonal repubs will not repeat the colossal fiscal failures they did the last time they were in charge. In other words, all you have left to do is explain WHAT you guys hope to achieve and HOW you will achieve it within the confines of accepting that in the end you must vote for the lesser of 2 evils.
BTW, in the context of this conundrum, how are you feeling about your many past strong defenses of the merits of the 2-party system? Any dents in your sanguine views on that?
April 15th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
JH,
Caer to say more about this? Do you mean to say that popularity does not prove rectitude, or something like that? If that’s what you mean, I can agree.
Or is it just the case that you find such reports frustrating because you adamantly oppose Obama’s actions and feel shocked that they have, so far, not dented his popularity? In other words, you are sick to your stomach because they are evidence to YOU that the people are being well duped.
I am not one to take a LOT from pub op polls, but so far, they do seem to demonstrate that Obama’s actions do not, at least so far, seem to be alienating most Americans. So even as I first notice that such polls are a blunt measure, I am willing to acknowledge that they are suggestive of substantial support for his actions so far. They sure don’t seem to support any notion that he is undertaking actions counter to what the people want.
Of course, it’s still very early in the admin. This is why I have been stressing the honeymoon dynamic.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
kranky kritter Says:
That’s a strange charge to make; I thought that centrists were supposed to be hard-headed realists? Elections are not about electing people who think like you, they’re about choosing the “best” (in the sense of “least bad”) available options. What dissonance, then? As you point out, “elected national GOP figures do not represent conservative values,” but, so long as they better represent those values – would do less harm – than their Democratic opponent, it is entirely rational to vote “for” them (i.e. against their opponent) in the general election.
I don’t like dentists. I like tooth decay even less. I try to get the best dentist, and even if I have to settle for a mediocre dentist, that’s better than tooth decay, right? There are all manner of things that the last administration did that I think are unfortunate, and Bush wasn’t my preferred candidate – but think about what his opponents would have done in office! There is no dissonance there, only realism about the choices represented in elections.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Sorry, I forgot this part:
Just fine, and no, respectively. Again, the choice isn’t between what we have and some kind of mythic idealized idea of what might be; we can see how third parties operate in other countries, and whatever inefficiencies, deficiencies, and difficulties our system may have, it’s an awful lot better than the alternatives.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Simon, nice to see that you remain optimistic. We live in the best of all possible worlds, I guess. LOL. Laughing with you here, amigo. If hope were incapable of triumphing over experience, we’d be extinct, I think.
As to the schizophrenic comment, I guess what confuses me is why you’d bother to complain so longly and loudly give how accepting you seem to be of the inevitability of the dynamic. When I read your many complaints about the unrepresentative nature of republican congresscritters, I feel the implication that it must be changed or fixed or something. Instead, ought I to assume that when push comes to shove, you expect very little change even though you feel obligated to complain stridently?
One more question. Let’s presume at some future point the GOP resumes majority + white house status (an easy presumption for me, I only form it as a stipulation due to the nature of other critters views here). What if anything do you think can be done to encourage the next iteration to stress fiscally responsible actions (as opposed to fiscally responsible rhetoric)? Or is it inevitable that the next iteration will also bring home the bacon after promising not to?
April 15th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Simon – A very important conservative value that I hold dear is to accept accountability. I have not seen that from the GOP elected officials, I don’t see it from the rank and file, and your posts seem to lack it, too. My point: the GOP is not and has not been truly conservative, the rank and file do not understand what true conservatism is; they habitually blame others for everything creating buggy men wherever they look, avoid accountability at all costs, and have therefore elected blowhards that do the same. If they want to navigate out of the lonely forest their in, the Repubs need to take a cold hard look at THEMSELVES. If and when the PEOPLE start acting conservatively and demand the same from their party, they may be able to rebuild. If however, the current trend continues, genuflecting to Rush and blaming everyone but themselves, I fear the days in the forest will be many.
April 15th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Yes that is what I meant. I would also suggest that the “popularity” of Obama, at this point, is more of a fellowship, a comradery and soothing internal peace that comes with the suicide pact a few minutes after drinking “the medicine.” Amen, brothers. Personally, Obama’s economic policy makes me go to the same “happy place” that a fist full of Vicodin and a fifth of rum would take me. In that vein: Justin, Carl, Krank, Michael, TerenceC, Simon, Mike, Jimmy, Agnostik and all unmentioned commenters — no matter what happens — I’ll always love you no matter what happens.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
KK, I suppose the point is simply that we have to make the best of the situation in which we find ourselves. In Pennsylvania, for example, conservatives will try to banish into the past tense Senator Specter in the GOP primary, but, if he loses, many will support him against his opponent, not because their view of Specter has improved, but because while they might prefer Toomey over Specter, they prefer Specter over generic Democrat. It’s always relative; I would have preferred Hillary Clinton as President to Barack Obama, but I would have preferred Sarah Palin to either of them. The one change that I would strongly support is the elimination of the open primary. Since I think that the primary election is the chance for a party to clean house of poor candidates, I am suspicious that an open primary allows outsiders to saddle that party with a poor nominee.
I don’t have a potted answer to offer on the restraining spending point, or the time to think one through, unfortunately, so I must punt on that for now.
Mike, I always find myself suspicious of people who talk about “true” conservatism and how some so-called conservatives aren’t “true” conservatives. Conservatism is rather like tea: darjeeling and earl gray are both teas, but they have quite different flavors. There are several flavors of American conservatism, which is in any event quite different to the conservative tradition in Europe (see, for example, Hayek’s famous essay explaining why he isn’t one). And I have found that affictionados of any particular flavor are a little too willing to accuse of being coffee drinkers anyone who prefers another kind of tea.