Instapundit spins a poll.
So the New York Times' most recent round of polling (pdf) is pretty bad for the GOP. How is the Right Wing Clearing House known as Glenn Reynolds handling it?
Well, first, all bad news for Bush must confirm Glenn's (and Mickey Kaus') pet convictions, like that Bush is being killed by his liberal stance on immigration.
Actually, from the NYT article on today's poll results:
Immigration is another issue undercutting Republicans and Mr. Bush. As Republicans battle over how to respond to illegal immigration, the poll found considerable opposition to the strict measures being pressed by conservative Republicans in the House.
About 60 percent of respondents said they favored the plan proposed by some Republicans in the Senate that would permit illegal immigrants who had worked in the United States for at least two years to keep their jobs and apply for citizenship. Just 35 percent endorsed the view of some conservatives that illegal immigrants should be deported. Two-thirds opposed building a 700-mile fence along the United States-Mexican border.
I'd love to see Kaus and Reynolds try to untangle their apparent belief that Bush should pander harder to the conservative base on this particular issue in order to stop bleeding true believer support for the midterms against poll results that have Americans favouring the generic Dem position over the generic GOP position 45-29. (Bush, after all, may be losing popularity among his base, but they're still his staunchest supporters, and they won't be voting directly for the White House in November anyway.)*
Then we get a link to Thomas Bray at Real Clear Politics, who writes:
Democrats hope that George Bush's miserable poll numbers will help them reclaim control of Congress this fall. But polls also show that the Democratic Party's overall approval ratings are almost as deep in the tank as the Republican rating. Voters may be expressing dismay at the alternatives.
Well, maybe. But today's NYT poll reports that 55% of respondants now have a favourable view of the Dems, the donkey's highest in two years, vs. 37% who have a favourable view Republicans, the lowest the elephant has been since the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Glenn doesn't know this either because he hasn't read the poll, or even apparently the NYT article about the poll. Instead, he culls this excerpt from another right wing blog:
The political situation has not helped some of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election.
And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.
To which Glenn adds:
I wonder how Hillary's polling? More seriously, I think we're seeing a general meltdown in support for the entire governing class as the result of a perception (which is largely true) that it lacks the seriousness and self-restraint necessary to run a major nation.
If Glenn had read the poll, he'd know that HRC has 34% favourable (35% unfavourable, 32% undecided). He'd also know that, despite Kerry's 26% favouable (38% unfavourable, 34% undecided -- compared to Bush's 55% unfavourable), he still narrowly beats Bush in a hypothetical rematch, 37-35%. But reading too much stuff slows down the insta-linking, and, anyway, I don't know if I'd read the poll either in Glenn's place. It's a much sweeter job when we can just grab at anything out there to make sweeping generalizations in line with our pet convictions, like about how Americans have rejected the entire federal government, which just happens to be controlled by Republicans. This is Glenn's fallback libertarianism -- either the Dems suck alone or, if that position can't be maintained, everybody sucks together because the governing class is inherently corrupt. I'm sure it will see him through to November just fine.
*To be fair, Byron York has a pretty convincing take, based on numbers from a recent Gallup poll, that moderate support was long gone and by assuming a "third way" type position on immigration, Bush has caused some of his remaining base support to peel off. It's not a ludicrous argument by any means, but 40-52 support among Republicans for Bush's immigration policy doesn't strike me as really too bad to begin with (it implies only about half of Republican identifiers support a more draconian policy in the first place, roughly what the NYT numbers suggest.) Going draconian would (a) entail a blatant White House flip-flop when Bush's lone remaining virtue, according to the NYT analysis is that voters consider him more honest than your average pol; and (b) would be yet another position alienating to a majority of Americans who favour a middle ground. Also, there's something rather sinister about the way supposed neoliberal Mickey Kaus and supposed libertarian Glenn Reynolds egg Bush on toward pandering to his base of zenophobes in order to scare his approval rating up a couple of points just because the moderates who once formed a Bushie cushion of support have likely abandonned the White House for good.
Well, first, all bad news for Bush must confirm Glenn's (and Mickey Kaus') pet convictions, like that Bush is being killed by his liberal stance on immigration.
Actually, from the NYT article on today's poll results:
Immigration is another issue undercutting Republicans and Mr. Bush. As Republicans battle over how to respond to illegal immigration, the poll found considerable opposition to the strict measures being pressed by conservative Republicans in the House.
About 60 percent of respondents said they favored the plan proposed by some Republicans in the Senate that would permit illegal immigrants who had worked in the United States for at least two years to keep their jobs and apply for citizenship. Just 35 percent endorsed the view of some conservatives that illegal immigrants should be deported. Two-thirds opposed building a 700-mile fence along the United States-Mexican border.
I'd love to see Kaus and Reynolds try to untangle their apparent belief that Bush should pander harder to the conservative base on this particular issue in order to stop bleeding true believer support for the midterms against poll results that have Americans favouring the generic Dem position over the generic GOP position 45-29. (Bush, after all, may be losing popularity among his base, but they're still his staunchest supporters, and they won't be voting directly for the White House in November anyway.)*
Then we get a link to Thomas Bray at Real Clear Politics, who writes:
Democrats hope that George Bush's miserable poll numbers will help them reclaim control of Congress this fall. But polls also show that the Democratic Party's overall approval ratings are almost as deep in the tank as the Republican rating. Voters may be expressing dismay at the alternatives.
Well, maybe. But today's NYT poll reports that 55% of respondants now have a favourable view of the Dems, the donkey's highest in two years, vs. 37% who have a favourable view Republicans, the lowest the elephant has been since the Clinton impeachment fiasco. Glenn doesn't know this either because he hasn't read the poll, or even apparently the NYT article about the poll. Instead, he culls this excerpt from another right wing blog:
The political situation has not helped some of the more prominent members of the Democratic Party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, had a lower approval rating than Mr. Bush: 26 percent, down from 40 percent in a poll conducted right after the election.
And just 28 percent said they had a favorable view of Al Gore, one of Mr. Bush's more vocal critics.
To which Glenn adds:
I wonder how Hillary's polling? More seriously, I think we're seeing a general meltdown in support for the entire governing class as the result of a perception (which is largely true) that it lacks the seriousness and self-restraint necessary to run a major nation.
If Glenn had read the poll, he'd know that HRC has 34% favourable (35% unfavourable, 32% undecided). He'd also know that, despite Kerry's 26% favouable (38% unfavourable, 34% undecided -- compared to Bush's 55% unfavourable), he still narrowly beats Bush in a hypothetical rematch, 37-35%. But reading too much stuff slows down the insta-linking, and, anyway, I don't know if I'd read the poll either in Glenn's place. It's a much sweeter job when we can just grab at anything out there to make sweeping generalizations in line with our pet convictions, like about how Americans have rejected the entire federal government, which just happens to be controlled by Republicans. This is Glenn's fallback libertarianism -- either the Dems suck alone or, if that position can't be maintained, everybody sucks together because the governing class is inherently corrupt. I'm sure it will see him through to November just fine.
*To be fair, Byron York has a pretty convincing take, based on numbers from a recent Gallup poll, that moderate support was long gone and by assuming a "third way" type position on immigration, Bush has caused some of his remaining base support to peel off. It's not a ludicrous argument by any means, but 40-52 support among Republicans for Bush's immigration policy doesn't strike me as really too bad to begin with (it implies only about half of Republican identifiers support a more draconian policy in the first place, roughly what the NYT numbers suggest.) Going draconian would (a) entail a blatant White House flip-flop when Bush's lone remaining virtue, according to the NYT analysis is that voters consider him more honest than your average pol; and (b) would be yet another position alienating to a majority of Americans who favour a middle ground. Also, there's something rather sinister about the way supposed neoliberal Mickey Kaus and supposed libertarian Glenn Reynolds egg Bush on toward pandering to his base of zenophobes in order to scare his approval rating up a couple of points just because the moderates who once formed a Bushie cushion of support have likely abandonned the White House for good.
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