Oh My: Hillary out in front

Wh-wh-what???

It looks like people just don't like the Republicans more than they don't like Obama. You can take this with a grain of salt - liberal Time magazine finds that Hillary polls better better than Obama, better than the GOP, pretty much better than everyone. Via USA Today

People can't help but wonder what might happen if Hillary Rodham Clinton ran again for president.

A new Time magazine poll shows Clinton easily defeating the major Republican candidates, were she somehow to become the 2012 Democratic nominee for president.

Clinton leads Mitt Romney, 55% to 38%; Rick Perry, 58% to 32%; and Herman Cain, 56% to 34%, among likely voters in a general election.

(Time magazine notes, "The same poll found that President Obama would edge Romney by just 46% to 43%, Perry by 50% to 38% and Cain by 49% to 37% among likely voters." Clinton's leads are bigger.)

That may be worrisome for the GOP for 2012 but it shouldn't be.  This reflects probably more regret on the part of many liberals at what could have been rather than as a plan for 2012.

(1)  Time is a liberal  publication and poll results can be skewed based on how questions are asked. 

(2)  Hillary isn't running and if she were, there would be a lot of blood on the Democrat side of the ledger.  Either as a Democrat usurper or as a third party candidate, she does more damage to Obama than to the right.  Hillary is probably much more interested in 2016. 

(3)  The Time poll has a number of GOP candidates all being led by Obama. Significantly.   That is out of step with other polls that have the races closer and out of step with polls indicating Generic Republican beating Obama.  Once we know who generic is, the numbers for the specific candidate will exceed that of Obama.  That is, barring an economic miracle.

What's with Gallup?

Gallup has consistently show an Job Approval rating for President Obama between 68% and 62%. True, it's trended downward since his inauguration, but at infinitesimal amounts. A 6% drop over 4.5 months?

And it has shown his disapproval numbers increase from an astoundingly (and possibly unreasonably) low of 12% up to 32%. A high by Gallup's calculations. Even so, the trend has been up from only a 26% disapproval as of early March. In other words an increase of disapproval of 6% over 3 months.

That's probably not unreasonable under normal circumstances. After all Gallup showed George W. Bush sinking from 35% to 33.1% between 2007 and 2008. Trends take time to unfold.

But these are not normal circumstances. There are two wars, an economic meltdown and conservative discontent over the socialization of America along with the requisite tax increases, national debt balloon and indebtedness to China. These are quite far from normal times.

But when you take other polls into consideration, Rasmussen, which has Obama at 53, appears to be the outlier, not Gallup.

AP has Obama at 64% approval. Quinnipiac has him at 59%, the Democratic pollster Democracy Corps has him at 58% and USA Today/Gallup has him at 61%.

Glass Half Empty

Every time Obama's numbers start to dip, he gets on TV with a speech or an international trip, and buys himself a short term bump in popularity. The harsh reality for conservatives, is that Gallup is still not wrong. There are a number of reasons for that, including the fact that the unified voice coming from conservatives, isn't unified.
There's no way to argue against a fleet of similar polls.

What's a conservative to do? Stop focusing on each other, and start focusing on the real problem - liberal democratic socialism.

Glass Half Full

To end on a happy note - the speeches can't last forever. Not if the wheels come off his recovery plan. Not exactly a glass half full situation, but at least his big government policies might be doomed by it.

The bigger plus for the GOP, is that Obama's approvals are slipping. 6% over 5 months is not so good. At that rate by November 2012 his approval rating wold be at 9% to 10%. Of course they won't get that low; his hardcore liberal base is bigger than 10%. But conservatives don't need his numbers to get that low. If they get below 46%, which is entirely feasible, the GOP will be in good shape by 2012. And getting to 46% approval would require a drop of 16% or a drop of 4.5% per year. According to Gallup, he's proven he can do that in less than 5 months.