…And the Plummeting Continues
According to Harris, Bush is now at 29%. Harris does not use the flat approve/disapprove model, instead asking if the president is doing “excellent,” “pretty good,” “only fair,” and “poor.” The former and latter two are grouped together for an equivalent to “approve” and “disapprove,” and it seems fairly well calibrated in that the poll had Bush at 35% in April and 43% in January, which tracked right along with other approve/disapprove polls at the same time.
I thought Bush would break thirty only after Rove resigned after being indicted, or if the massive Republican corruption in Congress, a veritable hot fudge sundae of scandals with hookers sprinkled on top, washed over on to Bush since his CIA appointees were involved. But it looks like his poll numbers have a gravity of their own.
During the ’04 elections, Bush was doing really badly, but the repeated fake terror alerts and hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising buoyed his number. But in ’05, when Bush was hitting scandal after scandal, failure after failure, his numbers lowered some, but hovered in the 40’s, seemingly no matter what. I thought he’d hit his base–the level of permanent, unconditional support at which he’d have to sodomize a boy scout on national TV to break through the bottom (of his numbers–no pun intended). But it seems that Bush had worn the less stalwart within his base somewhat tired; starting with Katrina and then Harriet Myers, then with the NSA eavesdropping scandal–issues that mattered somewhat more to his core constituents–he broke the surface tension and started to sink.
If Bush sinks four more points, he’ll be less popular than Jimmy Carter was at his lowest. Five points down from now, and he’ll be where Nixon was when he resigned. Clearly, we’ll have no such luck this time. But with a bit of good fortune, this will translate into voters going to the polls this November with the idea that having one or both houses of Congress opposed to Bush might not be a bad thing.
And those poll numbers don’t have yesterday’s news of the Government tracking billions of phone calls.
As I posted on another web site, 29% is not the end, its not even the beginning of the end, it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.
Bush’s numbers are going south and they are going to continue going south until he reaches the single digits.
Lets face it, Bush’s only competancy is in bullying. In politics this can be an asset, as it is a contact sport and can be a blood sport. Which is how he made it: first in claiming McCain’s adobted bengalese daughter was the result of an illicit sex act with a black women before the crucial South Carolina primary in 2000 – if he had lost that he was done toast, note that Bush spent $50 million on that one single phase of the presidential campaign (he had some ardent and well healed backers; Second Bush swift boated Gore with the ozone, i invented the internet crap; Third he swift boated Kerry, par excelance. In such a way was a well born but reckless, moral coward and otherwise incompentant joke able to obtain the most powerful position on earth in 2000 – and he still required illegal electioneering to boot – in Florida and in New Hampshire just to name two cases.
29% is not the end, its not even the beginning of the end, it is, perhaps the end of the beginning.
Wait until the wingnuts start to blame him for undermining their movement by botching the execution of their ideology.
Of course, they won’t blame their ideology. But now, they can’t blame anyone else.
They can’t blame Clinton, they can’t blame the Democrats. They control every branch of government and so they can only blame themselves. Furthermore they had 89% approval after 9/11 after back in 2001.
Its all their own fault. What they lack in corruption, they more than make up for in incompetance and what they lack in incompetance they more than make up for in blatently idiot policies.
There are the five stages of loss: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Those 29% are still in denial. In between denial and anger is that golden stage known as “Enraged Denial”.
Very soon, those remaining wingnuts will turn on him with “Enraged Denial” for the undermining of their movement citing the bloated spending and the poor execution. When they do this, it won’t be pretty for Bush. His rating are gonna drop like a rock, maybe even into single digit range (finally).
Its important to note: Sometimes some people don’t get past the enraged denial phase. They get tangled in a plausable theory. The Right wing conservatives in Germany after the war, developed a blame shifting plausable theory: “Germany was stabbed in the back by Liberals and Jewish Germans.” This arrested their progress through the five stages of denial. Then when they finally got into power, they ‘stabbed back’ and with horrific effect. What you call the ‘find-and-destroy-the-heretics’ stage.
Someday somebody’s going to have to do a study on arrested progress in catastrophic loss process, because it amounts to the refusal to learn an important lesson.
In the case of Germany, they lost WWI. The denyers blamed it on liberals and jews. In the 30s they came to power, and took a second stab at winning WWI, in fighting WWII. In WWI they won in the east but lost in the west. In WWII, they won in the west but lost in the east. They should have learned their lesson at the end of WWI – because at the end of WWI Germany lost some, but not much, territory, and nearly collapsed in to ruin, at the end of WWII, Germany was reduce to 2/3rds of what it was before WWI, politically devided, militarily occupied, and in utter and complete ruin. Such is the case when one party doesn’t learn its lessons well.
In essence, we are going through this as well in America’s hard right. Some want to deny the failure of 1920s style capitalism (never mind that it’s collapse paved the way to the rise of Hitler, WWII and the holocaust) and so resent the new deal, Some want to deny the civil rights movement, some are in the denial of America’s loss in Vietnam, casting the same blame as German right wingers afte WWI, the ‘stab in the back by liberals and media (and in some cases, Jews). All of these come together and manifest in Bush/Neocons & co.
The question is, how big of a price will we have to pay for not learning our combined lessons sufficiently the first time. Since Bush has become President this country has has lost one metropolitan area, and two have been evacuated, at least partially. Wars, Debt, Corruption, Torture and death: the chickens of such folly are only now coming home to roost.
Finally, I’d like to point out how foreigners seem to have a better perspective of American Presidents, from afar, than we do up close. I recall when Clinton was being pasted at home, he went to Ireland, where his presence practically shut down the country – and from that point on his image at home continued to improve.
In the case of Bush, I recall the imfamous headline in England “How could 69 million people be so stupid.” 69 million people voted for Bush.
Apparently, at least 20 million are now waking up to realize the denial and stupidity that they voted with in 2004. What was elementally obvious to anyone outside the United States was lost on Americans. No doubt our faulty media had a lot to do with that.
Bush’s numbers will continue to descend into the single digits, because his policies have been sheer folly and are coming home to roost and sink him, and because what’s left of his base will soon be blaming him for ruining their movement. Bush II, will soon have a new appreciation for the comfort Bush I has had in being in the company of Clinton. Soon they all will be the object of wingnut derision. The irony is that Bush I was cast in their image. He is they. To paraphase Pogo: “Conservatives, they have met their enemy and he is they.”