August 6, 2010 Conservative Examiner Anthony G. Martin
Never before in the history of modern public approval surveys has a President taken such a dramatic nosedive in the polls. A recent group of daily surveys by Rasmussen shows Obama hovering around 41-42% approval for his job performance. Merely 18 months ago Obama garnered a 70% advantage.
At the present rate of slippage he will soon be in the dismal and politically dangerous 30% range.
(Photo by Jeff Haynes/Getty Images).
This will place him roughly in the same range as George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Historically such a dismal rating means big trouble for the Party of the President in midterm elections.
The deeper issue, however, revolves around the reasons for Obama's nosedive in the polls.
Under normal circumstances political punditry maintains that factors in the economy are the driving force of a President's popularity. While the assertion is valid, this time around there are many other crucial factors at play that will continue to haunt this President.
First, the economy is admittedly very bleak. Today the headlines scream the problem. The jobless figures for July rose by 131,000. But an even bleaker picture emerged as the government admitted today that it had revised the jobless rate for June. The private sector lost 221,000 jobs in June, NOT the 125,000 as previously reported.
Due to the government's deft sleight-of-hand techniques in making these calculations, the jobless picture looks much better than it is. The actual unemployment figure stands at 21.5% when the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work out of discouragement are counted.
The economic outlook provides no reason for optimism that the unemployment picture will improve any time soon--a bad omen for Obama and the Democrats in November.
Second, Obama's problem with the public concerning the bad unemployment figures is intensified by his deceptive, misleading, and outright false rhetoric. Government economists proclaimed months ago that the 'recession is over.' Obama and his minions have taken to the highways of America to announce with glee that the 'recovery is underway, the economy is improving, the stimulus plan was a success, and that we are on the right road.'
None of this is true, and that is the source of much of the growing public dissatisfaction with Obama. Americans are realizing they have been duped, sold a bill of goods with promises that the massive program of government bailouts, stimulus packages, and meddling in the private sector would create jobs and bring us out of the worst economic downturn since Jimmy Carter. None of this has happened, and in fact, the economy has gotten much worse since Obama took office.
Obama clearly has a credibility problem in the eyes of the public.
Third, citizens are waking up to the fact that this is a government of extremists who are far outside the American mainstream. The confirmation of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday is a perfect case in point. Kagan is clearly a Leftwing ideologue who has attacked free speech, free expression under the First Amendment, gun rights, the U.S. military, and those who wish to stop the barbaric procedure known as 'partial birth abortion.'
But Kagan is merely the tip of the iceberg. She is but an example, a symbol, of many Leftwing extremists, many of whom have been involved with violent revolutionary movements, whom Obama has appointed to key positions in this government. Their names are now all-too-familiar--Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn, Valerie Jarrett, Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, Andy Stern, Jeff Jones, Carol Browner, Adolfo Carrion, Todd Stern, Ron Bloom, John Holdren, and Dr. Donald Berwick, among others.
And this is not to mention that behind the scenes Obama is heavily influenced by the founders and participants in the infamous 'Weather Underground' movement of the 60s and 70s--particularly his close friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The Weathermen bombed federal buildings and were responsible for several deaths, yet to this day neither one of these Marxist subversive outlaws has apologized for their crimes. Rather, they have stated on the record 'they wish they had done more.'
Once Americans began waking up from their starry-eyed Hollywood worship of a cult figure like Obama and realized they had put a 1960s-type Marxist radical into office, the nosedive in the polls was only a matter of time.
These factors, added to the ramming through of some of the most unpopular legislation in U.S. history--ObamaCare, the 'finance reform' bill that mandates permanent bailouts for favored large corporations, the lawsuit against Arizona in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the failure to secure the southern border, and the attempt to make citizens pay through the nose for their 'carbon emissions' through 'Cap and Trade'--amount to a coming stinging repudiation of Obama in November.
We can expect Obama's approval rating to be roughly 38% or worse by the Fall.
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
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