In the past few weeks, Americans have learned just how wasteful that obscure and well regarded government agencies can be. From the GSA’s lavish spending to send interns to Palm Springs, to the Secret Service’s hooker ho-downs in Third World Countries, from the oppressive TSA to the crucifying EPA, government is increasingly becoming more than just the enemy of small government advocates. If you run a business, fly anywhere, own a farm or just want to be free, big government has become a big enemy, period.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, is oblivious to all this. He keeps on pushing government as the be all end all solution to everything. A new poll out suggests that this attitude is going to catch up with him.
Today, just one in three has a favorable view of the federal government — the lowest level in 15 years, according to a Pew survey. The majority of Americans remain satisfied with their local and state governments — 61 percent and 52 percent, respectively — but only 33 percent feel likewise about the federal government.
In 2002, nearly double that figure, 64 percent, viewed the federal government favorably, and Americans held their local and state governments in similar esteem, at 67 percent and 62 percent, respectively.
There’s the expected partisan gap: A majority of Democrats, 51 percent, view the Obama-led government favorably, compared to 27 percent of independents and 20 percent of Republicans. During the Bush presidency, a majority of Republicans viewed the federal government favorably, while support for it faded among Democrats.
Independents align more closely with the Republican position than with Obama’s pro-big government position.
From the general to the specific, Obama’s personal spending habits are even chipping away at his base support:
Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters.
“They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that struggle and he’s basically doing what they can’t do on their tax dollars,” added the GOP pollster.
He and several other top-tier Republican pollsters, organized by Resurgent Republic, traveled to 11 battleground states to host focus groups of independent and swing voters, mostly Democrats, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but who are now on the fence.
What they found:
The theme, said McLaughlin, is that the first family “is out of touch” with working class voters.
He added that the president’s attack on the rich and GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney’s wealth is working, but the voters were also lumping in the president’s vacation spending in with the General Services Administration’s Las Vegas scandal and federal spending for those who aren’t looking for work.
“There really wasn’t a real dislike for Romney. It was just that he is too rich. But on the other hand there is a start of resentment of the government,” he said.
Out of touch, and championing something that an increasing number of Americans from center left to right see as the problem. Let the backlash begin.
“-lash” and “Obama” in the same sentence, racism alert, aoooga aooga!!!
I’m going to make a prediction about Michelle’s next glitzy vacation.
There won’t be one before the election. Maybe a few short vacations but nothing fancy. Something to make the Obamas look frugal (hard to type that without laughing).
But shortly after election day, win or lose, Michelle will go for it.
Another major trip with a few dozen friends/family just like Spain–just so she can thumb her nose at the people who dared to question her vacations.
The interesting thing is that Obama and his vacations are consistent with those of his alleged ideological mentors. Stalin and Mao lived in great comfort once they’d acquired power. Stalin in particular had many lavish residences he could use, including his two “dachas” (“cottages”) near Moscow and retreats – expropriated from pre-Revolutionary millionaires – in resort areas like Sochi.
Mao even went to far as to stop bathing for the last 21 years of his life. Instead, he received sponge baths from nubile young women and was doused in perfume.
For all their blathering about being the spokesmen of the downtrodden and being at one with the workers, leftists make no effort to avoid comfort once they come to power. Quite the contrary, they seek it out. But share it with the workers or even enabling them to acquire wealth – don’t make me laugh!
When Bill Clinton ran the first time, I voted for him (and I’ve always voted GOP) because I felt Bush was out of touch. Let’s hope there are a lot of Democrats who leave Obama because he is so out of touch.
I also voted for Clinton that time, for the same reason. But voting for a mendacious, partisan, amoral master of glibidity is no improvement over voting for his inarticulate, well-meaning empty suit opponent. And by the boost in vote fraud through Motor Voter, and the cynical harm done to the mortgage and banking sectors by the metastasization of the Community Reinvestment Act – arguably the cause of the mortgage bubble and crash of 2006-2008 – tell us that the Clintons have a lot to atone for.
President Obama, sigh, appears to be lapping the Clintons in the race to inflict the most damage on the country, all in his first term.
I feel like I’m stuck in the movie Groundhog day. It’s the same thing over and over with this pathetic administration.
Oh no! They’ll never miss their August trip to the Hamptons!
– for him and his will never admit they were deceived and will do it again.
Seems to me in this new age of limits and Club of Rome austerity that apparently requires the bankrupting of the coal industry to save the planet from climate change for the Chinese Industrial Revolution that it’s more cost effective to have the Secret Service agents utilize the sexual resources of the host country rather than go to all the expensive carbon consumption to fly the wives over for temporary assignments. Surely the contraceptives are free? I mean, during the Vietnam War the First Infantry Division kindly provided us young 19 year olds with a bordello called the Ville at Li Khe just so we could screw safe and sanely in between rocket attacks with girls that were medically checked and approved for service. Geez, I don’t know what today’s modern moral Puritans are going to do if we ever have to draft again–I’m sure Romney wouldn’t shown up as usual. Somehow I can’t picture Romney catching a dose of clap every month in country like some GIs did. I guess we’re just going to have to sexually integrate the squads and keep all the boom boom in-houch. Ah, man.
Gallery of Obama Vacations
http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/the-obama-familys-jetsetter-vacations-9673.gallery
That’s unjustifiably kind to Obama, whose multiple deceits, indulgence in class-warfare politics, and unabashed practice of crony capitalism make it plain that he cannot be trusted.
I do hope that before the Obamas are allowed to move out of the White House, someone trustworthy thinks to count the silverware.
Say what? You think they are going to agree to leave?
Obama’s concession speech will be must-see TV. Heck, if there is any chance that Chris Matthews will cry, I’ll even tune into MSNBC.
Actually, we should have a metal detector or a TSA device that is intrusive as hell. No trucks near the door and packing by Secret Service personnel.
I can’t stand the federal government. I just want to be left alone, but no, the nanny statists insist on forcing all of us into government run programs and managing our lives from birth to death. I don’t think people will tolerate it much longer.
Maybe for their next vacation they’ll load up the family cruiser and drive to Branson or the Wisconsin Dells…
“But you know one fantasy I have, and the Secret Service they keep looking at me because they think I might actually do it, is to walk right out the front door and just keep walking.”
MO famously said this recently. We really need to grant her with.