TV ratings for November 18, 2009; courtesy of the Drudge Report. (click to enlarge)
Sarah Palin sure seems to be gathering steam lately, and there’s strong evidence that the public is giving her a second look; perhaps the realization of Mr. Obama’s shortcomings is accentuating her positives more than any negatives that the lamestream media tries to keep the public’s attention focused on. Efforts that have achieved a whole new level of transparent desperation lately, with MSNBC reporters attending Palin book signing events armed with talking points to challenge her many fans, and Chris “Tingle†Matthews obsessing about the “monochromatic†nature of ‘Cuda’s fans. I guess Chris “Tingle†needed to find a new angle, since lately the race card is looking a bit dog-eared from overplaying it; attempting to use it against anyone opposing the President’s political agenda.
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The evidence of this resurgence is manifold. To begin with, her new book, “Going Rogue: An American Lifeâ€, sold 300,000 copies on the first day it was released! I guess it won’t be so hard after all to reach the 400,000 copies sold break even point, eh? And then there are the TV ratings that spike when she’s on interview programs. Not only did her interview last night propel Hannity’s ratings past O’Reilly’s usual high metric, but her recent appearance on Chewbacca’s Michelle Obama’s friend Thulsa Doom’s Oprah Winfrey’s program registered the largest audience that show has drawn in years!
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But a real measure of the change in public perception of Palin is reflected in a recent Fox news poll where her favorables were found to be 47/42 (favorable/unfavorable opinion):
Despite being characterized by many as a divisive force in her party and the nation, Americans are much more likely to give Palin a positive rating (47 percent favorable) than another prominent female leader — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (28 percent favorable). Moreover, about six in 10 Americans (61 percent) think Palin has been treated unfairly by the press, according to the latest Fox News poll…
Among self-identified Republicans in the survey, Palin gets the highest favorable ratings (70 percent) amid a group of other possible contenders for the GOP nomination, including Mike Huckabee (63 percent), Mitt Romney (60 percent) and Newt Gingrich (58 percent). Palin’s favorable score among all voters is 47 percent, up nine percentage points over last July’s reading of 38 percent…
President Obama recently stated that he “probably won’t†read Sarah Palin’s new book. But his possible opponent in the 2012 elections trails him in personal favorability by only seven points (54 percent to 47 percent). Among the critical segment of independent voters, they are virtually even (Obama at 50 percent; Palin at 49 percent).
That last part is especially topical and should concern the President, considering how his poll numbers are fading across the board. Of course, there is the Rasmussen daily Presidential tracking poll and approval index, which today stand at 46% of respondents at least somewhat approving of Obama’s overall performance, and an approval index rating of -14. And less those numbers be dismissed as wingnut fantasy, Quinnipiac reports an overall policy approval rating of 46%-although a higher number of respondents “like†the President, Gallup has him hovering around 50%, John Zogby has Obama’s popularity holding steady at 49% as does Public Policy Polling, and finishing off this round robin of popularity polling is Fox, who show the POTUS having the same favorability rating as Rasmussen-46%.
That’s a whole lot of “below 50%†going on…
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What should be of larger concern to President Obama is the growing dissatisfaction with his performance among self identified “independentsâ€; a 34/51 split (overall approval/disapproval). Perhaps more troubling still is a Zogby poll which reports that independents think that the Bush administration was more transparent than the much heralded, celebrated, most Ethical!, Honest!, Brilliant!, Judicious!, and Transparent! Administration-EVAH! And the Democrats as a party need to recognize that Obama’s coat-tails work in reverse also, as Rethugs! now lead in generic congressional balloting; an advantage that Republicans in the modern era have never enjoyed, not even in 1994 when they were swept in to power in the House of Representatives.
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None of this data means that any electoral success  is “in the bag†for Sarah Palin, quite the opposite instead since the legacy media, and the fightin’ nutroots, will almost certainly strive to cement her public image as being a divisive figure primarily through the bitter, deranged, openly misogynistic, acrimonious arguments, and belittling attacks that figures such as Chris “Tingleâ€, Olbermann, Maddow and other “gatekeepers†of information will subject the public and Sarah Palin to. And, wittingly or otherwise, there will be alleged conservatives “wizards of smartâ€, such as the Davids-Brooks and Frum, that will aid them in this endeavour by using what limited sway they have in Republican circles to gainsay her at every opportunity; publicly supporting the elitist arguments that she is just a rube, hicktard, chillbilly that’s bad for the party in general and who will be unable to attract moderates. It’s been more than 30 years since I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric; the same sorts of criticisms were leveled at Reagan, the only difference being the slur substitution of doddering-avuncular-doofus for rube-hicktard-chillbilly. And that’s why it is so clear to me that the far left is reacting to what they rightly perceive as an existential threat to all the sway they’ve worked to regain; especially over the last 4 to 6 years.Â
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The far left Democrats fear that, just as with Reagan, Sarah Palin’s cheery optimism, can-do attitude, and dedication to the traditional American ideals of national exceptionalism and individualism will resonate in a way that the elitist notions of our “betters†deciding what’s good for us never will; and fear that combined with a charisma that far exceeds the media enabled “cool†of Obama, will make for an unstoppable juggernaut. Indeed, based pretty much solely on her charisma and personal appeal the public is willing to give her another serious look; a development that drives liberals in the legacy media, as well as a few conservatives, to resort to doing whatever it takes to eliminate her viability as a candidate. This dedication to the destruction of her potential political career is revealed by the maniacal response by some journalists and commentators, such as Ana Marie Cox’s decision to not let a silly detail, you know, like actually reading the entire book get in the way of her panning of it; a suspicion some have about Rod Dreher as well. Or consider that the Associated Press assigned 11 reporters to “fact check†Palin’s book; an astonishing development on it’s face when you realize that to this day they have assigned none to fact check either of Obama’s books-either now or when he was an unknown, un-vetted, candidate who essentially came out of nowhere. As if this doesn’t reveal sufficient and unfair bias on it’s face, as Mark Steyn wryly observes, all this squad of muckrakers uncovered were 6 minor, inconsequential errors, and between them produced a 695 word story.
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What none of the folks in any of these organizations realize is that they are actually helping Palin through their deranged efforts. Just as during the 2008 campaign, the public can tell that many legacy media outlets, and of course the nutroot blogs, are biased against her; indeed, the Fox poll showed that 6 out of 10 respondents recognized this biased and agenda driven reportage. Add to this the public’s perception of the legacy media’s liberal bias, and the President’s continued bungling, dithering, and dedication to his far left base and their agenda, and you have a perfect storm that could possibly result in Palin’s favorable perception by the public exceeding the President’s; resulting in a monumental sense of delicious irony, in the literary sense, writ large as well as a generous helping of schadenfreude for the targets of the left’s coordinated political attacks.
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All of their efforts might just aid in Sarah Palin’s resurgence and might just propel her solidly into history too; not the dustbin though, but the annals instead, as perhaps the first woman to be elected President of the United States.
UPDATE: Dan Riehl weighs in on Sarah Palin 2.0, noting that in the public’s eye she has what amounts to a fresh slate and that what happened in the past is of less importance than what happens going forward. Oh, and he also mentions perhaps her most deranged and obsessive critic-RawMuslglutes…
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dan Collins, Rick Sheridan. Rick Sheridan said: RT @vermontaigne The Renaissance of Sarah Palin.: she…seems to be gathering steam… & there’s strong eviden.. http://tinyurl.com/yax9rzb [...]
Nice job Bob, nobody dishes “schadenfreude” better than the Rocketman 8^)
Thanks Danger!
I hope that all is well for you these days, considering what you wrote at the PW pub…
All the best
Harper Collins announced the book was going into its 2nd printing 2 days ago. I finished it last night and I don’t see how anyone can read it and come away thinking this woman doesn’t know her stuff. She is certainly up there with the experts on energy. I think what comes through the most is what a hard worker she is and how focused she gets when something needs to get done.
And perhaps one of her strongest traits is that she learns both from her own mistakes and from the mistakes of others. She is extremely confident in her own abilities but without the least hint of narcissism.
She is a master of the art of the humorous sarcastic put down that leaves the other person wondering, but I get, because I am very good at this combination of deprecating humor coupled with a hint of snark. Like Sarah, I am also an eyeroller and winker, meant to impart, “you know what I really mean.” I love it when she does this because for the most part it sails right over the stuffed shirt elitist’s heads.
Steve Schmidt is another matter. If ever there was a man deserving of being strung up by his privates, this man is it. What a total snake and scumbag.
I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy! I really admire Governor Palin a lot, and was “keeping an eye” on her since long before there was any talk about her taking part in national politics; she strikes me as being very Reagan-esque in her outlook, optimism, and ability to both excite the base and still have a broader appeal for non-ideologues-especially following the Obama follies…
Sarah Palin is a Cumb Dunt.
I called your mom a cumb dunt when I had sex with her last night.
Hey, Cean S, I dook a tump in your com’s munt after saving hex with her and halling cer a cumb dunt.
!pppppP
That’s got bo te the fumbest dunniest posts E’ve iver detsop.
Iometimes S even mrack cyself pu.
Thanks Bob,
Time has been dragging lately but I’m 7 days from the 1/2 way pt and less than a month from my mid tour break. I’m meeting my family at Eidelweiss (Garmish, Germany) for Christmas
Man, that sounds really great; and that resort is supposed to be really, really nice. It won’t be home, but with the family there it should be real homey!
I’m sure they’ll enjoy seeing the Bavarian alps, and you of course. It should prove to be very Christmas-like, and I’m sure a grand time will be had by all
Looks like POWIP’s Grand Wizard, Bob “Scare Pee” Reed, has wasted more of his government-funded time attempting to tar and feather his betters in the elite media. a.k.a. the wordly literatii.
It’s OK, Bob, because we know you’re simply an angry aging leftover of the Reagan-era surrender ape and retreat monkey throng. We understand.
Despite Fux Nutworks gloating broadcasts from Sarah Palinochio’s MI book signing featuring a parade of white waterheads blustering about being anti-government, in reality the TV images revealed a long line of bearded pussies wearing Mack Truck baseball caps and sporting bloated Swanson-TV-dinner bellies. These are the grown-up version of junior high karate champs – the ones who always got the crap kicked out of them in P.E. no matter how many brown belts they were awarded at Master Fu’s Karate School. As we say in the South, it’s the tornado alley trailer home demographic, those whose hormones failed to grow fuzz on their peaches, the fat, ugly, socially retarded hicks who couldn’t even find success in teenage suicide. Face it, Sarah “The Quitting ‘Cuda” Palin’s fans are a welfare bourgeois plague whose new favorite past time nowadays is watching Glenn Beck’s hysterics and sharing tales amongst each other of their scars that won’t heal because, damnit, America just doesn’t seem to give a fuck about them or their God-fearing grandmothers anymore.
“Bail-out Schmail-out, love me Mommy, love me America!”
White trash America needs an emotional bail-out. We should promote a hug-a-hick week because, can’t you see, they’re angry and hurting inside. Maybe just maybe hugs can heal hickbilly sniffles.
My big strong arms are always open if you’re needing a bear hug, Bob. Be strong!
“…a welfare bourgeois plague…” Are you referring to the 47% of the population that pay no tax and who mostly get rebates-the “stealth welfare” flim-flam enacted after Clinton alleged “ended welfare as we know it”..?
What ordinary Americans need are to stop having their wealth redistributed to the urban idle and having their individual freedoms impinged on by a group of Mao loving, wanna-be communists, who don’t recall that communism and statist socialism was an abject failure, economically and socially, and who can’t be bothered with those, you know, stubborn facts and inconvenient truths as they attempt to transform the greatest nation on earth into essentially a Castro/Chavez style “workers paradise” where they suffer from regular electrical blackouts, despite having more energy per capita than any other nation on earth, suffer water rationing, or can’t manage to provide enough toilet paper for their citizenry…
Palin is enjoying a renaissance of popularity and public image, owing at least in part to the incompetence of Obama and the reflexive cover that his sycophantic is breathlessly trying to provide as I noted in the essay links…
And the truth is, you can refute none of that, especially the incompetence of Obama, so all you are left with is bitter vitriol, baseless insults, cheap sexualo innuendo, and the recitation of the elitist cartoon that runs in your head.
Here’s a clue for you; remember that silent majority that Nixon referred to? Remeber all the rank and file regular folks that voted for Ronald Reagan, a man whose shoes Obama is unfit to shine-let alone compare himself to; conservative Democrats repudiating the weak-as-water Jimmy Carter, like they will with Obama soon enough, flocking to the man who told them with cheery optimism that, “it was morning in America again”, as opposed to telling them that they couldn’t drive their SUV’s as much, or eat and consume energy as much, since it wasn’t effin’ fair that as a nation we consume outsized quantities compared to the size of our population-just like that failure Carter told them to wear sweaters and turn the heat down…
I know it’s hard to defend the indefensible, a failed ideology and administration that you supported; but get over it! Think about what’s good for the nation, instead of what Obama wants, and that will lead your thoughts and actions in the correct direction.
You need to read this again, because you just didn’t get it. Palin’s a player, as much as Obama was in 2006; and has more experience than he did when he wa inaugurated. In the ensuing months he’s proven that the entire construct if his image as a Brilliant!, Judicious!, Ethical!, Post-racial!, Post-partisan!, New Kind of Politician! was a chimera; he regularly butchers the historical record when spouting specious citations to support Just Words!, and yet Booooooosh! and Palin are idiots owing mostly to their rural accents, poorly creased pants, and inability to recite college philosophy class talking points about Niebuhr…
The public are growing to like and trust her more, regarcless of the tut-tutting going on in the toney salons of the upper west side of Manhattan, bistros of San Franscisco, coffee houses of Seattle, and country clubs and marinas of South Florida. Obama better be looking over his shoulder, and begin to actually back up his palaver; because he needn’t slide much further, or flounder much longer, lest Palin surpass him in the majority of the public’s mind.
Stop it with model airplane glue, please.
Parah Salin is a smelly cumb dunt.
What you need is a little Russian Punk tossed in your illiterate face!
From his fictional memoir, It’s Me, Eddie, I raise my middle finger and offer the immortal words of the one and only Edichka-baby, Eduard Limonov.
“I am on welfare. I live at your expense, you pay taxes and I don’t do a fucking thing. Twice a month I go to the clean, spacious welfare office at 1515 Broadway and receive my checks. I consider myself to be scum, the dregs of society, I have no shame or conscience, therefore my conscience doesn’t bother me and I don’t plan to look for work, I want to receive your money to the end of my days. And my name is Edichka, “Eddie-baby.”
And you, gentelman, can figure you’re getting off cheap. Early in the morning you crawl our of your warm beds and hurry – some by car, some by subway or bus – to work. I hate work. I gobble my shchi, drink, sometimes drink myself into oblivion, seek adventure in dark city blocks, I have a magnificent, expensive white suit and an exquisite nervous system. I wince at your belly laugh in the movie theater and wrinkle my nose.
You don’t like me? You don’t want to pay? It’s precious little – $278 a month. Then why the fuck did you invite me, entice me here from Russia, along with a horde of Jews? Present your complaints to your own propaganda, it’s too effective. That’s what’s emptying your pockets, not I.
Who was I over there? What’s the difference, what would it change? I hate the past, as I always have, in the name of the present. Well, I was a poet, if you must know, a poet was I, an unofficial, underground poet. That’s over forever, and now I am one of yours, I am scum. I’m the one to whom you feed shchi and rotten cheap California wine – $3.59 a gallon – and yet I scorn you. Not all of you, but many. Because you lead dull lives, sell yourselves into slavery of work, because of your vulgar plaid pants, because you make money and have never seen the world. You’re shit!
“
Unlike you, Bob, Edichka-baby has seen the world, has lead men into the street and into battle, has stared tyranny in the face and asked tyranny to make him subway change. He has legions of malcontent youths who salute him, who want nothing more than to be just like Eddie-baby.
He’s a leader. He’s a legend. He’s Edichka.
Eduard Limonov is a political leader in Russia. He’d punch Parah Salin in the face and declare their meeting over.
He’s a real poet.
And this is relevant, how?
Just another non-sequitor, in an attempt to mask the fact that you can neither refute nor constructively comment…
Your hatred of Palin has blinded your thinking.
Wow, talk about “pussies,” look in the mirror Lump. The only pussies I see out there are libtard uninformed followers of that bastion of ignorance, MSNBC.
Sara, you need to know two things: Professional wrestling is fake and Sarah Palin’s face is a sticky mess after every hickboi’s bedtime orgy of delusions.
Why are you such a misogynist? Why do you hate women and minorities so; except for your man-crush Obama…
Nah, Lump, all I need to know is you are a world class jerk and one nasty piece. Ugh! Does your mother know you write such claptrap for public consumption?
Mom, is that you?
I’m in deep shit now!
Excellent post, Bob. I like your longer pieces.
Bob, did you drain yourself dry of scare pee?
Look at you.
You’ve lost weight.
Lay down and rest.
Message your bladder.
Drink some Pedialyte.
Now get up and pop in a Rev. Wright re-run and press your pee nozzle against your TV’s screen.
Get back in the game, Bob! You team needs another high-arching streamer of your scare swill! Give us more NewsMax links, Bob, or possibly a h/t to weaselzipper before Obama sends more tax dollars to ACORN!
For the Gipper, Bob! For the Gipper!
Those citations are mostly facts, with some erudite opinion mixed in.
Facts are stubborn things too; and they are definitely not Obama’s stock and trade…
Scare pee is the vitriol and insults you spew since Obama’s agenda and his actions to date are generally indefensible; and when you can’t refute or reply, just call ‘em all god-bothering hicktards racists! That’ll show ‘em hicks…
You need a new groove mange; your floor show is getting stale and tired. Here’s a thought, stick to the issues, argue the merits, and always base decisions primarily on the firm ground of lover for country and what will serve her best…
Be a patriot, instead of just an Obama lover…
What’s a matter, Scare Pee Bob, tired of being a wad of Wrigley’s gum stuck to the heel of winky Sarah’s Naughty Monkey boots? You’re the laughed at, defeated and blistered of America, Bob. I’m sorry, but your Duuuuuuh-Power! is a sad point of shame in America’s recent past-historic and it’ll be forever in the rear view mirror as America rockets skyward toward the greatness that is its future.
You should consider moving, changing citizenship and have a go at being a subprime gopnick in a third-world shit stew. Honduras and a hammock sounds like a good plan for ya.
Personal failure and humiliation are all that’s left for you in the Shining City on the Hill.
Adios, Rocketito pobre!
Not a friend of the ladies, are you thor?
“I’m sorry, but your Duuuuuuh-Power! is a sad point of shame in America’s recent past-historic and it’ll be forever in the rear view mirror as America rockets skyward toward the greatness that is its future.”
You mean all of the things that have made this nation great for over 200 years?
America does have greatness in it’s future; but not as the statist “workers paradise” that you think Obama willo be instituting here. America’s greatness will come after Obama and the other America hating Democrats are ejected from office, and more conservative legislators put this nation back on the path to small government, small spending, low taxes and regulation that result in trhe kind of high private sector growth that we have experienced at times in our past; and will again in the future, to be sure…
My suggestion is that you move to Venezuela and enjoy your man Chavez’s “workers paradise” and statist society…
[...] is he just on the exit ramp? In our Friday post on Sarah Palin, I touched on the inconvenient truth that the polls are headed south for the won !, but also how [...]