. . . this one: 43.
President Obama's approval rating at Real Clear Politics -- the purveyor of political numbers trusted by Unca D -- is in the 43s, down a bit from recent 44s.
Last fall the number dipped briefly into the 39s. That's when healthcare.gov ran in the ditch. It's also when . . .
. . . Mr. Obama's oft-repeated yarn about liking and keeping your doctor and health plan was exposed for what it was: a four-star lie -- deliberate, cold, and cynical.
But Mr. Obama's numbers did not keep declining -- a dishonor he has done much to earn. They began to bob back up.
What's so good about 43? It's still below water. The majority (52.6 as I write) of the polling public well understands that the president of the United States is not doing a good job. But polls don't run things. A majority has opposed Obamacare in every poll ever taken, yet it is the law of the United States (except as Mr. Obama chooses to ignore it). And Mr. Obama, whose disapprovals have equalled or exceeded his approvals most of the time since early 2010, is still the president.
The fact of the matter is that is survivable -- at least to one as dishonest and calculating as Mr. Obama. It is from just this base that he rallied in 2012 to win reelection over a far better man. He may have a permanent grip on less than half the American people, but he has the support of 75 percent or more of journalists, academicians, and other powerful elites.
If only our president would drop into the thirties and stay there, his own party would abandon him. Late-night comics would be encouraged to mock him. His political adversaries would be heartened. Even a few journalists would begin to ask hard questions.
How, in the face of overwhelming evidence of his unworthiness, does he maintain the support of 43 percent?
One reason, as Rush reminds us every day, is that a large cohort of our population pays less than no attention to the overwhelming evidence. They are the low-information voters -- the sort who can't pick Joe Biden out of a lineup (delicious thought, that) but know everything about Kardashians, twerkers, and Biebers. We've always had airheads with us, but they are now being manufactured in larger numbers on the assembly lines of bad schools, broken families, and popular culture.
Another reason is that each day, Mr. Obama hooks more Americans on government handouts, through ballooning food stamp enrollment, a deliberate (in my opinion) breakdown of the gatekeepers against Social Security disability fraud, and healthcare, unemployment, minimum-wage, housing, and other programs galore. All the while, evidence mounts that his programs, individually and in the aggregate, are unaffordable and deadly to the work ethic needed for a healthy citizenry and a functioning economy.
But what to you and me are bugs are, to Mr. Obama and his power-hungry crowd, features. People who get checks from the government know who butters their bread and approve of having their bread buttered. It's self-interest of the sort that is mocked by the left when it inspires hard work, frugality, and other virtues. Such self-interest -- greed, really -- is celebrated, however, when exercised in furtherance of dependency on government, meaning dependency on money taken from productive taxpayers, money borrowed from China, and money printed by the Federal Reserve.
However impolitic Mitt Romney's statement about how 47 percent of voters have been lost permanently to candidates such as he, the statement is essentially true, give or take a few percentage points. And today's 43 or 44 or 47 percent is likely to grow as Democrats serially undertake to buy the votes of yet more groups -- immigrants and, most recently, ex-felons. A political strategy that is appalling is, sadly, likely to succeed.
We declinists have been wrong at every prior turn in American history. We are right this time. If a president so woeful as President Obama can hold the affections of 43 percent, we are far along the path to permanent eurosocialist-style decline.
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