RUSH: Washington Post today, Chris Cillizza. “Meet the haters. WeÂ’re talking about the voters whoÂ’ve had it with all Washington politicians: President Obama, congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats. Despite their distaste for, well, everyone, when push comes to shove, these voters are lining up squarely behind GOP candidates for Congress.”
So in the Washington Post today, in a piece by our old buddy Chris Cillizza, the vast majority of Republican voters are haters. If you don’t like what’s going on in Washington, if your solution is to vote Republican, you’re a hater. Remember the woman who called here two weeks ago in the midst of the polling data showing Obama plummeting? And, by the way, speaking of that, I think it’s the latest Fox News poll, Obama has sunk to his lowest approval rating ever, and the highest disapproval rating in the Fox News poll. And the Fox News poll is pretty much in pace with every other poll. It never shows a disproportionate disapproval for Obama. They’re right in there with all the other polls.
But on this one Obama has reached an all-time low. And in fact in the Washington Post/ABC poll it’s also bad. In that poll the Republicans have pulled even with Obama on trust, and the Drive-Bys can’t believe it. So here comes our old buddy, Chris Cillizza, characterizing all opposition to Washington as hate. And if you happen to vote Republican because of your opposition to Washington, you are a hater. And that’s what his piece is about.
“Haters Gonna Hate. But They Plan to Vote Republican … ItÂ’s encouraging news for a Republican Party eyeing midterm elections now only about 11 months away. Why? Because it suggests the image problems the partyÂ’s congressional members have experienced … donÂ’t translate to a death knell at the ballot box. Seventy-two percent of voters who disapprove of the job Obama, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans are doing say theyÂ’d vote for the GOP candidate for U.S. House in their district if the election were held today, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday. Just 14 percent say theyÂ’d vote for the Democrat.”
So, riding to the rescue here, the Drive-Bys are claiming that all of that opposition to Washington signifies one thing: hate. “The new findings come as Republicans have erased the generic House ballot advantage Democrats built in the wake of the government shutdown showdown.” See, this is so much a part of the daily narrative of the soap opera.
Okay, so we have a government shutdown. So the media just assumes that everybody hates that — and since the Republicans were blamed for it, then it’s assumed that everybody hates the Republicans. Because everybody hates a government shutdown. Because nobody wants the government shutdown. Because everybody loves the government, and most people realize they can’t get through the day without their government being up and running and working for them.
When the Republicans come along and shut down the government, well, that’s when Democrats really score big — and they had polling data to show it. At the government shutdown, the generic ballot had the Democrats winning. Generic ballot is when the pollster goes out and says, “In the next election, are you gonna vote for a Republican or Democrat?” No names attached. That’s why it’s called generic.
The Democrats always win the generic ballot, except when they don’t — and when they don’t, it causes an earthquake in Washington, and this has caused an earthquake. Just a couple of months ago the Democrats were winning big in the congressional ballot right after the government shutdown. So everything the Democrats and the media believe was borne out by their poll. That is: Every American loves the government. They can’t get through the day without the government.
When the government gets shut down, people get depressed and scared and panicked and are afraid to leave home, and then they blame the Republicans for it, and then the Democrats and the media celebrate. “Mission accomplished!” But two months later, the Republicans are cleaning the Democrats’ clock in the generic ballot. I mean, Charlie Cook, the dean of political analysts, says he has never seen this gigantic a shift in the generic ballot in such a short period of time.
Never.
He has never seen anything like it. So how do they explain it? What could cause such a massive reversal in just two short months? The obvious conclusion is… HATE. Hate of government. Hate of Washington. Hate of Democrats. The fact that the Republicans are leading in the generic ballot, meaning more people prefer Republicans at this point in time when the poll is taken, must mean that hate is alive and well. As Cillizza says here, “So, just who are the haters, and why do their votes matter so much?
“They lean heavily Republican. Thirty-four percent identify as Republicans and another 38% are independents who lean Republican.” So they’re leaning toward hating. “Just 13% are independents with no lean and just 10% are Democrats.” So 23% don’t hate. They love. “Seventy-one percent oppose” Obamacare. Seventy-one percent. It still amazes me that the Republican Party cannot find linkage to that 71%. I’m seeing such a lost opportunity here. I’m stunned.
Seventy-one percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll oppose Obamacare, and the Republicans just passed a budget that basically locks in the spending for Obamacare, because they’re afraid of being tarred and feathered with another government shutdown next month. Folks, there are 71% of voters opposing Obamacare. That’s 71% of the universe of people that the Republican Party could forge a relationship with, a political voting relationship — and they haven’t.
Outside of three or four Republicans, they’ve made no effort to do it, which leads to an obvious conclusion. Maybe the Republicans don’t really dislike Obamacare that much, or maybe it’s just too hard. Maybe it’d just be too much work, and maybe it’s because the president’s race is African-American, and that means that if they do anything to capitalize on this opposition, they’re gonna call us “haters.” They just did, again today.
“Well, then they’ll call you racist!”
Well, they do that all day anyway, all the time anyway. “The haters matter,” writes Mr. Cillizza, “because they constitute a significant and growing share of the electorate, due to sunken approval ratings for both Obama and congressional Republicans. Together they make up about a third (34%) of all voters. A month before the 2010 GOP wave election that swept House Democrats from power, the haters constituted only 28% of the electorate.”
Today the haters make up 34%.
That’s why they’re quaking in their boots in fear of the “haters” in Washington. But this is the first time I can recall where opposition to the status quo is said to be rooted in hate. Now, I know that the Democrats say conservatives hate this and hate that. But this term is now being used to identify an entire voting bloc. Seventy-one percent opposed to Obamacare are “the haters.”
The vast majority opposed to what’s going on in Washington are “the haters.”
What do you think the purpose is here? It’s to demonize the option like they did with Romney, but in addition, this is a warning being sent to the Republicans. “Don’t you align with these people! Don’t you try to capture these people! Do not join forces with these people, because then we’ll call you ‘haters,’ too,” and they’re very confident that the Republicans don’t want to be called haters, and they don’t want to be called racists, and they don’t want to be blamed for the government shutdown.
So that’s what this is.
This is a full, head-on, frontal assault on the genuine and real substantive opposition of Obamacare and Obama and Washington by calling it nothing but a bunch of haters. Who were the haters in the Bush years, by the way? How did the haters hate Bush? Now, that was real hate. That was hate. It wasn’t called that, though. But that’s what it was. They’re worried. This generic ballot business, I’m telling you, has got ’em skunked, and that 34% level of opposition to Democrats in generic ballot, called “the haters,” was 28% before the 2010 midterm.
They are scared to death, and that’s why they’re demonizing everything.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, don’t misunderstand, folks. Just because the Democrats are scared to death doesn’t mean they act like Republicans when they’re scared. The Republicans, when they’re scared, cower in the corners, and they shield themselves. “Please don’t hit me! Don’t! Don’t hit me again! Please don’t!” It’s like battered wife syndrome. When the Democrats get scared to death, they get ticked off.
When the Democrats get scared to death, they double down. They go on offense. They take no prisoners. The fright motivates ’em. ‘Cause they don’t like it. They don’t…. (interruption) They were extremists in 1995, exactly right. They don’t like things going against them, and they make people pay for going against them. Even average voters are made to pay by going against them. They don’t cower. They’re not afraid, and the Republicans…
Here’s a sad thing. All of this ballot stuff, the generic ballot increase and favor for the Republicans, they haven’t done one thing to earn it. There aren’t any Republicans out there coalescing support. All of this Republican advantage in the generic ballot and all this stuff that’s got these people upset is strictly like it was in 2010, anti-Obama. It’s anti-Washington, it’s anti-Democrat. The Republicans are doing nothing to engender it or cause it. They, too, are acting afraid of it. Go figure.