Obama's approval rating is sinking like the Titanic. A bowling alley in Clearwater, Florida, Bowl-O-Bama, is doing record business despite a bad economy.. The alley also reports a record number of 300 games. Since opening in November 2010, 963 patrons have bowled a perfect game, including strikes in the warm-up frames. This alley also has the highest bowling league average in the country, with a 237. And thats the senior league.
I'll bet the average Joe on the street didn't hear what the Obama spokesmen were saying and and take it as just a wild guess by people who really have no idea what they were saying. At least not then. Most people really thought that we had to give him a fast trillion or else unemployment would rise above 8%. But now Obama has trouble being taken seriously because the public realizes that he and his team are incompetent. Something that the mushy middle voters didn't know 3 years ago.
Three years ago the people were basically given a choice between two candidates neither of which should have been elected to the office of president. It was our typical choice of the lesser of two evils and Obama was the least objectionable candidate at the time. The Republicans basically handed the election to Obama in 2008 by nominating McCain and Palin. We'll see who the Republicans nominate in 2012 and if they make another bad choice as they did in 2008 they will probably lose again. Those Republicans that believe they can throw any candidate at the American People and still win the election are fools.
It wasn't much of a choice was it? Sort of like handcuffing someone to a poll and giving them a hacksaw to free themselves when they wanted to leave. But I don't think that excuses everyone because while Republicans were holding their nose to vote for McCain the Obama voters really were taken in by the guy.
It was a bad election to be sure but then so have all of the presidential elections for the last 30 years or so. Who can actually point to any president that was "the best choice" for America. Not even Reagan, the "darling" of most Republicans, met this criteria as his adminstration was supporting the Contras that were a terrorist organization. His economic policies of "trickle down" failed for most Americans as he continued to expand the scope and cost of the US government. Yes, many Obama supporters were taken in and, of course, that hasn't been helped by the fact that Obama hasn't done most of what he promised. Of course much of what he promised couldn't be accomplished as he often promised that which he had no authority as president to do. At the same time things he could have done under presidential authority, such as closing GITMO without Congressional approval, he has failed to do.
I disagree that Reagan was a bad president. If your threshold is that there cannot be anything to criticize them for then America has never had a good president. Reagan's economic policy was simple. Cut taxes and the owners of the money will make the wisest use of it and invest it better than the federal government is capable of doing. That worked for Reagan and it would work today if we had another Reagan to adopt those policies.
Except that you are assuming it was the tax cuts that "worked". Clinton raised taxes and you could just as easily say that worked for Clinton and it would work today. The difference is that after Reagan's tax cuts, the deficits tripled and the debt quadrupled by 1992. That didn't "work." After Clinton's tax increase, the record deficit decreased every year and the Govt had a surplus budget by 2000. That did "work."
Middle voters? Has that anything to do with Middle Earth and Hobbits? Curse that McCRino for muddying up the waters!
While it sounded good in principle Reagan failed to reduce or even contain federal expendatures during his time in office. The budget went from $678,241,000,000 (the last Carter year) to $1,253,007,000,000 during Reagan's last year. That was an increase in federal spending of 84% in just 8 years. http://www.davemanuel.com/2010/06/20/some-us-government-spending-statistics-from-1960-to-2010/ If we look at income for the same time period the income for the 50 percentile and lower (bottom three lines) remained stagnant while upper income individuals certainly earned more. Basically what wealth that was created went to the higher income individuals above the 50 percentile level with the very wealthy seeing the greatest increase of all. Inflation also averaged almost 4% (3.96%) during Reagan's time in office while GDP growth was 3.4%. We did not see an expansion of the GDP as was predicted under "Reaganomics" predominately because it was consumed by the massive increase in government spending. http://www.davemanuel.com/2010/08/03/us-gdp-growth-by-president-1948-2009/ Once again, Reaganomics looked good on paper but the failure of the government to contain spending and expansion under Reagan was the predominate reason it failed in practice.
A number of good points, but given that: (1) we had superior economic growth in the 1960s even though spending increased faster in the 1960s (8.1% average) as compared to the 1980s (7.7%), (2) We had better growth in 1993-2000 with higher taxes, and (3) We had worse growth in 2001-2011 with lower taxes; upon what basis do you claim that "failure to contain spending" was the reason growth was not as expected during Reagan's turn, as opposed to the possibility that tax cuts simply do not increase economic growth as conservative mythology claims?
Depends on which poll you read. Of course you searched out and found the lowest one you could. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
