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Title: Where Is Obama’s Popularity Bounce?
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URL Source: http://capitalistpiggie.wordpress.c ... a%E2%80%99s-popularity-bounce/
Published: May 6, 2011
Author: capitalistpiggie
Post Date: 2011-05-06 09:06:43 by no gnu taxes
Keywords: None
Views: 342
Comments: 2
Normally in American politics, when a major foreign policy event occurs – the launch of a war, a terrorist attack, or the killing or capture of a significant enemy – the president receives a bump in the polls. When Saddam Hussein was captured in Iraq, for example, President Bush’s approval rating jumped from 54 percent to 63 percent, according to CNN. When Osama Bin Laden was killed this week, by contrast, President Obama received virtually no bounce: according to CNN, 52 percent of people approved of Obama, up from 51 percent. That lack of bounce was mirrored in several other polls, including the Rasmussen poll, and the Newsweek/Daily Beast poll. Assuming these polls are accurate, where did Obama’s bounce go? Some pundits speculate that Obama’s foreign policy bump has been offset by his polling on the handling of the economy, which remains at record lows. Others believe that the public is simply too polarized to hand Obama credit for the Bin Laden operation. In reality, Obama’s lack of bounce is a credit to the American people. Essentially, after watching Obama greenlight the Bin Laden kill mission, the American people had to decide who Obama was. Was he a new, tough Obama willing to go after terrorists with alacrity and zeal? Or was he the old, timorous Obama, frightened of his own international shadow after breaking out of his post-American model? For the most part, we bet on the latter option. And we were right. Since taking as much credit as possible for presiding over the Bin Laden kill, Obama has backed off the political ramifications of that kill as fast as humanly possible. It began with the Administration’s odd insistence that Bin Laden resisted and was therefore shot – as though any American cares whether the SEALs double-tapped Bin Laden in cold blood or because he pulled out a weapon like Billy at the end of The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Realistically speaking, Bin Laden armed against a trained team of SEALs is about as fair a fight as Bin Laden unarmed against a trained team of SEALs. But Obama doesn’t like the excrescence of a kill-terrorists-on-sight policy, so his Administration created a false narrative in order to avoid it. And so we were treated to the odd and awkward spectacle of Jay Carney, White House press secretary, telling us that “resistance does not require a firearm,” as though Bin Laden pulled out a pair of shuriken and required two rounds to the head to prevent a kung fu showdown. Beyond the absurdity of Carney’s bird walking, there is an obvious contradiction here: the rules of engagement for our troops in Afghanistan require that they not fire on anyone not holding a weapon. “If they use rockets to hit the [forward operating base], we can’t shoot back because they were within 500 meters of the village,” Spc. Charles Brooks of the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment in Zabul province told the Washington Examiner. “If they shoot at us and drop their weapon in the process we can’t shoot back.” If Obama is fine with taking out an unarmed Bin Laden, he should be fine with our troops taking out unarmed terrorists around the globe. He isn’t, so he forces the press secretary to spin wildly.
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
Alll of your crybaby articles are going on ignore today...
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." Too bad the software doesn't let the poster know how many people have his articles on ignore. The only thing that annoys me is that I have to give them a hit to put them on ignore.
"We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2001
--GW Bush
#2. To: war (#1)
Alll of your crybaby articles are going on ignore today..
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