In late January, about a week after President Obama's inauguration, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) outlined some of this thoughts on the future of the Republican Party."[T]he Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one," McConnell said. "In politics, there's a name for a regional party: it's called a minority party."
I thought of this quote when looking through the cross-tabs of the latest weekly tracking poll from Research 2000 for Daily Kos. Notice the regional differences (thanks to reader DD for the heads-up):
President Obama favorability:
Northeast: 88% favorable, 11% unfavorable
Midwest: 73% favorable, 24% unfavorable
West: 76% favorable, 22% unfavorable
South: 41% favorable, 54% unfavorableDemocratic Party:
Northeast: 66% favorable, 23% unfavorable
Midwest: 52% favorable, 39% unfavorable
West: 54% favorable, 38% unfavorable
South: 31% favorable, 61% unfavorableRepublican Party:
Northeast: 8% favorable, 82% unfavorable
Midwest: 22% favorable, 68% unfavorable
West: 20% favorable, 70% unfavorable
South: 43% favorable, 47% unfavorable"[T]he Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one," McConnell said. It was one of the more reasonable observations he's ever made.
atrios: This Is Excellent News For Republicans
I hope John McCainSully: Still Hauntedyells at cloudstells David Gregory what it all means soon.
Mr. Obama's overall approval rating, meanwhile, has hit a new high of 66 percent, up from 64 percent last month. His disapproval rating stands at 24 percent. Nearly all Democrats and most independents approve of the way the president is handling his job, while only 31 percent of Republicans approve.
The remarkable thing about today's partisan Republicans is their capacity to forget instantly and entirely anything that went on for the past eight years. And so suddenly we are rushing toward socialism, even though by far the biggest jumps in state power and debt occurred under a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect. There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments. But put a moderate Democrat in office tackling a historic collapse in demand - and spending must be frozen! Reading the partisan right blogs, this ability to disappear the past is striking, and it helps explain base GOP loathing of Obama (even if the base is much smaller than it was). But the broader public, those with eyes and ears and functioning short-term memory, are not so cocooned. Greg Sargent:
...the economic crisis, by prompting debate about who’s to blame for the mess, has frustrated the GOP’s hopes of leaving Bush behind. The economic mess all but ensures that Bush’s policies will continue to loom large in defining the GOP in the public mind.
The new New York Times poll [pdf] tells the story. It finds that fully a third, or 33%, of the public blames the crisis on the Bush administration far more than anyone else. Wall Street is a distant runner-up, with 21%. Only two percent blame Obama.
JedL (Daily Kos): By all means necessary
Tue Apr 07, 2009 at 01:13:50 PM PDT
When Newt Gingrich baselessly accuses Obama of ignoring the law and trying to move the U.S. towards a dictatorship, he's not only challenging the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, he's also laying the predicate for political violence.
In all likelihood, Gingrich doesn't believe what he is saying. He is probably just a cynical opportunist, using rhetoric that he thinks will appeal to his base.
But the insincerity of Gingrich's words do not excuse them. He is claiming is that President Obama has assumed dictatorial power; that the President is engaged in a radical power grab aimed at depriving Americans of their fundamental constitutional liberties.
The logical implication of Gingrich's accusation is that Obama must be stopped by all means necessary, including a violent revolution.
Gingrich is too smart to openly admit the implication of his argument, but other right-wing leaders like Glen Beck feel no such restraint, eagerly advancing the notion that the only way to stop President Obama is through force:
That clip of Glen Beck sums up everything that is wrong with the violent rhetoric from the right-wing. Instead of accepting that they lost the last election and organizing for the next, they are trying to make the case that President Obama is an illegitimate president.
Instead of arguing that the way to stop President Obama's agenda is through the ballot box, they are arguing that the way to stop his agenda is by driving a stake through his heart.
That's wrong -- and it's time for it to stop. We need dissent in this country, but there is no room for those who encourage political violence.
Sully on The Torture Report
It's been another huge day of data-gathering in the years-long bid to get to the bottom of the secret and illegal torture program set up by Bush and Cheney as their central tool in the war on Jihadist terrorism. You can download the leaked - and devastating International Committee of the Red Cross report here. You can read about the chilling similarities between the Bush-Cheney techniques and those used by the Soviet gulag here. You can read more details of how doctors were implicated in monitoring and measuring the torture of human beings here. If you need confirmation that this new data is real and dispositive, then go read the partisan right blogs. Their total radio silence tells you something.
But Mark Danner's superb piece, after years of superb reporting, comes to an important conclusion that we should not miss. It is that we need to put all the data on the table - including both the precise techniques and who authorized and perpetrated them and also the alleged intelligence gains from the program. Danner sees why this latter point, which I have also endorsed, is so important. Until we can examine the claims from Cheney et al. that torture saved lives, we will never be able to remove the danger of a president reinstigating torture on the same basis in the future. The GOP is not ashamed of using this as a political weapon. Cheney has all but declared that without torture, America cannot be safe. Gingrich is reiterating that. Rove tried to run the 2006 election on the question of who has the balls to torture terror suspects more brutally. Unless we have clear data that can judge these claims, we cannot dispositively prevent a recurrence.
I should be clear. I oppose all such torture as illegal and criminal and immoral even if tangible intelligence gains were included in the morass of lies and red herrings that we got. But if torture advocates really do insist that America needs to embrace this evil if it is to survive, then we need to see and judge the evidence that they keep pointing to off-stage. We need a real and thorough and definitive investigation. If Cheney is right, he has nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. And the Congress should move to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, withdraw from the UN Torture Treaty, amend domestic law to enshrine torture, and allow future presidents of the United States to torture suspects legally.
More sunlight please. Let us have this debate in full and in detail. And soon - before it is too late.
Party of (no)minees April 6: Many of President Obama's top appointments are being blocked by Congressional Republicans. Why? Rachel Maddow is joined by "The Nation" Washington editor Chris Hayes.
Thanks for the kind comment. Nice to have you drop by.
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