Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most polarizing of them all?
The answer? Barack Obama. (via Gallup [5]):
The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats' (88%) and Republicans' (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.
So how does a "polarizing" president try to become less polarizing? By focusing on something that the bulk of the country agrees on. According to the latest news [6], Obama plans to focus on the fact that we're spending too much money and need to get our fiscal house in order.
The only problem with is that the message doesn't fit the messenger. It's a little like a call girl being a big advocate for chastity.
Reports indicate he'll use his State of the Union speech to call for a "freeze" on "non-defense, discretionary" spending. Basically, that means he's not touching where the real spending is - entitlements. As Hot Air [7]pointed out, the $250 billion he says this would save is only a little more than the roughly $200 billion in MONTHLY deficit spending this government does.
As National Review [8] points out:
...the freeze would not apply to “entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” “would not restrain funding for the $787 billion economic stimulus package Obama pushed through Congress early last year,” would not “apply to a new bill aimed at creating jobs,” and would be “unlikely to affect the approximately $900 billion health-care bill.”
How's that for getting tough on spending!
And let's not forget that this is the same guy who criticized John McCain [9] for calling for a freeze in federal spending when he was campaigning for his current job.
Again, no credibility.
Which might have something to do with why Democrats seem to be abandoning ship, (with stories about retirements [10] and failures to recruit top candidates [11] coming out every other day).
Just sayin'.
