Obviously, no one could have predicted that the Republicans’ heroic battle against the stimulus package would hurt them politically. But here’s Charlie Cook:
As polling very clearly shows, congressional Republicans have done nothing to help themselves by almost unanimously opposing the massive stimulus package. Indeed, they look increasingly isolated: a narrow party that is looking inward for sustenance.
And not many voters want the GOP to be back in the saddle again:
Head-to-head, though, Americans are putting far more faith in Obama than in congressional Republicans: 61 percent said they trust Obama more than the GOP when it comes to economic matters, just 26 percent side with the Republicans in Congress. Obama’s advantage on that question is bigger than George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush ever had over the opposition party in the legislature on dealing with the economy.
Overall, Democrats maintain a nearly 2 to 1 edge over Republicans as the party Americans prefer to confront “the big issues” over the next few years.
I’m sure the pundits will continue to cite some Rasmussen results that show what a genius Eric Cantor is, though.
I hate to keep beating this one, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the gap between Villager opinion and public opinion this wide. Not since the Clinton impeachment anyway.
gbear
Well, the first thought that comes to my mind is that The Villager’s are rather stupid that way.
Second thought is that they’re REALLY stupid that way. Terminally, it seems.
joe from Lowell
I went to Real Clear Politics today to look at polling data.
There were 22 Obama Job Performance polls. Four of them had a disapproval rating in the 30s. Every single one of them was a Rasmussen poll, and every single Rasmussen poll has his disapproval in the 30s.
So, to break it out, 0/18 non-Rasmussen polls showed Barack Obama with a disapproval rating of 30 or more.
4/4 Rasmussen polls showed Barack Obama with a disapproval rating of 30 or more.
Hack.
Lev
You can’t trust any of Rasmussen’s issue polls, and their method of reporting Obama’s approval (I think they’re still just doing strongly approve vs. strongly disapprove) is silly. Rasmussen is indispensable during election season–you can’t use tricky wording to get people to say they want to vote Republican. The rest of the time, Rasmussen is only of interest to Mickey Kaus and the House Republican Leadership.
dmsilev
I wonder what it would take for the Villagers to break out of their self-contained world view and actually look at things like polling and real-world views. Maybe if we have a generation of Democratic domination of the actual government, that will be enough time for some of the more hidebound residents to retire and some new blood who haven’t quite lost touch with reality to take their place.
Maybe.
-dms
Napoleon
Nirvana is both the Republican party and the current villager MSM being entirely discredited. Watching what has been going on as depicted by the Republicans and the MSM has been like watching an alternative universe.
joe from Lowell
Rasmussen’s election polling does an excellent job capturing the direction and size of trends before everyone else, but I still don’t find their underlying numbers very plausible.
If R leads D by 5 points on Tuesday and 1 point on Friday, it probably means that R actually had a slim lead on Tuesday and lost it over the course of the week – but the size of the swing is probably right.
Comrade Stuck
Oh DougJ, the winguts have this one. They have their secret plan from the Gweat Gwingrich Wingnut Webellion of 1993. Just ask Grover Norquist.
blogwhore alert!
Zifnab
I can’t stand cable news anymore. It’s so phony, so gimmicky, so detached, I just stick to the blogs and the papers. Cable News is a massive waste of everyone’s time. They’re so far off the mark, it’s like listening to the news on Opposite Day.
Rosali
New CBS poll: Should the Govt provide help to homeowners?
Yes= 61% No= 20% Don’t know= 14%
With all that talk about Santelli’s populist revolt, you’d think that the numbers would be the other way around.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
The Villagers don’t live in the USA, they only visit it occasionally, as tourists. As the saying goes, "Why do they call it ‘tourist season’ if we can’t hunt them?"
Perhaps if we were to shoot them and then roast them over an open fire and eat them (or the edible bits anyway – might need lots of chili), they might start to get the point.
calipygian
This is certainly good news for McCain and the Republicans.
MikeJ
Why are Americans so out of touch with what their betters think?
bootlegger
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: No shit, if ever we had an aristocracy, a bunch of courtesans groveling at the feet of power, this is it. All that’s left is for us to find the next inventor of the guillotine.
As for polling, didn’t you know that the Limbaugh method of counting phone calls to Congress is The Truth!
Tsulagi
And starbursts. Don’t forget the starbursts!
The Populist
The villagers will be left behind and may I respectfully say FUCK THEM.
Yep, I say that because I am tired of trying to understand people who don’t try to understand me. I look at things with depth. I am not going to side with liberal viewpoints anymore than I will with far right ones. Problem is, liberals treat me with respect and LISTEN to my POV when the right tell me I am crazy and should stop being a liberal.
So basically, righties call me liberal without even digging deep enough to know I am a bit more complicated than that and liberals/dems are cool and want to talk and find the middle ground + educate me on their viewpoints. Nobody on the left has ever labeled me the way these rightie blowtards have.
So basically fuck Haley Barbour and the other governors and their little serfs. If the people of Missisippi and Louisiana and etc want to keep voting against their self interests let them.
When I hear a-holes like that lady who called Rush whining about the evil liberal scourge when she lives in a bright red county of Kentucky, fuck them.
The Grand Panjandrum
After watching Obama handle the wrap up to the fiscal responsibility summit this afternoon this was my favorite line from the televised part:
Pundits are falling all over themselves trying to describe the session but what is obvious is that he is absolutely in charge and nobody’s fool.
MikeL
This is only related to the topic by a few ideological tendrils, but damn this is funny. And the joke’s authors aren’t even in on the joke!
Dennis-SGMM
@calipygian:
Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal also.
The Populist
May I add that if I hear anybody, ANYBODY, whining about being out of work in these redder than red states, I will now shrug and worry about getting jobs for my fellow Californians and other states that at least have pragmatist righties running them. If you elect scum like Hayley Barbour, it’s your problem not mine. Just don’t take my tax dollars, okay? Figure it out and let the "markets’ help you out of your mess.
Shit, the funny part is that the markets are dying from neglect and these maroons truly believe the nonsense that the market will sort itself out? Nah…not happening.
The Populist
I remember pointing out how this country had become an aristocracy/corpocracy under Bush and got shouted down.
We were once a true meritocracy yet the right decided to tell us to shut up and take our rights so rich people could get richer at our expense.
The same righties who told me this was a meritocracy could not defend their stances. I saw the rich getting richer. I saw that trickle down wasn’t "trickling".
For supposedly smart people the right have to know history has proven that greed and disdain for the average person is always met with a strong retort from the masses. People want fair. They may buy your bullshit for awhile but if you make it hard to achieve something for little reward and then pull the rug from people, you risk a heck of a lot of hatred coming back your way.
The Populist
Guys…did any of you know that we are on the brink of another REVOLUTION?!?!?!?!?!?!
If Pajamas and Malkin say so IT MUST BE TRUE!!!!
Comrade Stuck
Indeed, most of the other deep south governors are just politicking wingnut style. Barbour is a real Mccoy cracker sumbitch straight out of the local yokel cast in Mississippi Burning.
The deep south is still largely operating under the pre-civil war caste system (minus the slavery part). For poor people, they are expected and raised to pay more taxes and not whine about their birthright of propping up their masters. If you ask them about the stimulus and Barbour’s plan to not take the unemployment benefits that would help them, most will say hell yea, you go Haley, stick it to them yankee libtards. The parable of cutting noses off to spite faces is never taught in southern schools.
(( I grew up in the south and lived in southern Mississippi for several years.
TenguPhule
So about the same amount of people who approved of the Job Dubya was doing disapprove of Obama’s performance.
Go figure.
John S.
Jesus H. Christ, those PJTV ads just keep getting dumber and dumber.
An American Tea Party???
Can we just throw Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds and Joe the Plumber overboard instead?
TenguPhule
Guillotines.
SATSQ.
TenguPhule
Only if you threw a bucket of chum in the water first.
Vote TenguPhule in 2012, I pledge to feed Malkin, Coulter, and NJTNP to great white sharks on PPV.
Just Some Fuckhead
Really, no surprise here – Republicans broke the fucking world.
sam the sham and the pharoahs
The dilemma faced by the Villagers is that the corrective for what’s wrong with our economy and our government is fundamental, serious change. And that threatens their very existence, and they can’t imagine how they might survive in a new reality. The way they see it, the only option they have is to advocate for the status quo.
TenguPhule
At least one of those words doesn’t belong there.
opium4themasses
@MikeL: I don’t know why but this made me giggle.
valdivia
I loved Obama’s version of question time today. He really did hand these idiots their asses skewered on a platter.
ksmiami
Just because the GOP forgot about years 2000-2008 doesn’t mean everybody else did.
/idiots
El Cid
I am highly offended that all you libruls would blame Republicans for stuff that just happened to happen under 8 years of hard right wing Republican leadership.
Mike in NC
Take away their seven-figure salaries, book deals, limos, and TV shows for starters? Thirty seconds of Chris Matthews is more than my poor brain can tolerate.
barrisj
You mean Rick Santelli hasn’t as yet single-handedly brought down the Obama approval numbers? And although Rick’s IQ probably is higher, he seems to be currently serving the "Joe the Plumber" role amongst the right-wing gasbag community this week. Next week, maybe Charlie Gasparino—and what is with these Italian-surname dudes on the bidness channels, already?
demkat620
@valdivia:
Yeah he was really good today especially on McCain’s attempted gotcha:
This is how we do it…
valdivia
@demkat620:
what I enjoy is that these people are like 20 paces behind him and don’t realize it. they think they are being clever. gotta love that no?
Mnemosyne
I learned how to knit a few years ago, so I’m ready to organize the tricoteuses under the guillotines.
I actually was a tricoteuse for Halloween two years ago. At least a year too early, sadly.
Dennis-SGMM
"Yeah, muthafucka, your pimped-out helicopter is costing us a bundle."
McCain neglects to mention that the new helicopter hasn’t actually been purchased yet and that it is the end product of a six year project.
Rome Again
@opium4themasses:
Unfortunately, the link to the wiki list of terrorist organizations does not have the GOP on it at all, when the GOP should be listed at the top.
Delia
@Mnemosyne:
Sounds amusing. I just can’t decide whether the Republicans or the bankers should be the first to go.
valdivia
@Dennis-SGMM:
but but but, don’t you know it has to be Obama’s fault? By republican magical thinking (talk about magic realism except with no realism with this crew) everything that happened from 2000-2008 was because Obama would be president. see?
Waingro
The South does have a weird political pathology, doesn’t it? People are so obedient down there- they’ll keep choking back those shit sandwiches these corn-pone authoritarians love to serve.
Southern progressives are some of my favorite people, but damn these Southern wingnuts are some of the the most destructive, retrograde people in the country.
Ash Can
@demkat620:
Holy crap. McCain got sliced ‘n’ diced and had the pieces handed back to him before anyone even realized that Obama was packing a shiv. Our president is a frickin Benihana chef.
demkat620
@valdivia:
Smart is hawt!
Rome Again
@Delia:
Aren’t Republicans and Bankers one and the same?
Dennis-SGMM
It’s not just political. Back when I was a machinist my company subcontracted a particular part to a shop in Houston. It was a tricky thing to machine and they just couldn’t come up with a good one. So the company sent me, as the guy who’d been making the good ones, down to Houston to help ’em get it sorted out. When we’d break for lunch, the guys would brag about what cool cars the bosses drove.
John S.
I used to work as a marketing consultant and got sent down that way for very similar reasons. It was quite an experience. I ended up going back on three separate occasions.
I’ve been around, and Houston is in my bottom 5 least favorite places.
kay
@demkat620:
And, McCain noted, "your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One. I don’t think that there’s any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have—have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money."
I don’t like and admire John McCain as much as other people do and did, but is this what he actually said?
YOUR helicopter? I don’t know. That just makes me sad. I can’t even hate that. It’s so transparently bitter. What is McCain? 5 years old?
Fulcanelli
@Waingro: It has a LOT to do with the role of religion in Southern society. They are trained from birth to be shut up, face front and obey the man at the podium, whether it’s the Preacher or the Senator. Both Southern types tend to spout some pretty wacky shit and nobody notices or seems to care.
Rome Again
@kay:
Yes, kay. It’s so transparent that McCain only wanted to be president so he could tell everyone 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was his house, all the transportation amenities would be his toys and the masses he would have presided over would be his peons.
Comrade Stuck
@Waingro:
They are pillars of strength in an insane environment. IE Molly Ivens (RIP) and others. She once said parts of Texas a liberal needed a Visa to enter. First class lady, as was Ann Richards. also RIP.
kay
@Rome Again:
I don’t remember the losing candidate acting so small.
McCain’s in the Senate, so I knew he wasn’t going into hiding, but so was John Kerry. There’s a sniping quality to these attacks that seems petty.
It’s disconcerting to me. I don’t know why it isn’t commented on.
gbear
NYT The Caucus covers the helecopter story and has a great picture of McCain. Says at least 1000 words.
Question: did McCain (or the wife) ever own a private helicopter? I was wondering if Obama’s line about never having one before was a special dig against the McCain’s, who’ve stated that private jet is the only way to travel.
Fulcanelli
I think the ultimate "Republican Stimulus Victory" would be when Pfizer starts making Viagra tabs red and sells them in NASCAR festooned packaging.
ksmiami
McCain is a first class asshole – even Nancy Reagan thinks so
Rome Again
@kay:
Because McCain has always been a petulant child. It’s expected.
bago
The helicopter thing was genius. The kind we haven’t seen for decades.
Dennis-SGMM
I think that McCain was objecting to the 22 inch rims on the copter.
/Ducks, runs out of room.
kay
@Rome Again:
Obama solicited his opinion. So. Given an opportunity to expound on his single issue, which is wasteful government spending, he goes after the President’s helicopter?
El Cid
Clearly only Bush Jr. who was KeepingUsSafe from Terror merited special attention to his transportation vehicle.
Yet Bush Jr. was such a brave cowboy that he shunned wasteful Air Force One and drove his own humble Ford Mustang around the country, fighting crime under the alias Michael Knight…
kommrade reproductive vigor
Bu-but, Dr. Denton’s Media is going to start a teabagging revolution!
Rome Again
@kay:
After losing the election, he is still licking his wounds, and looking for a way to get back at the man who beat him. He’s not very good at it but did we really expect he would be? It’s childish, yes, but it’s not really surprising, is it?
Fulcanelli
According to the National Geographic special on Marine One there’s about 30 of them in the fleet, 4 different models, state of the art everything and they get the upholstery done in Tijuana. Catch the show if you can.
ksmiami
This is excellent news for McCain!!!
That One - Cain
@Zifnab:
I get all my important issues from balloon-juice. *smirk*
sri
valdivia
@demkat620:
yep. very very hawt. good to know others think so too.
ksmiami
Can we shrink the Main Stream Media Mediocrity until it can be drowned in a bathtub?
Mike in NC
Perhaps the US Government can bill McNasty for those five naval aircraft he destroyed through stupidity and sheer negligence? That’s probably less than the price tag on a 747.
Fulcanelli
Obama’s address to the the assembled congress critters tomorrow eve should be interesting TV. Watching the R’s pout and golf clap will be worth the price of admission. Bring the pain, Mr. President.
srv
@Just Some Fuckhead: George deliberately the whole world.
Wile E. Quixote
There’s a piece in Politico today about the GOP’s new strategy. What is it? It’s the same strategy they pursued during the 1990s.
Forget change: GOP eyes retro strategy
Here are the first few paragraphs:
I read stuff like this and have to wonder if the Republicans are high or merely stupid. I mean really, how long can you offer up appeals to nostalgic era of Ronald Reagan – Republican Jesus, and simple obstructionism as a viable political platform?
I love Norquist’s selective memory. Perhaps Bush 41 wouldn’t have fucked himself as hard as he did if he hadn’t gone out and said "read my lips, no new taxes". If he had been the pragmatic Republican he was in 1980, you know, the one who condemned Reagan’s "voodoo economics" and had not made this promise he probably wouldn’t have pissed so many people off. Similarly in 1994 there were major Democratic scandals, which were handled ineptly by the Democratic House leadership, that caused the Democrats to lose the House and Senate, and the Democrats didn’t lose by much. As much as the Republicans talk about 1994 being a landslide there were a bunch of races that were decided by 51-49 splits.
Emma Anne
@Dennis-SGMM: and @John S.:
My dad was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. His opinion of the place is that if he got dumped back there with no car and no money, he’d start walking.
Numberwang
Obviously, we’re dealing with a group who made some very bad bets in the last couple years, slicing and dicing numbers to look better on paper than they really were. They’re trying very, very hard not to acknowledge reality. Nationalization’s out of the question, so we’ll just have to split the party into a good GOP and bad GOP. The good GOP will go on to return to profitable lines of work, such as complaining about spending on all projects, isolationism, and good-natured policy-making conducted as if the United States meant something. The bad GOP will be put in charge of the bad bank which make loans to a team of Baseball’s dopedest all-stars that you can watch from your car (which shoots fire).
Dennis-SGMM
@Emma Anne:
I lived in South Texas (Kingsville) for three years. One of the books I read during my exile was Andy Adams’ excellent Log of a Cowboy. In it, he mentions that if he owned Hell and Texas he’d live in Hell and rent out Texas.
TheHatOnMyCat
Right. So, why do we pay attention to those Poundits, again?
( twiddles thumbs )
( crickets )
( cone of silence )
( distant bird chirps, dogs barking )
Mike in NC
Grover is 15 years behind the times, but maybe that’s because he was less of a fat ignorant slob then, but only slightly.
Spent a week in Amarillo one night on a cross-country drive. But it was nicer than Oklahoma City!
TheHatOnMyCat
My impression of Amarillo is that it might be the only place in Texas where you can’t get decent barbeque.
Dennis-SGMM
@Wile E. Quixote:
"Our two weapons are obstruction and countering health care reform."
"And tarring the Democrats with spending scandals."
"Our three weapons are…"
No one expects the Republican Revolution!
Fulcanelli
While Obama’s non-dusty strategic playbook was written 2500 years ago by Sun Tzu… "Many Calculations, Many Victories!"
The AI in the average first person shooter video game has 10 times the strategic brain power and operational dexterity that the Republican party is packing.
They really have no ideas at all. Pathetic.
/Tax Cuts, bitchez!
Rome Again
@Wile E. Quixote:
Would it were so that they could just put down the bong and their senses would return within a few hours. Unfortunately that brand of stupid doesn’t wear off.
Mnemosyne
@Fulcanelli:
I’m half-expecting them to refuse to stand when Obama enters the room. That would be comedy indeed.
Wile E. Quixote
@Zifnab
Amen brother. The gym I go to has two TVs tuned to Faux and two tuned to CNN. This is the only time I’m exposed to cable news and I never cease to be amazed at how incredibly stupid and vacuous it is. The thing is that I can’t watch cable news shows under any circumstances because doing so is just too painful. Seriously, when I was in the hospital in 2003 after my motorcycle accident, which was during the run up to Gulf War, the Sequel, I was jacked up on every opiate known to man (my favorites: demerol, fentanyl and oxycontin, least favorites: morphine and methadone). Even with a PCA drip of demerol and nurses who would supplement that with Oxycontin and lime jello I still found the stupidity of cable news to be too painful to bear. For me the choice between watching 30 minutes of CNN or having a catheter inserted would be an easy one.
TheHatOnMyCat
@Rome Again: Let’s look at the bright side. Our opposition is high, and stupid.
How much better can this get?
Rome Again
@TheHatOnMyCat:
If we’re in such good position, why do I feel like I’m about to blow a gasket?
TheHatOnMyCat
@Rome Again: I think we got so used to being kicked in the junk by those Repubs that we are not used to beating them.
Or in this case, watching them beat themselves.
Rome Again
@TheHatOnMyCat:
I tend to disagree. Personally the cognitive dissonance they suffer is causing me to become very frustrated. People just don’t do this sort of shit and get away with it, but somehow they always have recently. They are changing the rules and driving us off a cliff and no one will realize it until we’re 20 feet from the edge going 120 mph.
(P.S. – ummm, I don’t think of that as "junk") ;)
LaDonne
OT, perhaps, but one other thing that I have only heard on Ric Edelman’s show is that the Fed Reseve moving into the mutual fund market has made the tax payers $8 billion because it worked.
His explanation is here. It’s the first hour of 2/21 at about the 22 minute mark.
I wonder if anyone else has heard about this.
Steeplejack
@sam the sham and the pharoahs:
Dude, it’s "pharaohs." The only person I know who uses "Pharoah" is jazz cat Pharoah Sanders.
(Sorry, former copyeditor with OCD tendencies.)
Wile E. Quixote
@Tenguphule
Make it great white sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads and you’ve got my vote!
DougJ
I agree.
But I do think that the media portrayal of things does affect what is possible politically. In a less toxic Washington environment, it would have been possible, for example, to get a larger stimulus package through. That might make a lot of difference to a lot of people’s lives.
The Republican party is imploding even as their immense bravery is celebrated by pundits. But this stuff does have negative side effects.
It’s likely that the current Republican party will eventually vanish. But the question is if they’ll destroy our society first.
binzinerator
Word.
binzinerator
Wile E. I hear you, but so much of what has fucked us up as a nation has been foisted upon us by republicans by 51-49 splits, at best. Anything over a simple majority of 50% they call it a mandate, dontcha know.
Cyrus
Just so we’re clear, the Clinton impeachment wasn’t all that long ago. You could just as easily have said "the president before last." Or "the previous Democrat." Funny how that works.
binzinerator
Jeez, I think we’re talking about the same thing. Sorry I misread your comment.
I will say that one thing the goopers’ 50% plus 1 strategy has done is point out the fact that, yes, 50% plus 1 is as good as a landslide in terms of getting to carry out whatever it is you want done, at least if you have democrats as your opposition.
I wish the democrats would figure this out.
The thing about authoritarian assholes is this: if you ram it down their throat with enough force they will swallow it and they will be respectful of the one who did the ramming and they will even come around to defend it. "Thank you Sir! May I have another!".
That’s just how these people roll.
binzinerator
@DougJ:
This is, after all, the "apres moi le Deluge" sort of people we’re talking about here.
Mnemosyne
@Waingro:
I think the way Molly Ivins explained it was that once she figured out they were lying to her about race, she started to wonder what else they were lying to her about.
Person of Choler
Yeah, I’m sure that the Republicans who voted against the Stimulus now wish they could take credit for the stock market’s behavior since the Stimulus passed.
bago
The Palin IT site has an ad on how to claim your stimulus money.
jibeaux
I liked this part:
Now, if we can just get them down to a percentage of Congress proportional to the actual support for their ideas, we might be able to get some shit done.
Gregory
@Mnemosyne: If memory serves me right, the way our esteemed host explained it was that once he figured out they were lying to him about Terri Schaivo, he started to wonder what else they were lying to him about.
Evinfuilt
@TheHatOnMyCat:
I live in Galveston, Houston has the 2nd worst BBQ in the state. I agree about Amarillo, they use the worst cuts, just pound,salt, and burn their meat, trying to pass it as BBQ.
The Hill Country is where the real BBQ is. I also found a great pit house on 45 a bit over halfway to Dallas from Houston. You could smell it coming, I had to pull over.
Texas really should be 4 states, then Austin and San Antonio would have a chance to be truly admired as the wonderful cities they are.
Oh, and get me out of here, please! This summer will be the 10year mark of being around Houston, I can’t take it anymore.
Zifnab
@Person of Choler: Lols. The Republicans thought they could control the stock market with the repeal of Glass-Steagle in ’99. And again when Greenspan and Bernenke dropped the federal interest rate to virtually nothing. And again when they promised permanent Bush Tax Cuts and massive cuts to corporate taxes would repair the marketplace overnight.
Seems to have worked well so far. But now that the Democrats are in control, its been nothing but bad news, doncha know.
Zifnab
@Evinfuilt: As a Houston Native, I feel your pain.