Obama Paying a Price

From the beginning of his administration, Barack Obama has been more popular, personally, than the policies he has sought to implement. It was inevitable that before long, voters’ doubts about Obama’s policies would erode his approval ratings. That process now seems to be underway.

After consistently scoring a 59 or 60 percent approval rating in the Rasmussen Survey for at least the last couple of weeks, Obama has begun to drop and has been at 56 percent approval for the last two days, with 43 percent now disapproving. “Strong” approvers now outnumber “strong” disapprovers 39 to 31 percent. So after only six weeks, 70 percent of the electorate already has strong feelings about our new President, pro or con.

From the beginning, I think the Democrats have overestimated both Obama’s personal popularity and the extent to which that popularity will cause voters to accept (or perhaps not to notice) otherwise unpalatable policies. The most basic evidence for that proposition is that polls do not show majority support (or, in most cases, even plurality support) for Obama’s major policy initiatives–the bailouts, trillion dollar plus deficits, and so on.

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