Saturday, June 28, 2008

23 Skid. Oooo.

The people have spoken.

Posted by bjkeefe at 9:02 PM
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it amazing he still has the support of 58% of Republicans. Those poor, poor people.

3:00 PM, June 29, 2008
bjkeefe said...

My feelings, too. But I do think at least some of this is explainable by two other reasons: First, an instinct not to tell "liberal pollsters what they want to hear." Second, an instinct to support the president, or at least, never to criticize him; i.e., an attitude of "at least respect the office, if not the man."

On the bright side, nearly half of Republicans surveyed are willing to acknowledge to a stranger that Bush is a failure. And note that by digging a little deeper into the data, this poll was criticized for having an under-representation of Republicans, which really means that a random sample shows that significantly fewer people self-identify as Republicans compared to years past.

3:34 PM, June 29, 2008
Anonymous said...

LOL, that's a good point about "not wanting to tell liberal pollsters what they want to hear." That's definitely how a lot of people think. I know it is here, in my ultra-conservative small town.

Now, if Pisc was here, he'd tell us that the only reason those 42% disapprove of Bush is because he was too liberal. That one always cracks me up. And yet, strangely, I believe it's true. These past years it has been possible to track the decline of Bush with the increasing rate of Republicans who said that he wasn't really a conservative.

What I'm curious about now is how they will treat him at the Republican convention later this year. It will be interesting to see how they handle the most radioactive political figure since Richard Nixon. I predict he will be welcomed like a demigod. Compared to four years ago, when they skipped the "demi" part and just treated him like a God, or at least God's personal servant.

(In fact, I won't be surprised if they show more raw, emotional enthusiasm for Bush than they do for McCain.)

11:32 PM, June 30, 2008
bjkeefe said...

I think there probably are some who sincerely disapprove of Bush for the "not a real conservative" or "betrayed the conservative movement principles" reasons. But, generally, I think you're right: this is more of a convenient excuse than anything else -- some wingnuts just cannot bear to admit what a disaster their boy has been, and how poorly their philosophy always works out when put into practice.

I dunno about the convention, and Bush's reception, though. For one thing, a lot depends on what McCain thinks at the moment about how much he needs to distance himself from Bush. If he's going all tough-on-terror / bomb-the-brown-people, then he might like to have Bush in the spotlight. If, on the other hand, the number 23 has become a comparative earlier high point and McCain's new message of the day involves yet another permutation on "change," there could be some desire to shunt Bush off to a non-prime time speaking slot, or even no appearance at all.

A lot depends on Bush's ego and the willingness of some of those close to him to tell him the truth. Both are bad bets. There is also the reality that Bush is still a fund-raising asset for McCain, so there is only so far that our little maverick can run. And really, a complete diss of Bush at the convention would be almost Soviet in its laughability -- everyone in the country would be making jokes about airbrushing history.

I guess, in the end, the conventions are so stage-managed these days that it won't be much of a problem to fill the arena with the sort of loser whose palms still get clammy when chanting "four more years." And there's another upside -- if you let Bush speak, McCain's speech might even come off as something not quite horrible.

4:23 AM, July 01, 2008

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