The Pink Flamingo :: Is President Bush That Disliked (or)

I don’t like Rasmussen. I think his polls are a crock. We hear how badly the President is in the polls, but look at the particulars tat have him around 34%.

“…Rasmussen Reports updates the President's Job Approval on a weekly basis based upon nightly telephone interviews with 500 adults. Weekly results include interviews with 3,500 adults. Full month results are based upon interviews with 15,000 adults. In any review of Job Approval data, the trends are more important than the precise number. Many factors, especially question wording, can impact the particular approval rating percentage.Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large. Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. Our targets are established based upon survey interviews completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews). For the month of April, the targets are 40.5% Democrat, 32.3% Republican, and 27.2% unaffiliated. For March, the targets were 38.8% Democrat, 33.0% Republican, and 28.1% unaffiliated…”

Let’s be honest here, the poll is weighted to make Bush look as bad as possible. There are 7% more Dems that Republicans and nearly as many independents as Republicans. If there were to be a fair poll, with REGISTERED voters – and not that “adults” crock the President would have a far different approval rating. We wouldn’t be forced to put up with additional Peggy Noonan Woman Scorned GWB Hatred Dribble.

Ever since Peggy Noonan severed her relationship with the GWB Administration, she has been the living, breathing example of hell hath no fury like the woman scored. (An example of her “before”) I don’t know what went down, but she has a scorned lover’s hatred of George W. Bush. Her WSJ column today just proves it.

We all know how bad the USA Today & Gallup Polls are. The Gallup poll is with 1000 “National” adults and not weighted by party.

I would love to see a “Fair” poll for the President. I have a feeling we would find these hatchet jobs way off the mark.

I find amazing the fact that George W. Bush is almost the forgotten man. We all know the hard right conservatives dislike him as much as the Dems. They are ignoring him. In fact, most conservatives in general are ignoring him. There aren’t all that many blogs like The Pink Flamingo who advertise as being proudly Republican in scope, so I really don’t know how to judge things. I think Republicans have been so whipped by conservatives they are almost afraid to come out of the closet as straight Republicans. It is quite fascinating how only the liberal blogs mention him, and then only in derision.

Perhaps we are to blame for his low opinion numbers because we aren’t standing up for the man. He’s a good, decent man. Sure, he’s done a few things of which I disapprove, primarily Michael Chertoff and that whole border fence fiasco and I don’t approve of the bio-fuel mandate, but on a whole, I agree with the man 95% of the time. That’s a good record.

We all expect people like Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan to express their contempt of the man. The far right considers him right up there with their liberal version of some hulking anti-Christ. But Peggy Noonan is truly pathetic. She reminds me of a post Civil War spinster, sitting on the dilapidated porch of a moldering anti-bellum mansion. A character out of a Tennessee Williams play, she fans herself as she sips iced tea (laced with a little something extra) and drawls mournfully about the passing of the Great Ronald Reagan.

People forget things like this (from 9/13/2004’s Weekly Standard)

“…IT'S OBVIOUS not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge (which might even outrank the Silver Star) but that much of the opposition to Bush has a remarkable and very special quality; one might be tempted to call it "lunacy." But that's too easy. The "special quality" of anti-Bush opposition tells a more significant, stranger story than that. Bush's greatness is often misunderstood. He is great not because he showed America how to react to 9/11 but because he showed us how to deal with a still bigger event--the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left us facing two related problems, one moral and one practical. Neither President Clinton nor the first Bush found solutions--but it's not surprising that the right answers took time to discover, and an event like 9/11 to bring them into focus. In moral terms: If you are the biggest boy on the playground and there are no adults around, the playground is your responsibility. It is your duty to prevent outrages--because your moral code demands that outrages be prevented, and (for now) you are the only one who can prevent them…”

The man has not changed. We have changed. Decent Republicans have allowed liberal Dems and far right conservatives to write the headlines. We are allowing them to destroy this man’s reputation. The worst part of it is we are doing nothing about it. In that way, we are just as bad as they are.

When George W. Bush waxes poetic on freedom, he is as eloquent as anyone in the history of this nation.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.

I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again.

The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable - and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power Who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true

The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.

I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul.

When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart.

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.

You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

From GWB’s 2nd Inaugural Address – January 20, 2005

“…n America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act and the GI Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time.
To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance -- preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society.

By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character -- on integrity and tolerance toward others and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.

That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards,and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before -- ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today and forever.

In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service and mercy and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love.

Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?

These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes -- and I will strive in good faith to heal them.

Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.
We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills.

We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" -- they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.

History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction set by liberty and the author of liberty.
When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still….”