If there is one pundit that makes me want to throw up every time I see him speak on TV or read one of his columns, its Fred Barnes. This man is absolutely insane and a far worse hack than the likes of folks like David Broder and can almost hold a candle to Dick Morris' lunacy. Every week he has been writing a column critical of President Obama in the right wing Weekly Standard. In his latest article, he thinks that Obama's popularity is "slipping" and his 63% approval rating is in the same spot as George W. Bush in 2001. Barnes is cherrypicking. That one poll that showed Bush at 63% in March 2001 was a clear outlier. Other polls that came out that time showed Bush in the mid to high 50's. http://webapps.ropercenter.uconn.edu...
Barnes believes that the economic recovery will not come soon enough to spare "Democrats from losing a number of House seats and maybe even several Senate seats in the 2010 midterm elections". Several Senate seats? Does Barnes realize the seats that are up in 2010? Republicans will be defending open seats in New Hampshire, Florida, Missouri, and Ohio that all have a good chance of going to Democrats. If Republicans were even to make small gains in the 2010 Senate races, they would have to pick off Democratic seats in very blue states like New York, Delaware, Illinois, and Connecticut where Republican candidates would need a large number of Democrats to crossover and vote for them to win.
He then goes on to say that the public reaction to Obama's agenda has been "tepid". He basis this on heavily anti-Democratic slanted polling done by Rasmussen. What really makes me want to smack Barnes is how he puts the words "stimulus package" in quotes as if its not a stimulus package. What does he think we should do? Nothing? In another article last week, Barnes tried to say that Obama was in the same poor position Bill Clinton was in. Obama did not run as a moderate. He ran as an economic liberal who would use government to help fix the economy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...