Northwest Indiana Discussion

Mitt Romney has been making a pitch for bipartisanship in the closing days of the race, and this morning rolled out an endorsement from Hillary Clinton’s former Senate state director, Gigi Georges:

“For most of my life, I’ve been an active Democrat. I am proud to have worked for President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Hillary Clinton, and, during that time, I saw firsthand what can be accomplished by strong, bipartisan leadership. I know what it means to work across the aisle on issues that are important to the American people. And that’s why I am supporting Mitt Romney. Governor Romney has a plan to restore the prosperity this country deserves and expects. He will work with people of good will no matter what their party, and he will pursue the policies that are in the best interest of our country, no matter who proposes them. That’s what President Obama promised to do four years ago. But like so many of his promises, bipartisan cooperation is just another one he has broken. We can’t have four more years of failed policies and two parties that can’t work together. We need the change Mitt Romney is offering.”

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Legendary performer Stevie Wonder this morning expressed his love for Cleveland during a get-out-the-vote rally at Cleveland State University.

His love went largely unrequited.

Fewer than 200 people showed up to watch Wonder perform a handful of his hits at the early voting event in support of President Barack Obama.

Most of the people had learned of the event just hours before the 9:30 a.m. start time. Some just happened to be in the area and followed the live music.

Campaign volunteer Ken Johnson asked who in the crowd had voted early before introducing Wonder.

Nearly every hand went up.

Just a week before the New Year, Obama enjoyed his highest approval ratings of 2012. According to Gallup, 58% of Americans approved of the job Obama was doing. Survey results released today by Gallup, though, show Obama’s apporval rating has plummeted to just 49%. It is a dramatic drop coming over a holiday period when people traditionally pay little attention to politics. Four years ago, at his first inauguration, a full 69% of Americans approved of Obama.

The drop in Obama’s approval from 4 years ago is understandable, given the sluggish economy and the hope American’s had as his presidency began. The considerable drop from just a few weeks ago is more puzzling. According to the media, he was the “winner” of the fiscal cliff negotiations, getting most of the tax hikes he campaigned on and avoiding spending cuts.

Also according to the media, he has deftly exploited the Sandy Hook tragedy to make a renewed push for gun control. This is supposedly popular with the American public and Obama has been all over the airwaves pushing his proposals. He even orchestrated a back-drop of children from across the country to release his proposals to the public.

And, yet, his approval rating is dropping. Exit polls from the past election make it pretty clear that voters chose Obama the person and not his policies. Pushing his policies even further to the left looks like its backfiring with the public.

Is The Push To Control Guns Causing Obama A Drop In Popularity?

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat approve of President Obama's job performance.

President Obama’s approval rating has fallen 8 points and his disapproval rating jumped 7 points since the beginning of the year, leaving him underwater, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll.

Some 47 percent of respondents approve of the job he’s doing, while 50 percent disapprove, the poll found.

Gallup earlier this month found his three-day approval rating tumbling to its lowest level since reelection. A McClatchy Marist poll last week found his approval rating at 45 percent among registered voters, the lowest level since 2011. Quinnipiac came up with the same result earlier this month — 45 percent — compared with 53 percent after reelection.

White House press secretary Jay Carney has said people shouldn’t pay attention to the “series of polls” and pointed out that a recent Washington Post poll found his approval rating at 50 percent. Although the Post poll last week also found that has dropped 5 points since he took the oath of office in January.

During the debate over the so-called fiscal cliff in December, public opinion surveys showed more Americans trusted President Obama than trusted Republicans in Congress when it came to handling the nation’s economy. The New Year’s Day deal to avoid going over the cliff, which included higher marginal tax rates on high earners — something Mr. Obama had campaigned on and lobbied for — was largely seen as a victory for the president.

But with more budget battles approaching, over raising the nation’s borrowing limit and perhaps reaching a grand bargain, Mr. Obama’s advantage over Congressional Republicans has all but vanished. Public approval of his handling of the economy has slipped, according to polls, and surveys now show that a roughly equal number of Americans favor Mr. Obama as favor Congressional Republicans on economic matters.

In its latest Obamacare poll, Public Opinion Strategies found that Americans aren’t just down on the health care reform pushed by the president. They seem to want Washington to stop spending their tax dollars on most programs.

Pollster Bill McInturff found, for example, that just 38 percent support spending on health care, a 23-point drop since 2009, when Obamacare passed. On other programs over the three-year period, he found that 24 percent support spending on the jobless, a 20-point drop; 36 percent support more Medicare funding, a 17-point drop; 33 percent support spending on the environment, down 10 points in three years; and 53 percent back spending for veterans’ benefits, down 10 points since 2009.

A new NBC/WSJ poll finds President Obama’s approval rating has fallen 6 points since his reelection to 47 percent.

At the same time, his dispproval rating has ticked up 5 points to 48 percent, the poll found.

That puts him underwater for the first time since August last year, when an NBC/WSJ survey found him at 48 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval.

The poll also found that 31 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction — down from 41 percent last fall — while 61 percent think the nation is headed in the wrong direction. That’s up from 53 percent.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe, in political terms, Barack Obama is at least somewhat liberal, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That includes 38% who think he is Very Liberal.

Twenty-four percent (24%) say the president is politically moderate, while only five percent (5%) see him as conservative.

Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 because he was not George W. Bush. In fact, he was elected because he was the furthest thing possible from Mr. Bush. On some level he knew this, which is why every time he got in trouble he’d say Bush’s name. It’s all his fault, you have no idea the mess I inherited. As long as Mr. Bush’s memory was hovering like Boo Radley in the shadows, Mr. Obama would be OK.

In an excerpt from a longer interview, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is asked by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution whether he plans to run for president in 2016. “Uncommon Knowledge” is produced by the Hoover Institution for WSJ Live.

This week something changed. George W. Bush is back, for the unveiling of his presidential library. His numbers are dramatically up. You know why? Because he’s the furthest thing from Barack Obama.

Obama fatigue has opened the way to Bush affection.

In all his recent interviews Mr. Bush has been modest, humorous, proud but unassuming, and essentially philosophical: History will decide. No finger-pointing or scoring points. If he feels rancor or resentment he didn’t show it. He didn’t attempt to manipulate. His sheer normality seemed like a relief, an echo of an older age.

And all this felt like an antidote to Obama—to the imperious I, to the inability to execute, to the endless interviews and the imperturbable drone, to the sense that he is trying to teach us, like an Ivy League instructor taken aback by the backwardness of his students. And there’s the unconscious superiority. One thing Mr. Bush didn’t think he was was superior. He thought he was luckily born, quick but not deep, and he famously trusted his gut but also his heart. He always seemed moved and grateful to be in the White House. Someone who met with Mr. Obama during his first year in office, an old hand who’d worked with many presidents, came away worried and confounded. Mr. Obama, he said, was the only one who didn’t seem awed by his surroundings, or by the presidency itself.

In an interview with AlterNet this past week, America’s most well-known left-wing intellectual slammed President Obama for his inexplicable “attacks” on civil liberties in the forms of various laws expanding upon the executive powers set forth by President George W. Bush.

Speaking with the liberal blog’s Mike Stivers, Chomsky expressed dissatisfaction with the current president’s record on civil liberties: “I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”

For an example of Obama’s civil liberties abuses, Chomsky cited Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project, in which the administration petitioned the Supreme Court to put an end to legal groups giving any “material assistance” — including advice to turn nonviolent — to terrorist organizations.

“The case in question was a law group that was giving legal advice to groups on the terrorist list, which in itself has no moral or legal justification; it’s an abomination,” Chomsky said. “But if you look at the way it’s been used, it becomes even more abhorrent … And the wording of the colloquy is broad enough that it could very well mean that if, say, you meet with someone in a terrorist group and advise them to turn to nonviolent means, then that’s material assistance to terrorism…. Obama wants to criminalize that, which is a plain attack on freedom of speech. I just don’t understand why he’s doing it.”

After a week of revelations about government spying on reporters and the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives, most voters feel “like the federal government has gotten out of control and is threatening the basic civil liberties of Americans.”

At the same time, a new Fox News poll finds disapproval of President Obama’s job performance is above 50 percent for the first time in a year, his honesty rating is at a new low and half of voters already think he’s a lame-duck.

More than two-thirds of voters — 68 percent — feel the government is out of control and threatening their civil liberties. About one quarter disagree (26 percent).

Six in 10 Americans say the Justice Department “went too far” when it seized the phone records of reporters working at the Associated Press (AP) without prior notice. That’s almost twice as many as the 31 percent who think the actions were “justified” because the government was looking for leaks about a terrorist plot.

The poll also finds more voters questioning Obama’s honesty. Some 49 percent think Obama is honest and trustworthy today. That’s down from 51 percent last July — and the first time in a Fox News poll that less than half of voters said Obama was honest. Obama’s highest honesty rating was 73 percent in April 2009, when he had been in office about 100 days.

A record number also now thinks Obama is not honest: 48 percent in the new poll, up from 46 percent last summer

Nearly half of voters now consider Obama a lame-duck president. Less than a year into his second term, 49 percent of voters say Obama is a lame-duck, including 25 percent of Democrats.

Almost as many voters — 47 percent — say Obama still has the power to get things done.

... At the same time, a new Fox News poll ...

CNN Poll: Obama approval rating unharmed by controversies

Even as his administration has faced intense scrutiny over a trio of controversies, President Obama’s approval rating hasn’t suffered, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll released Sunday.

GOP scandal-mongering making Obama more popular, GOP most unpopular in CNN polling history

The Democratic Party went from a 46-48 favorable-unfavorable rating a month ago, to 52-43 in this latest poll. That's a net gain of 11 points.

As for impeachment-screeching Republicans? They're DOWN a net eight points from 38-54 a month ago, to 35-59 this week.
It turns out that:

* The American people just don't think that it's the worst scandal since Watergate that Obama called the Benghazi consulate attack an "act of terror" as opposed to a "terrorist attack".

* The American people just don't care that the IRS spent extra time looking at the applications of political groups—none of which had their applications rejected, mind you. (Well, except for that one liberal group.)

* The American people can't be bothered to care that some reporters were spied on, after the GOP spent the last decade pushing for increased wiretapping powers in the name of "national security". This is exactly what Republicans wanted. No one believes they're really that outraged about it now.

So after the president's supposed worst week ever, with Republicans jumping in glee at the scandals, we find that the president's popularity has inched up, the Democratic Party's popularity is significantly up, and Republicans, at 59 percent unfavorable, are at their highest unpopularity level since CNN started polling the question in 1992.
Way to go, sherlocks.

Fox "News" poll?.... that's funny. The CNN, PPP and Gallup all have the same results.