From Friday’s WSJ op ed by Doug Schoen and Scott Rasmussen:
“Eighty-three percent say they are worried that the steps Mr. Obama is taking to fix the economy may not work and the economy will get worse.”
“ Eighty-two percent say they are worried about the amount of money being added to the deficit.”
“ Seventy-eight percent are worried about inflation growing, and 69% say they are worried about the increasing role of the government in the U.S. economy.”
“Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.”
President Obama is not going to fix this problem by attacking Rush Limbaugh. The boy geniuses who dreamt that one up and have so gleefully prosecuted the assault on a private citizen and talk show host need to revisit their strategy.
For in attaching Limbaugh they have misused the bully pulpit, the most powerful weapon in the President’s arsenal. Instead of advancing the President’s agenda, they have made the President look petty and vindictive, raised more doubts about his spending and tax policies, driven Limbaugh’s listenership and first quarter revenue up by double digits.
By shooting down, Obama is shooting himself in the foot. Instead of taking advice from the Clinton advisors who elevated the politics of personal destruction to an art form, they might spend some time with those who helped Ronald Reagan sell a vision that gave this country its most prolonged period of prosperity since the Second World War.
Obama’s problem is not Limbaugh. Obama’s problem is that he is trying to enact an agenda for which he has no mandate, about which the American public is highly skeptical and one that is the antithesis of the anti-earmark, anti-tax, anti-deficit President that candidate Obama promised to be. Obama will not win in the court of public opinion by attacking those who rightly and accurately point out that his lurch to the left is not what the voters asked for last November.
