The Republican "Loyal Opposition" might want to take note.
From www.swamppolitics.com
Obama's job approval, as measured by the daily tracking surveys of the Gallup Poll, stands at 65 percent. That's returning to the high-60s that Obama had enjoyed at the start of his administration, after trenching at 59 percent earlier this month.
But it's worth noting, entering the third month of the Obama administration, that the president has managed to keep roughly two-thirds of the public on his side at a time when millions of jobs are disappearing and the federal deficit is soaring.
It also bears noting that the president's disapproval ratings have increased substantially - starting in the low teens and pushing up the mid-20s in the latest Gallup. Pollsters have pointed to a hardening of the old polarized public as more of the Republicans never inclined to like Obama and independents who had given him the benefit of the doubt start to fall back into skeptical or disapproving lines.
Obama's "honeymoon" ended on the first night when the Republicans asked for separate rooms when they checked in. The Repugs never had, nor never will have, any intention of working with Obama, his administration, or the Democratic majority in Congress. All those Repugs who lined up on Inauguration Day to promise to give the new president the benefit of the doubt were just blowing smoke up the electorate's collective ass as they have been doing for the last eight years. Never forget for one second that these guys are steaming over the back to back losses they suffered in the last two election cycles. There sole purpose is plotting and planning their return to power. The country and the people be damned.
They can no more change their right-wing ideological approach to governing then McDonald's could turn vegan. Never gonna happen. I think there are two main reasons for this adamancy. The first is that they truly believe their double-barreled strategy of cutting taxes and down-sizing government. They see the second as the result of the first; the starve the beast plan. Meaning that if you reduce federal revenues you will perforce have to cut government services. It is a strategy aimed at pleasing the rich and powerful while screwing the middle class and the poor who are more dependent on government than the first group. The angry white folk and the christianists may think that they are the base of the Republican party. But we all know that money talks and bullshit walks. But they need the "little people" because there aren't enough rich voters to keep them in power. So every four years, they see that attention must be paid and the pander pipeline is once again opened.
The second reason, I think, is that they long ago reached the point of no return. For them to suddenly begin to work together in a truly bipartisan manner would not only be an act of ideological heresy but more importantly the admission that they have been wrong for so many years and that all the crises, financial and otherwise, that beset the country today can be laid directly at their feet. They have spun a web of deceit, corruption, and incompetence and now find themselves trapped within it.
So all that they can do now is "rage against the dying of the light". When Rush Limbaugh said at the very start of this new administration that he hopes Obama fails, the Republican leaders who rushed to the cameras and microphones to say nay, nay weren't doing it because they disagreed with Limbaugh. They were pissed that Limbaugh had given away their game plan. They have not one single constructive idea or thought on how to dig America out of the hole they dug for it. Nor will any be forthcoming. They are so consumed with aiding and abetting the downfall of Obama and the Democrats that there is no room left in their brains for such things to even begin.
They have spent every day since Obama's inauguration looking for all things negative they could put into their talking points for their turns on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. But it seems that most of us have moved on and the only ones listening are the true believers.