Gallup’s latest tracking poll shows President Barack Obama‘s public approval rating at 39 percent — the first time he has dropped below 40 percent during his presidency.
His negative approval rating? It’s 54 percent, a clear indication that the Obama presidency is in trouble.
Poll numbers increasingly show Americans have had it with the former purveyor of hope who has failed to deliver. His numbers are worse than ratings for former President George W. Bush at the same point in the first term.
Democrats find it more and more difficult to spin the Obama record for any more that what it is — a monumental failure in leadership, in policy and in practice.
Liberal Democrats see him as too moderate. Conservative Republicans view him as too liberal. Voters see him as too weak when it comes to leadership.
Republicans, of course, want to see Obama as a one-term President. If they had anything to offer up as a viable alternative winning back the Presidency would be easy but the party of the elephant is hamstrung with its own demons driven by tea party extremism and old-hat ideas.
Tea party centerfold Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll, followed closely by perennial Presidential loser Ron Paul. Neither stands a chance of winning the Presidency, assuming Republicans are dumb enough to hand either the nomination Bachmann is a just another Sarah Palin — too much flash, too little substance. Paul is a phony populist with too many skeletons.
Mitt Romney? Polls show him having the best shot against Obama in a head-to-head contest but he’s not enough of an extreme right-winger to gain the GOP nomination.
Rick Perry? Another Republican governor from Texas. We all remember how well the last one worked out.
Sounds like we need “none of the above” on the Presidential ballot in 2012.
At least then, voters would have a clear choice.
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- Rock bottom? Gallup poll has Obama approval rating below 40… (shortformblog.tumblr.com)
- A disastrous summer for the White House. Is Barack Obama now the most unpopular US president since Jimmy Carter? (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
18 thoughts on “Obama is a failure but what do Republicans offer?”
Party support will galvanize behind whoever the Republicans choose. They may have faults and divisions in their perceptions of the various candidates but the final tally is they want Obama out more than they want perpetual in-fighting so they will back the nominee.
The great middle will swing to the right if this was an election held today. The failures in the economy and leadership are apparent to all but they real loyalist and they are dwindling in number.
Carl and Woody. Back in my days of employment opportunities, it was always the large corporations who offered the best jobs with the best benefits. I followed many of these corporations on the Dow Jones and was able to follow their advancement in jobs and their political choices. I wanted desperately to live away from my family and I worked for money and managed to find good people every where I worked.
I chose not to join a union and work on my own ability to advance and did well. I also needed an income to pay for my addiction called books.
Things changed after I married and had two daughters sand a step son in my care. I had to return to the work force and found myself in competition with young, beautiful and very talented gals. I snuck a face lift in and got back in the swing of things. In the later years, not even surgery could counter gravity and I returned back to sewing and did pretty well. I did discover that the GOP no longer appealed to me. The corruption weighted down my party until I simply gave in and worked with Perot and then the LP.
I still carry a hope that some miracle will land on America and my agenda will be returned to some movement. I draw the line at having to be baptized to be necessary by any political movement.
As the elite (via the media) plays the ignorant/dumbed down populace like a cheap (out of tune) violin.
I believe dogs are smarter than most Americans.
Dogs learn who their masters are much earlier than the majority of morons who call themselves Americans.
CHB seems like a little community of thinkers and debaters, who are aware of our current situation.
The movie “Idiocracy” is no longer comedic but descriptive.
That’s all ….
Rick Perry? Another Republican governor from Texas. We all remember how well the last one worked out.
More likely you have a revisionist memory of how that worked out. I’ll take a 5% unemployment rate and a triple A rating under another Texan over the crap the current poser in chief has given us any day.
I’ve followed Karen Kwiatkowski’s writing for some time. She sees Paul in a much different light than Doug.
Wonder why the mainstream media is afraid to even mention his name…?
Thanks for the link Woody. The MSM’s blackout concerning Ron Paul is an example of what I’ve written about concerning the powers that be endorsing their main men and women via their solely owned media outlets.
In the book “The Rich and the Super Rich” by Ferdinand Lundberg (deceased) written over 40 years ago it outlines how the process takes place. Consensus for whom viable candidates might be is first achieved via the chain of “gentlemen’s clubs” that cater to the super wealthy; ie., the Rockefellers, Mellons, Scaife’s, Koch’s et al. Once a distillate of those that will ‘perform’ to their directives, they then utilize their MSM outlets to ‘push’ the product down our collective throats. “We the people” friendly candidates be damned. This is Ron Paul’s problem. They perceive him and his ideas as enemies of corporate hegemony over the unwashed masses.
https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Super-Rich-Study-Power-Money/dp/0818400692
It’s not simply circumstance that he’s put on ignore. Candidate selection and voting have become an ‘engineered marketing process’, all to our collective detriment. Believe it…! : |
Carl Nemo **==
“Sounds like we need “none of the above” on the Presidential ballot in 2012.” …extract from article
No truer words have been written concerning our now devolved election process.
One of my all time favorite bumper stickers I’ve come across is: “Don’t vote it only encourages them”.
During the Roosevelt era presidencies which included the Depression and WWII, the Democrats were thought of as the “People’s party”. The Republicans have always been the flagship party of the monied class with little kinship for labor or addressing social problems in a reasonable fashion. If they had their way, you’d still have children washing bottles by hand for ten cents an hour twelve hours a day, six days a week.
Unfortunately both parties have been compromised by corporate interests via their lobbying efforts. When the rubber meets the road, all modern legislation is to the public’s detriment while their corporate sponsors laugh all the way to the bank, no different than the “robber barons” of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It doesn’t make a difference whether we’ve had a Reagan, two Bush’s, Clinton, Obama or a future Bachmann, Perry or whomever in the White House because they all report to “Mr. big bucks” who sits behind the shogi screen calling the shots.
Their solely owned MSM outlets, proffer these clowns to us; simply allowing the unwashed electorate to indemnify their pre-selection. The process of voting has turned into nothing but a feelgood charade for “We the People”.
The time for real change is coming for better or worse; but it will come as a function of “rushing their perimeter” along with blood running in the streets. : |
*****
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” …Abraham Lincoln 1809 – 1865
*****
Carl Nemo **==
It’s past time to look to another party and avoid voting Democrat and Republican altogether. The only wasted vote is a vote for another D or R!
The history of my interest was based during the Inquisitions. When the people of Spain, Italy and France were behaving badly, the church stepped in to give them guiding laws. It soon was taken over by the Catholics and all hell broke loose in the streets. My realm of interest was the Renaissance and it might have introduced music, art and theater, it nearly killed the citizens of Europe.
America cannot afford their armies or even the law enforcement sources from cities. Now they want to add an Amendment to the Constitution to ban many parts of our personal lives. Lessons not learned…. Another war on drugs in the making.
Ron Paul perennial loser? Populist? Do you even know what Populism means? He’s a Libertarian leaning conservative who is polling 3rd nationally in the GOP right now. He nearly won the latest straw poll and has won every debate so far according to most polls. You have been sold the right vs left and you have bought in. You’ve been told that you have to choose economic freedoms or personal freedoms and they are mutually exclusive. Well, Ron Paul wants you to know that they’re not. You can have both. It’s called liberty. It’s what the framers intended. You really should do some research into what our country really is (an oligarchy) and how it got that way. I recommend the documentary “America: Freedom to Fascism”.
Great reply 5 x 5. You have summed up our prospects very well; or lack thereof. Could it be that the voters of today missed out on American history? Did they miss out on the classes in rational debate? Not all of them rely on prayers to save their jobs and their retirement funds.
I look forward to every election or I did until 2000 when there was no choice for me at all. It was the first election I did not get involved in at all. Why does it seem that voters may be too stupid to vote? I spent many years living in a tiny village on the coast of California. We loved our elections and were very equal in numbrers in our D and R community. There was no animosity or anger anywhere. I had a bookstore and had a ball doing my windows and every week the residents would pop in to see who I was featuring.
The days of having fun with elections are over.
Sandune: I see a parallel between the U.S. of today and the U.S. of the 1850’s. Despite what a lot of my fellow Southerners believe(d) or were taught, slavery WAS the cause of the Civil War, and the acrimony and polarization is there in the history books for anyone to find.
Compromise was sought, but sometimes there is none possible. And then, as the title of the film says, “There Will Be Blood.” After Ft. Sumter, one Southern politician pulled out a hankerchief, stating all the blood that will be spilt would be soaked up by what he held in his hand. As it turned out, he was way off the mark.
The comity you described in your California town no longer exists, at least on a national level. The weakening of rational thought and debate is not a cause of our problems, but a symptom.
Barack Obama, like James Buchanan, has failed to provide what I call a continum of the narrative. Essentially, the citizenry needs to be told what’s going on. Call it the Bully Pulpit or whatever you want, but failure to do so leaves a vacuum.
And returning to Doug’s title here, what the Republicans are offering is a form of secession for corporations. Jefferson Davis and his fellow confederates dreamed of establishing slavery across the entire U.S., Mexico, and eventuall into South America. Corporations have done so worldwide without even a whimper from Washington.
The modern corporatists are modern day abolitionists, their goal being the abolition of government for any purpose other than the furtherance of their own goals.
You know, the real corker of it is that old saying, “Those who fail to learn history are forced to repeat it.” Odd thing is, I’ve studied history as best I can, and I’m STILL being forced to repeat it through the actions of others. 🙂
I believe by October next year the Republican mantra will be something like, “I’m not like Obama.”
That may be all they will have to offer. Hell hath no fury like an electorate betrayed. Candidate Obama never really became President Obama. Style and imagery are no substitute for substance.
However, that is belied by just about everyone running for office now. There is no original thinking; no leadership; no addressing the primal factors that are tearing our society apart. It is true that economics is the key, but the hand that turns it must be guided by more than self interest.
I’m about as optomistic as my uncles were on Corregidor in April 1942. Ain’t nobody coming to the rescue, and there is no help at all. We are on our own, and may be overwhelmed. Perhaps our “leaders” might ship us another load of plaitudes.
Nice Commentary Chief, and welcome back. Is there any possibility of a secular Republican Party? Or have they sold their souls to heaven?
I am very disappointed in President Obama but the Social Conservatives could and would destroy the base of our constitution and what is left of the Supreme Court.
Door number 3 please Vanna.
Though … if there is no #3 … I’ll hold my nose and vote for everybody that is not currently an incumbant.
I do indeed want change.
The economy — and Obama’s poll ratings — may have suffered its worst blows. Obama will look somewhat better in 12 months, especially against a flawed or weak GOP nominee.
I think Obama and the dems will keep the White House and make modest gains in Congress.
…and do what? This is a whiskey tango foxtrot situation.
Obama’s administration could be called “Clinton III,”
both presidents the best Republicans in the WH in decades.
From [Dick Morris’] triangulation to Obama’s implementation of a straight Republican agenda, from Bush’s continued tax cuts to a “health care reform” program that hands 35 million new customers over to the health insurance companies, the same ones who are destroying our health system.
And then there is the Supreme Court . . . I’m afraid that’s about all Obama’s got going for him heading into 2012.
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