By Dave Andrusko
Sometimes it’s helpful in getting perspective to begin with media quotes, in this case about the re-election campaign of pro-abortion President Barack Obama, which is gearing up in a serious manner.
· “The community organizer who became president has launched a massive pre-reelection year campaign to assemble and train an army of new community organizers to carry Obama’s ‘movement forward for years to come.’ Strengthening ‘our democracy’ presumably has something to do with reelecting the revered leader in 2012.”
— From “Obama recruits an army of community organizers to carry his ‘movement forward for years to come’” by Andrew Malcolm, of the Los Angeles Times.
· ”One Democrat creating a pro-Obama effort is David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group. Mr. Brock founded a group called American Bridge that accepts donations to help dig up dirt on the Republicans hoping to unseat Mr. Obama.”
— From today’s Wall Street Journal, “2012 Ad Blitz for Obama Planned.”
· “Obama’s approval rating fell in 2010 compared with 2009 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”
— From Gallup: “D.C., Hawaii Still Most Approving of Obama; All States Decline.”
What does this tell us, if anything? A great deal, actually.
For starters, Obama’s approval ratings, which had temporarily rebounded, have begun to decline…again. “Obama’s overall average approval rating in 2010 was 47%, down 11 percentage points from the 58% he recorded in his first calendar year in office,” according to Gallup’s Frank Newport.
This is a surprise only to those who do not pay attention to a man whose style of leadership has correctly been dubbed (by Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post) “robust indecisiveness.”
One of the few exceptions to Obama’s habitual to-ing and fro-ing is abortion. He is as faithful to Planned Parenthood and NARAL as President George W. Bush was to our Movement. Obama will fight (with our dollars) for their right to kill hundreds of thousands of unborn babies and elect politicians who will keep the federal gravy train running.
By the way, there is an important caveat to this overall 11% decline, which taken alone “obscures significant differences.” While Obama “enjoyed 50% or higher approval in a group of 12 traditionally Democratic states, plus the District of Columbia,” Newport writes, “At the same time, he suffered average approval rates of 43% or less in 18 other states, most of which are traditionally ‘red’ states.”
What else? Just as Planned Parenthood has carefully cultivated a brand as an above-the-fray dispenser of “medical services to women,” so, too, has President Obama shaped an image as a professorial seeker-after-the-middle ground. In fact he is adept at hardball. That the movers and shakers around him would include someone who specializes in “digging up dirt” is no surprise.
Andrew Malcolm’s piece for the Los Angeles Times is a great read (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/02/obama-campaign-community-organizer-.html). As we look ahead to 2012, whatever Obama’s poll numbers may be, in all likelihood he will have a large army of volunteers dedicated to re-electing him.
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