Day: February 6, 2007

One in Three Remains a Believer in Bush

Buck Banks

Bottom third: Our man in the White House still manages, amazingly, to garner the support of a third of respondents to polls, according to National Review’s PollTrack:

Bush’s job approval rating in Gallup’s latest survey is 32 percent, a slide of 4 points since mid-January, which puts the figure just one point higher than the lowest it has been during his administration.

His approval mark on foreign affairs has reached its lowest point to date at 31 percent. And assessments of his handling of immigration and the situation in Iraq, now at 25 percent and 26 percent, have returned to the bottoms they reached in January 2006 and last month, respectively.

Recent attention on global warming hasn’t caused his approval ratings on energy policy to bounce around much, either. Three in 10 said they approve of the way he’s handling energy issues — not a marked difference from 2006’s numbers.

Kind of explains the popularity of “American Idol” and “Deal or No Deal.”

It’s a Miracle: Rev. Ted Haggard Is ‘Completely Heterosexual’ Now

Jon Ponder

Here is good news for unhappy homos and homo-hating Christians alike. Rev. Ted Haggard has completed his therapy and apparently has forsworn consorting with male prostitutes forever. After only three weeks of therapy, he has been judged to be “completely heterosexual” now:

Evangelicals believe science has a liberal bias.

“He is completely heterosexual,” [said Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur, Colorado, one of four ministers who oversaw Haggard’s re-education therapy.] “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” he said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days and it hasn’t happened.”

Science, of course, says that sexual identity is engrained and immutable, and that no amount of guilt, recrimination or praying away the gay can change it. Of course, Evangelicals like Rev. Haggard believe science has a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert put it.

No word on whether Haggard addressed the issues behind his and his wife’s admitted use of crystal methadrine.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Political language — and with variations this is true of all politcal parties, from conservatives to anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

— George Orwell

By Stifling War Debate, GOP Senators Risk Handing Dems a Super Majority in ’08

Jon Ponder

In shutting down debate yesterday on Pres. Bush’s escalation of the Iraq war, Senate Republicans embarked on what could be the riskiest legislative gambit since House Speaker Newt Gingrich shut the government down during a budget dispute with Pres. Clinton.

If Dems were to hold all their seats in 2008 (as they did in 2006) and pick up just 10 of 13 GOP seats that are in play, they would have a 60-seat “super majority.”

The GOP filibuster puts GOP senators squarely on the opposite side of public sentiment. In a Rasmussen poll released last Friday, 55 percent of Americans said they favor a firm timetable for withdrawing troops that gets our troops out within one year — while only one-third (33 percent) said they believe the escalation will succeed.

All but two Republican senators voted with their leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to close the debate on a non-binding resolution — a rebuke of the president so mild that critics view it as little more than a slap on the wrist. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut, voted with the Republicans.

The two GOP senators who voted with the Democrats — Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota — are both up for reelection in 2008.

And they are not alone. In fact, what makes the GOP gambit so risky is that nearly half the members the GOP Senate conference — 21 out of 48 — are up for reelection next year, whereas only 12 of the 48 Democratic seats are in play. (Neither seat held by independents — Lieberman and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — are up.)

If their votes now to stifle debate on this unpopular war were to become an issue in campaigns next year, the GOP losses could hand a 60-seat majority to the Dems, giving them the magic number required to shut off filibusters on bills and nominations.

As things stand now, one GOP senator, Wayne Allard of Colorado, has announced his retirement, and five GOP seats are considered vulnerable — Collins, Coleman, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon — with seven seats called “Republican favored.” If the Dems were to hold all their seats (as they did in 2006) and pick up just 10 of the 13 seats that are in play, they would have a 60-seat “super majority.”

In 1996, voters’ dim view of Gingrich’s government shut-down — especially after he admitted that he was motivated by a fit of pique after feeling slighted by Pres. Clinton on Air Force One — made it a winning campaign issue for the Clinton-Gore campaign.

Similarly, voters in 2008 who are angry over the Senate Republicans’ seemingly bizarre support for an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president may be surprised to learn that Minority Leader McConnell has close, even intimate, ties to the Bush administration. His wife, Elaine Chao, is a Bush Cabinet member; having served as secretary of labor since 2000.