15
May
Rove: Bush poll woes reflect only abysmal job performance, not reality
Karl Rove told the American Enterprise Institute today that president Bush’s approval ratings are down only because Iraq is a mess. By the same token, as Philip Klinkner notes, “if it weren’t for the Alps, Switzerland would be flat.”
What Rove said is that Americans “like this president. His personal approval ratings are in the 60s. Job approval is lower. And what that says to me is that people like him, they respect him, he’s somebody they feel a connection with, but they’re just sour right now on the war. And that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Of course the president’s problem is a bit wider than the war. The “Jorge Bush” crowd are incensed by his lily-livered approach to immigration — including those who believe a little Nazi-style efficiency could resolve the problem — nothing against Jews; he’s just sayin‘ — and he’s being dogged by civil libertarians of all stripes upset by his widening, or at least increasingly widely exposed, dictatorial streak.
That’s to say nothing of which polls Rove is reading. Klinkner points to a recent CBS/New York Times poll placing (PDF file) Bush’s personal approval rating at 29%, two points lower than his job approval rating. Rove has an answer, though: “[t]he polls I believe are the polls that get run through the RNC. And I look at those polls all the time.”
Would that it were true; Rove is as avid a consumer of polls as is the pony-loving Atrios. He surely knows that solid majorities among Americans think Bush is untrustworthy and doesn’t share their values; people feel connected to him in much the same way the feel connected to a proctologist, only without the upside potential.
That’s why Rove’s strategy for the mid-term elections remains the same as ever: demonize the opposition and throw some red meat to the base. The problem is that the base is now demanding not just red meat, but live human sacrifice. It’s one thing to jabber about National Guard troops on the Mexican border, banning abortion, and a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage; it’s another to convince the people you’ve strung along for six years that you’re actually prepared to commandeer some box cars, fill them up with aliens and faggots and whores and dump them in the volcano, and to do so without alienating otherwise complacent or unmotivated voters any more than they already are.
Especially if you’re barricaded in your lawyer’s office. Here’s hoping …
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Rove Blames Iraq War for Low Bush Numbers
Presidential aide Karl Rove blames Iraq war for Bush’s low approval ratings
May 16th, 2006 at 4:47 amThe jig is up for our president. Abraham Lincoln was right. It seems you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, after all. The base is slowly but surely abandoning the president and his republican party. Check out the discourse here, for example. And the independents have figured it out too. Now if the democrats could only find some competent leaders, the democrats might actually return to power this November.
May 16th, 2006 at 9:22 am