August 17, 2009

Reason enough for conservative optimism

Looking at the Rasmussen Reports numbers today, President Obama's approval index has a smaller negative than a couple of days ago, but it's still significantly negative. That might change a bit as a result of the waving the white flag on a public option for health care insurance. He's likely to bleed some support on the left if it's not some sort of trial balloon.

So putting aside the current number, I've instead opted to look at the Rasmussen By The Numbers page today. The results are tilted quite heavily in favor of the Republicans of late. Without going into district by district breakdowns (who has time for that these days?) There's some interesting things to note.


In each of those categories except for one, the Republicans hold an edge over the Democrats - including the most important category, the economy.

There's a troubling number though, the holdout category Government Ethics/ Corruption. There Democrats still hold a slight edge, despite Blogojevich, Burriss, Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, Congressional jets, email-gate and a host of other issues. And the issue ranks high on the importance scale.

That's where a Washington outsider like Palin or Romney or Pawlenty or another governor make sense from a GOP perspective. If any contender can come across like not part of the Washington insiders' club, they might be able to take that advantage away. No doubt the GOP left a bad taste in voters' mouths over the past 8 years. Any contender for 2010 or 2012 needs to have that aura of corruption far away from them. That's why people want new, and change. Washington is broken and the Democrats are simply going about re-proving that to everyone. They're doing a wonderful job, making the next election cycles easier and easier for Republicans. The GOP simply needs to keep striving to impress voters that they aren't just a party of 'no' but a party of ideas while at the same time, working towards re-establishing ethical trust.

In addition to the numbers above there's a number of other indicators on Rasmussen's page worth looking at; perceptions of Obama, the generic Congressional ballot, energy, taxes and partisan politics all seem to indicate favorability towards Republicans and conservative views on the topics. While the mid-term elections are still 15 months away, a lot can change. Not that much really needs to change to affect a shift though.

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