Just like Democrats still trot out old, moldy Herbert Hoover to describe Republican policies, they will be years blaming George Bush for the results of their lousy governance.
Why? Because it works:
Early exit polls released on Tuesday evening show that about half of voters still blame President George W. Bush more than President Barack Obama for the country’s economic problems and most cite the economy as their top issue in the election.
The exit poll results released by The Associated Press fit with the argument Obama’s team has been making in the lead-up to the election.
Sixty percent of voters named the economy as their top issue, followed by health care in a distant second at 17 percent, the deficit at 15 percent and foreign policy at 4 percent. In 2008, 62 percent of voters said the economy was their top issue.
Within the issue of the economy, 40 percent of voters named unemployment as the biggest problem.
Still, voters are less than optimistic about the state of the economy. Only 24 percent said their families finances are better off than they were four years ago. Thirty-nine percent of voters surveyed said the economy is improving, compared with 31 percent who said it’s getting worse and 28 percent who said it’s staying the same.
More voters in the swing states of Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia blame George W. Bush than Barack Obama for the state of the U.S. economy.
According to early exit polls in Florida, 53% of today’s voters say Bush is more to blame for the country’s current economic problems while 41% say Obama.
In New Hampshire, exit polls show 54% blame Bush while 41% blame Obama.
There’s less of a gap in Ohio and Virginia. In both states, 50% of today’s voters say Bush is more to blame for the country’s current economic problems. In Ohio, 41% say Obama is more to blame and in Virginia 45% say Obama.
Holding the current president harmless for his mismanagement of the economy is the result of a massive, deliberate campaign of lies that obscured the record of the incumbent while pointing the finger at someone else. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said no way the voters would allow Obama to get away with this nonsense.
Unfortunately, I was wrong.
It did take until the 1938 mid-terms for the public to repudiate the New Deal measures of FDR. Even the Blame Hoover meme had a very finite shelf life for most people but it took a few election cycles of continued grindingly impoverished “New Normal” to get past it.
It’s not just that – I believe a lot of people voted against Romney instead of for Obama. The campaign (and the entertainment/infotainment) industry has demonized Republicans for years to the point that many people under 40 only know of the GOP through the Democratic campaign propaganda. They “know” the GOP is evil, yet can’t always seem to articulate why other than talking points from campaign ads or some particular wedge issue (abortion, contraceptives, etc.). This is the real “What’s the Matter with Kansas” moment when people vote against their economic interest becomes of a single issue (here it’s the “war on women”). This goes to the point of absurdity with confronted with the current Obama record. Basically coming down to “It’s not evil when we do it” or claiming whatever spin is the real truth.
I seriously don’t know how the Republicans grow beyond the rural/small town and suburb voter block and gain traction in cities (where the Democrats rule). It isn’t racial voting blocks as much as city/hinterland blocks. It’s going to have to take effort to promote a serious positive image (not just moral issues either) to start fighting the negative image.
The current disastrous state of affairs is the legacy of George W. Bush.
Soros infiltrated the Dems around 2000, when they became notably more vicious, destructive, and radical. They directed much of this hate at Bush.
Instead of confronting it and putting it down, even sending a few deserving Dems to prison for various real offenses, Bush and other Republicans were passive. They thought they’d play “Mr. Nice Guy,” and history would be the judge. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. They were elected to govern in the here-and-now, where they were tarred and smeared, and too many people believed it.
At best, history will judge them fools, but certainly not the calm, noble wise-men they consciously sought, and still seek, as their legacy.
When evil — and the Democrats are a party of pure, unadulterated evil — is unchecked, it becomes increasingly powerful. That is why the MSM and Democrats are now basically omnipotent.
As for the economy thing specifically: Romney and Ryan were too quick to agree with “we inherited a mess”; R/R should have simply said that Obama wanted the job, put in a bunch of “fixes” that made things infinitely worse, then had the gall to blame his predecessor for his own incompetence.
Excellent analysis, as it happens to be the simplest & most accurate. All of the handwringing over GOTV projects, hispanics, women, ______ (fill in group here) are dwarfed by the fact that under 30s voted in historically high numbers and for Obama, beating out 08!
Frankly, given the climate, I don’t see how anyone under 40 could even call themselves “republican”…
This is where Romney’s failure to defend Bush, has it’s payoff.
George Bush has become the Emmanuel Goldstein of Big Brother Obama.
If unemployment is stuck at 8% in four years, Dems will still blame Bush and it’ll still work. Libs are expert liars and great at fooling themselves.
Here’s the typical lib mindset: if they do something well, they take full credit, jealously. This is especially true with ethnic liberals. Think about blacks and jazz. But when it comes to anything negative in black culture, it’s whites. Whites therefore get no credit for jazz, but any blame for any failure.
When Obama succeeds, it him. When Obama fails, it’s Bush and GOP obstructionism. Libs are infants.
If libs fail, they blame others and make excuses. I don’t know anything about psychology, but I do know when I see a mindset that always works to the advantage of the individual involved when it comes to arranging reality so they’re never at fault. I also know this is the mindset of a person who either can’t compete, or is overly compassionate about people who can’t compete, and agrees they are not to blame.
Americans used to be pragmatic rationalists; they took it all on themselves, both the good and bad. No more. Obama won cuz half the country in the right states buys into this mindset. Period.
The false narrative on Bush – like all others – is made possible, and perceived to be true, only due to the unceasing efforts of our corrupt media. Any conservative politician – including Bush – must take their corrupt tendencies into account when acting or opening their mouth; Obama, on the other hand, can ignore his duties knowing full well that the press will ignore it. We lost…I accept it, but would love to have – as a consolation prize – an honest press, because, absent an honest press…we are done for.
Ultimately, the fault lies with the weak campaign. When Romney picked Ryan he signaled a campaign of “big ideas” but he never really went anywhere with the concept. Plus, Romney did nothing to differentiate himself from Bush, both appear to be personally conservative but publicly liberal (Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was neither compassionate nor conservative), and the Obama slogan of “back to what got us here” worked.
The election was about change but Romney never really brought any change to the table. He’s like a lot, if not all, Establishment Republicans… he wants you to believe he’ll implement a conservative agenda without spelling out what he intends to do. While I, as a conservative believe he’s a much better choice than Obama, non-conservatives see him as no different from the fiscally irresponsible Bush and Obama. The voters said “if the change results in no change then why change”?
At the end of the day, Romney ran an “ABO” campaign and presented a very tepid case for himself. The problem is that vast majority don’t read blogs so they don’t know how horrible Obama’s policies are they can’t tell the difference between Bush and Obama. I do understand Romney not making an “anti-Bush” case because that’s largely an “anti-Establishment Republican” case that points the finger of blame at the Republican Leadership but that lack only reinforces the idea that a vote for either Romney or Obama is a vote for the status quo. And it’s a status quo that the voters wanted to change.
In one sense, Bush is Hoover, for pushing statist, interventionist solutions during the financial crisis and for expanding government w/No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D. And Obama is FDR for, like Roosevelt did with Hoover, he took Bush’s policies and vastly expanded on them.
Michael Medved (who reads political statistics as some of us read thrillers) pointed out today that this was a very low turnout election which was the result of negative campaigning, and that negative campaigning is known and practiced to restrict turnout. You suppress the other side’s turnout and work on turning out your own.
Obama has, from the first, blamed Bush for leaving him an imperfect economy. He hated Bush because that is what leftys do, but he was aided and abetted by Republicans who — frightened by the financial crisis and soaring debt — blamed Bush too. Republicans help Democrats out consistently by turning on their own. They blamed Bush, they blamed McCain, now they will blame Romney, and some blame Palin and Ryan. I don’t quite understand it, but I think it is because they wanted perfection (or Reagan). This is nonsense. Reagan was not perfect. Candidates are not for falling in love with. They are ordinary fallible people with experience and core beliefs that we try to suss out.
The problem is always low-information voters. Do not misunderstand. I am NOT saying that people are uneducated nor stupid, simply that they don’t pay much attention to politics, economics (other than their own family)or civics. They watch TV, movies, football, go fishing, and turn to politics only during election season, may or may not watch the debates. Apparently a large number of voters only make their minds up in the voting booth. Obama said he created 5.5 million jobs — the president is not going to lie to the American people is he? Romney says he’s going to create more jobs, but doesn’t explain how, enough that people understand. It makes for a more difficult task for Republicans who must explain themselves clearly, and Democrats just will do what they always do —lie. Michael Medved also claimed that people don’t vote for ideas, they vote on emotion. Food for thought.