Not Good News for the GOP

This Gallup Poll on the favorable/unfavorable rating of each party shows that the GOP is in a world of hurt. They have 61% of the public having an unfavorable opinion of the GOP, as against only 34% having a favorable opinion.

Given these numbers, you would expect a political party to co-operate with the incoming President to try and get America out of the economic mess that its outgoing president got us into, but you would be wrong. The GOP's idea of a stimulus package? Cut the capital gains tax to zero.

Gallup Poll Shows Clinton & Obama Lead or Tie GOP Contenders

The Gallup Polling organization released a poll of nationwide voters on November 26, 2007, showing that Clinton and Obama lead all GOP contenders with the exception that Obama ties Guilliani in the poll. What is significant about Clinton's lead is that against all candidates, except Guilliani, she is doing better in her poll numbers than she was doing in a June/July poll. Regarding Guilliani, although Clinton's spread over Guilliani has increased from four per-cent to five per-cent, the numbers for both Guilliani have declined by one point each. Clinton went to 49% from 50% and Guilliani went from 46% to 44%.

Of course, we don't elect presidents in a nationwide contest, we elect them in 50 state elections which result in the selection of electors who make up the electoral college. Therefore, national polling figures are somewhat misleading. While it is probably impossible for a presidential candidate to lose the popular vote by more than five per-cent and still win the 270 electoral votes required to become president, as we saw in 2000, it is possible to lose the popular vote by 500,000 plus votes and still win the electoral college. In such a case, however, it is helpful to have the United States Supreme Court go in the bag for you.

Gallup Poll Finds Big Majority Opposes Iraq War Escalation

The Gallup organization ran a pre-Bush speech (scheduled for Wednesday) poll on the issue of escalating the Iraqi War and found that a big majority opposes such escalation. (You can get the details by clicking on this entry's title. ) Gallup believes that support for the Bush's plan may increase after he gives the speech, but initially over 60% of the public is opposed to increasing the number of troops in Iraq.

Note that we are avoiding using the term "surge" to describe the planned troop increase. The word "surge" implies a short-term increase in troops, but there is nothing in this administration's recent history to give us confidence that the troop increase will be short-term, no matter what Bush says or doesn't say Wednesday night. We also think that the media is playing into Bush's hands when they allow him and his supporters to decide what language is going to be used to describe their actions.

One of the ways that Bush controls the media is by getting it to accept his language. His supporters use a label and if the media doesn't accept that label, it is accused of "bias" or more specifically, "liberal bias." Apparently the charge of "liberal bias" is so intimidating that grown men and women feel that they have no choice but to give in to the demands of Bush and his radical right-wing supporters.

Here is a news flash for the media: you get to decide what language to use to describe Bush's actions. That's part of your job. You are more than just stenographers blindly reporting what Bush and his supporters say.