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May 16, 2006
Carl Rove is Wrong
Carl Rove blames Bush's poll numbers on the Iraq war.
Karl Rove yesterday said the continuing war in Iraq rather than President Bush's actions on federal spending, immigration and Social Security is driving the president's job-approval ratings to record lows, but that will change by November."The war looms over everything, there's no doubt about it," the White House chief political strategist said in fielding questions from reporters after his speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank with close ties to the Bush administration.
The public continues to give Mr. Bush high personal approval ratings, but assessments of his job performance are low. The latest Harris-Wall Street Journal poll showed 29 percent of Americans approved of the president's performance.
Mr. Rove, 55, said the reason is that the war has put voters in a "sour" mood. The Iraq situation, he said, is distracting public attention from the robust 4.8 percent annual growth rate of the economy, an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent, the creation of 5.2 million jobs since August 2003 and the strong performance of the stock markets.
No doubt the war in Iraq is part of the problem. The invasion was brilliant, we screwed up the next 18 months, but are now largely on track. Much of the public only sees the 18 months or so after the invasion, and the stories of how we've turned things around don't get through to many people, especially those who depend on traditional media sources for their news.
But Carl Rove has it exactly opposite; the only reason why President Bush has any positive poll ratings at all is precisely because of the war in Iraq. There is a base who supports him because he took the bold and necessary step of taking the strategic offensive against the enemy, and for recognizing that the defensive war that the liberals want us to fight in the War on Terror is dead wrong.
The Real Reason for Low Polls
There are two reasons for Bush's low poll ratings.
One, he has almost completely lost the support of his conservative base. He has alienated us on so many issues I don't have time to list them all this morning. See here and here for details.
Failure to seriously address the problem of illegal immigration is only the latest in a series of disappointments. In last night's speech the president insisted on finding a "third way" on the issue, one what will end up pleasing no one.
The second reason for his low poll numbers is that the administration seems completely unable to communicate their successes to the public. As such, the middle doesn't recoginze that the economy is in very good shape. You can always pick on one or two statistics, but most economic indicators are very positive. Likewise the war in Iraq. If it wasn't for the internet and reports like this one you'd never know that much was going right over there.
The GOP is fixated on the issue of Hispanic voters, and seems convinced that if they do anything at all serious about controlling the southern border they'll face this huge backlash at the polls. But just the opposite is happening. They are facing a huge backlash from their base precisely because they're not doing anything. This idea that the future of the GOP is tied to keeping or gaining Hispanic voters, who presumably don't want to do anything about illegal aliens, is going to cost them dearly at the polls.
Posted by Tom at May 16, 2006 8:02 AM
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