Americans Give Low Ratings and Dire Predictions for Debt-Ceiling Deal

At USA Today, "Poll: Thumbs down on the debt-ceiling deal" (at Memeorandum):

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken hours after the Senate passed and President Obama signed the deal, 46% disapprove of the agreement; 39% approve. Only one in five see it as a step forward in addressing the federal debt.

The dyspeptic view may reflect less an assessment of the plan's particulars than dismay at the edge-of-a-cliff negotiations to reach it.

"Most people assume that whatever came out of this horrible process was pretty crappy," says Joseph White, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who studies budget policy.

And a surprisingly good discussion at the clip. I'm not familiar with Beverly Gage, but she nails it with her comments on the absurdity of Obamania. And Harvard's David King needs to be fact-checked. He says America hasn't been this polarized since the 1920s, and Judy Woodruff calls him out. He then clarifies with a reference to congressional polarization starting in the 1970s, and that sounds more accurate.

Los Angeles Times Soft-Peddles Voter Unease With Democrats' Budget in California

At the Los Angeles Times, "California voters see some bright spots in grim budget":

Reporting from Sacramento — The budget approved by Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers last month was largely distasteful to voters, a new poll shows, but many felt the process went more smoothly than in past years, when political paralysis gripped the Capitol and left the state starved for cash.

The element of the spending plan that most troubled Californians was the threat of steep cuts in education. In addition, about half opposed reductions made in healthcare and other services, and more than half viewed the budget as unfair.

But the poll suggested surprisingly strong support for higher vehicle fees and a new fire levy, both of which are included in the plan. Voters were about evenly divided on paying sales tax when buying from online retailers such as Amazon.com — one of the budget's most controversial provisions that now appears headed for a statewide referendum.

Continue reading.

But also read the poll's internal data. The Times' report glosses over some key details. A plurality of 43 percent "oppose the state budget recently passed by the state legislature and Jerry Brown ..." And after a series of specific questions on the content of the budget, a plurality of 47 percent opposed "the state budget recently passed by the state legislature and Jerry Brown..." The more you know the worse it gets. Figures. And the budgeting was based on future anticipated revenues, which could be a gimmick. And a plurality of 44 percent of voters thought it was wrong to "force deeper cuts down the road." And exactly 50 percent of those polled favored cutting state subsidies to local governments, even after they'd been read this long lead-in to the question item:

Now let me read you a pair of statements that some people may make about the measure to eliminate local government subsidies provided to companies that build businesses and conduct other projects in blighted or run-down areas.

Supporters of this measure say that eliminating the subsidies would save the state 1.7 billion dollars. They say these subsidies have often been misused for projects in areas that don't need it, and the money would be better used to help balance the budget.

Opponents of this measure say that eliminating the subsidies would cost the state thousands of jobs. They say these subsidies are crucial to creating jobs and revitalizing neighborhoods, and now is not the time to make cuts that will prevent getting the economy back on track.

The prompt is framed as if subsidies are a good thing, with only the $1.7 billion in savings discussed at the middle of the paragraph. Still, half of those polled thought cutting subsidies was a good thing. There's more at the raw data file. If anticipated revenues fall short voters won't support deeper cuts to education. And voter support for the Amazon tax is tentative. It's going to be an important referendum campaign, apparently in 2012.

Very Religious White Americans More Than Twice as Likely to Identify With GOP

But religion has no effect on blacks, who identify with the Democratic Party regardless of religion orientation.

At Gallup, "Religion and Party ID Strongly Linked Among Whites, Not Blacks."

Personal religiousness makes little difference among blacks ... as the powerful partisan pull of Democratic identification among black Americans trumps any influence of religion. Only 9 to 10% of blacks in each of the three groups of varying religiousness identify as Republicans, while more than three-quarters in each group identify themselves as Democrats.

Reminds me: "The Democrat Party Has Always Been the Party of Racism."

Suffolk University Poll: Bachmann Gains in New Hampshire; Minnesota Congresswoman Tops Field as 'Most Conservative'

Fox News has a write up, "Poll Shows Bachmann Gaining Momentum Among NH GOP Voters." Mitt Romney is by far the GOP frontrunner in New Hampshire, but as other media outlets are stressing, Michele Bachmann comes on strong in the survey, surging 8 points in favorability since May. The Suffolk press report is here, and the poll data here. What I liked best is that Bachmann beats out the field as the "most conservative" candidate in the race. Bachmann was most conservative at 15 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 13 percent, and Romney at 11 percent. The rest of the candidates were in single digits, and the roster includes big name personalities such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Bachmann's had a big week. One of the indicators of that is how aggressively the Democrat-Media-Complex has been trying to take her down.

There's a whole string of threads on Bachmann at Memeorandum, and just now the San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford (who announced that Barack Obama was the "Lightworker" in 2008) has weighed in with the latest misogynistic sleaze attack on the congresswoman, "Michele Bachmann, Hell's Barbie":

Yes, Michele Bachmann is running for president. Michele Bachmann, fundamentalist Christian zealot, paranoid isolationist, lowbrow conspiracy theorist, heavily shellacked automaton, anti-choice anti-gay anti-everything neo-Stepford throwback and easily the flat-out nuttiest female ever to raise a hugely depressing $13 million for her clumsy campaign launch, Michele wants to lead us all to salvation.

It's been a week of virtually non-stop attacks like this. No doubt Bachmann's sending shivers down the spine of the progressive establishment. And that's on the left. Will the GOP embrace Bachmann as well, or would Beltway insiders prefer a McCain 2.0 over the Iowa-born congressional upstart?

The GOP needs a conservative candidate. And while Sarah Palin may still enter the race, Michelle Bachmann's making all the right moves, and getting some well-deserved recognition among potential voters.

RELATED: At National Journal, "Is There a 'Generic Republican' to Beat Obama in the Polls?"And the discussion with Gretchen Carlson on Fox & Friends this morning:

Arab Spring Fails to Improve U.S. Image

Hmm ....

Support for suicides bombings is up in Egypt, unchanged among Palestinian Muslims. See the Pew Global Attitudes Project. (Via Blazing Cat Fur, who has screencaps.)

RELATED: At IBD, "Is the Invasion of Israel Imminent?"

Rally 'Round the Flag After Killing Osama Bin Laden

Discussed this with my students today, and Frank Newport has some background, "History Suggests a Rally in Obama's Job Approval Rating as a Result of Bin Laden's Death."

Voters Support Benefit Rollback for Public Workers in California

Jammie had yesterday's headline of the day, "Shock Poll: Extremist Teabagger Californians Want Givebacks From Public Employees."

See Los Angeles Times, "California voters want public employees to help ease state's financial troubles":

California voters want government employees to give up some retirement benefits to help ease the state's financial problems, favoring a cap on pensions and a later age for collecting them, according to a new poll.

Voter support for rolling back benefits available to few outside the public sector comes as Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans in the Legislature haggle over changes to the pension system as part of state budget negotiations. Such benefits have been a flashpoint of national debate this year, and the poll shows that Californians are among those who perceive public retirement plans to be too costly.

Voters appear ready to embrace changes not just for future hires but also for current employees who have been promised the benefits under contract.

Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.

Although pension costs today account for just a fraction of the state budget, they are putting local governments under considerable financial strain, and analysts say effects on the state may not be far off.

"It's pretty clear that there's broad support for making changes in the area of pensions," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who co-directed the bipartisan poll for The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

RTWT at the link above.

I've been making this argument at my college, especially during last year's negotiations over contract renewal. And earlier today I e-mailed this story to the college community, and one of my colleagues wrote back, saying: "I don't think the union leadership reads the newspapers."

Ouch.

At 150th Anniversary, Civil War is Still Relevant to Most Americans

A new poll, from Pew Research, "Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive":

As the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War approaches, most Americans say the war between the North and South is still relevant to American politics and public life today.

More than half of Americans (56%) say the Civil War is still relevant, according to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 30-April 3 among 1,507 adults. Nearly four-in-ten (39%) say the Civil War is important historically but has little current relevance.

In a nation that has long endured deep racial divisions, the history of that era still elicits some strong reactions. Nearly half of the public (46%) says it is inappropriate for today's public officials to praise the leaders of the Confederate states during the war; 36% say such statements are appropriate.

Nonetheless, a majority (58%) say they have no particular reaction to the Confederate flag, the symbol of the South. Among those who have a reaction to the flag, more than three times as many say they have a negative reaction as a positive reaction (30% to 9%).

More at the link above. An interesting correlation would be to cross-tabulate opinion on the Civil War with party identfication. The Pew results find 37 percent independent, 32 Democrat, and 25 Republican. No doubt Democrats are most likely to have negative reaction to the Confederate Flag. Which reminds me, the attacks on people as racist who show any pride in Southern heritage are pretty pathetic. Yeah, Charles Johnson, Scott Lemieux and a few other progressive losers, I'm talkin' to you.

Majority of 53 Percent of Americans Describe Democrat Agenda as Extreme

Well, yeah.

These people are freakin' commies.

At Rasmussen, "Just 32% See Democrats' Agenda as Mainstream":

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 32% describe the agenda of Democrats in Congress as mainstream. Most (53%) say it is more accurate to describe that agenda as extreme, down slightly from 57% last August. Another 15% are undecided.

Update on New York Times Poll on Public Sector Unions

I wrote previously about the latest survey from the New York Times: "There's something fishy about this poll ..." One thing that bothered me was how the Times indicated that 25 percent of those surveyed included "a public employee in their household." And that's not quite right, as Ed Morrissey indicates:

... 25% of respondents are either public employees or share a household with a public employee. Federal employees comprise less than 2% of the workforce at around 2 million. Overall, the US has 22.22 million government employees out of an employed workforce of 130.27 million, according to the Current Employment Statistics survey at the BLS. Government employment accounts for 17% of all workers, so a sample consisting of 25% public-sector households for a survey of adults (not registered voters) seems a little off.

Anyway, that's a fantastic analysis. And while I'm at it, folks might check out William Jacobson's work as well, focusing on Public Policy Polling, "Skewed Sample Data Used In PPP Wisconsin 'Do Over' Poll." Here again, the survey's oversampling Democratic households. What's amazing, though, is that if it wasn't for bloggers analyzing the findings, most folks wouldn't know otherwise (see U.S. News, for example, "New Polls Bring More Bad News for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker").

Poll Shows Support for Public Sector Workers

At New York Times, "Majority in Poll Back Employees In Public Unions." (Via Mememorandum.)

I checked the raw data and the sampling methodology. There's something fishy about this poll, and I wasn't quite sure. Yet, Allahpundit does a thorough fisking, and seems to think the survey's not an outlier after all: "CBS poll: 60% oppose stripping any collective bargaining rights from public workers." Basically, when push comes to shove the public stands firm on support for education, and by implication the larger public sector work force. More particularly, folks recoil at the idea of making real cuts that have real impact on people's lives. Let's face it, it's scary as hell to contemplate a lifestyle downsize, to say nothing of jettisoning old-age retirement security for the ups and downs of stock market pension accounts. But we'll know more in time. The Democrats may well have erred big time in their methods of obstruction, despite sympathetic trends in public opinion. And if the mainstream press were to widely feature pictures like this on a day-to-day basis, then the public would at least get more of the real-world information needed to make accurate and holistic decisions about public policy. Seriously. Look what's happened on ObamaCare. Opponents were right all along, and now the administration's letting go of its legislation piece by piece. As we move forward through 2011 we'll be hearing from states with way deeper fiscal sinkholes than Wisconsin, and the public will get to see new rounds of progressive tantrums over public benefits systems that are inherently unsustainable. In any case, the unions are hoping to keep the protest spirit going, and they've had the corrupted police union giving them the green light for further disruptions in Madison. They're finally clearing the place out now, so check Althouse for more on that, and then back here later today:

Majority of Americans Against Public Employee Unions

Here's this from CBS News, "Lawmaker: Gov's plan has torn Wisconsin apart" (via Memeorandum). State Senator Jon Erpenbach is cited there, and he's at this AP clip:

Gov. Scott Walker is destroying neither the unions nor the state of Wisconsin. We're in tough economic times, but there's more to the union backlash. It's also the thuggery and authoritarianism that's central to the progressives' political agenda. Gov. Walker nailed it yesterday when he said that by fleeing the state, Democrat state senators had broken their vows to the people and the public good. From President Obama on down, progressives have excoriated Gov. Walker, often using the exact same Hitler comparison the leftist media exploited to marginalize the tea parties.



This is unconscionable, as Rep. Michele Bachmann warned. We're at the tipping point in American politics, and the backlash is growing. A new survey has the numbers: "Clarus Research Group: Clarus Poll: 64% of voters oppose government employee unions":

WASHINGTON -- As President Obama has joined the political battle in Wisconsin that pits Republican Gov. Scott Walker against public employee unions, a nationwide Clarus Poll finds that a substantial majority of Americans believe government employees should not be able to belong to labor unions. In the Clarus Poll, sixty-four percent of voters polled said government employees should not be represented by unions. Twenty-nine percent of voters said government employees should be represented by labor unions that bargain for higher pay, benefits and pensions.

The full pdf is here: "CLARUS POLL: 64% OF VOTERS OPPOSE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE UNIONS WISCONSIN FIGHT SPOTLIGHTS ISSUE."



It's interesting that even MFM outlets are getting the message. At Los Angeles Times, "Unions Losing Their Grip in Stronghold":

The bill proposed in Wisconsin to remove collective bargaining rights from government workers is similar to measures advancing in other Rust Belt states. Such battles are part of a nationwide backlash.

The pampered nature of public employees is obviously not helping their cause. See Astute Bloggers, "TEACHERS IN WISCONSIN MAKE MORE THAN TWICE THE PER CAPITA INCOME OF THEIR FELLOW WISCONSINITES." And Jennifer Rubin responds to the left's attacks on Gov. Walker, "Who's been overreaching?":

Walker's proposal to limit collective bargaining rights of public employees is bold but hardly original. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels did the same thing. A similar effort is underway in Tennessee.



I would suggest it is not Walker who has gone too far, but public employee unions who for years have ruled the roost in many blue states. The voters sent a signal last November not only to Washington, but to Madison, Lansing, Columbus and elsewhere. We're going to see whether their will, or the ambitions of union leaders, prevails.

See also, Phil Boehmke, "Wisconsin Madness as Seen by the ‘Little People’."



Okay, a little roundup of today's developments:

Ann Althouse warns against outside activist seizing the spotlight in Wisconsin: "There's a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin today — pro-Scott Walker — and I'm a bit wary," and "'Keep our protest CIVIL/Don't become Incited/THE NATION IS WATCHING/And so are our children!'."

Well, let's hope she's not too prescient: "Bloggers For Peace Flotilla Arrived In Madison…SITUATION TENSE…UPDATE: Thousands of Walker’s Supporters Are Here!"

And from Glenn Reynolds: "READER BOB WIRKA SENDS THIS PICTURE from the Madison Tea Party rally in support of Gov. Walker."

RELATED: At Big Government, "'Winning the Future' Means Winning in Madison."

Expect updates ...

Ronald Reagan Greatest President, New Gallup Poll Finds

Amazing: "Americans Say Reagan Is the Greatest U.S. President" (via Memeorandum).

Majority of Americans Would Reject Obama 'If the 2012 Presidential Election Were Held Today'

At Fox News, "Obama Falling Below Expectations at Two-Year Mark."



At at the raw survey form, 51 percent would vote for someone else, 36 percent definitely and 15 percent probably (via Gateway Pundit):

And the kicker is that the survey oversampled Democrats.



Ouch.

'Heated Rhetoric' Not to Blame in Arizona Shooting, Poll Finds

At the Washington Post (full survey here).

The poll does not break down by party. I'm still tripping on the 56 percent of Democrats in yesterday's CNN poll who blamed "heated right-wing rhetoric" for the attacks. It's 100 percent untrue, of course, and is thus a bigger statement on the ideological denial of reality that's the hallmark of radical progressive thinking in recent years.



John Hawkins has more on this, "Understanding How The Left Thinks: It’s Not About What’s True, It’s About Who’s On Offense." And previously at Dr. Sanity, "Rage Against Reality All You Want":

Today's political left are the hands-down, gold medal winners in the Denial of Reality Sweepstakes. Watch them spin, lie, distort and finally resort to personal attacks on their critics without any debate on the facts--and learn all you need to know about their creatively dysfunctional coping.



Reality is coming for them. The spectacle would be interesting if only they did not intend to drag the rest of us along with them into the abyss.



They can rage against reality all they want. It won't change anything. But I imagine that getting all those intense feelings out will be sufficient for the children of the left, since that is the only 'reality' they care about or understand.