Another problem with the Canadian Press Washington bureau

Here's the latest entry, reproduced in The Chronicle-Herald "World News" section under the subheadline, "Frank talk skewers town hall nonsense." Such is the license of a Herald "World News" editor, that they may insert their elite prejudices into the very newswire copy headlines.

Lee-Anne Goodman: "The ever-outspoken Barney Franks, the chairman of the House financial services committee, minced no words Tuesday night at a town hall meeting in Massachusetts when someone likened Obama’s health care plans to 'Nazi policy.'
'On what planet do you spend most of your time?' Franks replied to the woman as constituents cheered and applauded.
Franks assailed her for carrying a photograph of the president defaced to look like Adolf Hitler — the type of sign that’s been seen among Obama opponents since the so-called tea bag protests in April."

Might as well start with the name. It's "Frank", not "Franks".

"So-called tea bag protests." Yes, "so called" by leftists who hold the protestors in contempt. The protests are more officially called "tea parties", as in the Boston Tea Party protesting King George III's taxation. "Tea bag" refers to a pornographic leftist taunt against the protestors. And the tea parties started in February, not April, and for that matter they've never really let up yet.

And that gal at the townhall with the sacrilegious "defaced" Obama photo is known to have been from the LaRouche Youth. Even the Washington Post saw fit to report it. LaRouche-ites are avowedly not conservative, much less Republican. But the Canadian Press Washington bureau is evidently content to let its readers assume this was just another dastardly doing of those beastly Republicans.

Lee-Anne Goodman: "Franks’s 'mad as hell' moment, captured by CNN cameras, went viral on Wednesday, showing up on countless websites, blogs and Facebook walls and met largely with celebration."

No doubt that was cause for "celebration" among the CP Washington bureau's kind of people. A big committee chairman in a government with practically unchecked power, berating a law-abiding citizen who's completely shut out of power. Prop up the powerful, tear down the powerless. It's the Canadian Press way in the Age of Obama.

The Canadian Press Washington bureau is getting to be a regular watchdog against American citizens exercising their free speech to compare their government to Naziism, which in any event is one of the more hackneyed and less effective lines of argument in public affairs. But there was a time when the Fourth Estate was more wary of unchecked government than of law-abiding citizens saying their piece in the town squares and town halls.

The Senate Majority Leader has called the protestors "evil-mongers". The Speaker of the House claimed they were "carrying swastikas", then she and her House Majority Leader added that the protestors' actions were "simply un-American". An Arkansas Democrat Senator had already called the protestors "un-American", before recanting for fear of her political skin. And a Washington state Democrat Congressman accused the protestors of "brownshirt tactics".

It ought to be a little discomfiting to appreciate that those are the public pronouncements of people holding all the power, about people who are completely shut out of power. A Fourth Estate would be alarmed at such a prospect; it certainly wouldn't throw in with the government in lording over the people. But the Canadian Press Washington bureau finds "celebration" that the big-government bigwig has denounced the insufferable peasant, and put her right back down in her place.

Lee-Anne Goodman: "But there’s another potential option, something called budget reconciliation. That would allow Democrats to push the bill through with only 51 votes."

Quite right. Only, there is that niggling point that reconciliation is to be used for budgetary matters, not a governmentalization of American health-care opposed by majorities of the American people. From no less an authority than the inventor of the reconciliation mechanism, Sen. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia: "I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation. ... As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose."

Lee-Anne Goodman: "It could have been the Nazi comparisons. Perhaps it was recent remarks from top Republicans that they’d support no health care reform bill. Or it could just be spent reserves of patience following weeks of misinformation about death panels and health insurance for illegal aliens."

Take just that very last point. "Misinformation about ... health insurance for illegal aliens." When Obama and his lot talk about covering the "46 million uninsured" (or "as many as 50 million uninsured Americans," in the preferred formulation of the CP Washington bureau), they're necessarily including 9-10 million legal immigrants and illegal aliens who are counted in that figure. The National Institute for Health Care Management reckons that 5.6 million of the 46 million uninsured are illegal aliens. So insuring those "46 million uninsured" necessarily involves covering millions of illegal aliens included in the figure. It's no "misinformation"; it's Census Bureau statistics and NIHCM estimates.

And since that CP dispatch was published, it's come out that no less an authority than the Congressional Research Service has determined that "H.R. 3200 [the House health-care bill] does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently.”

Of course Obama and his party must claim their health-care "reform" won't cover illegal aliens -- they know even their own side would never swallow such a thing. But there was a time when those people who fancy themselves reporters would have had some skepticism and scrutiny for a president's political tricks and fibs, and not just credulously ape his self-serving rhetoric like some party-organ stenographers.

As for those "top Republicans" saying "they'd support no health care reform bill," that's a neat way of blaming the Democrat crack-up on a Republican minority so small it's in no position to influence much of anything, one way or another.

The Left lost any credibility in blaming Republicans for their failings as of June 30, 2009, when Democrats officially hit the magic 60-vote threshold in the Senate. If the Democrats -- by themselves, without a single Republican vote -- were agreed on this health-care "reform", it'd be passed already. They have the supermajorities in both houses of Congress to do anything they please -- short of overriding a presidential veto, amending the Constitution, or removing a president -- all by themselves, without a single Republican vote.

As of June 30, any Congressional obstruction of Obama's agenda must by definition be the result of balking by Democrats. To imply that Republicans are the obstructionists in this is purest partisan ax-grinding, dependent on ignorance of the numbers and workings of the United States Congress.

And those "top Republicans", whoever they are, are with the people. An August Rasmussen poll found 54% would prefer no health-care reform at all, to anything this president and Congress are likely to come up with. That number shot up to 66% among independent voters. But polls aren't making it into the dispatches of the CP Washington bureau like they used to, now that they've become relentlessly bad news for Obama and his project to "remake the nation."

The Canadian Press Washington bureau was happy to report after just a couple months of the Obama presidency that "Americans are still giving President Barack Obama high marks"; where are the CP Washington bureau dispatches on Obama's marks now that his job approval rating ranks "10th among the 12 post-World War II presidents at this point in their tenures"?

The CP Washington bureau has referred matter-of-factly to the Bush era as "eight years of unpopular Republican rule under President George W. Bush" -- undaunted by the facts that there had been "Republican rule" for just four of Bush's eight years, or that Bush was quite popular enough to be re-elected president and to see his party gain seats in a midterm election for only the third time in the century and a half since the Civil War.

Indeed, it was practically de rigeur in the dispatches of the CP Washington bureau to append any reference to President Bush with "wildly unpopular" or "one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history" -- undaunted by the facts that what was being referred to was not "U.S. history" so much as "polling history", or that even within the history of polling, Bush ranked overall 7th of the 11 presidents since the advent of the Gallup presidential job approval rating in the 1940s.

Well, that "unpopular" Bush was scoring higher job approval ratings than Obama at the same points in their presidencies by late July -- even before Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks had his approval rating hitting 90%. This latest CP Washington dispatch was published on August 20; on that day, Obama's job approval was just about 5 points lower than Bush's had been on the same date in 2001, in the average of all the polls at Real Clear Politics. And Bush had a contested election and a hostile press and popular culture working against him. As to Obama's Democratic supermajorities in Congress, the Real Clear Politics average had the Congressional job approval rating on August 20 at 30%. So when will we read in the Canadian Press about this "unpopular Democratic rule under President Barack Obama"?

And that's the real story in all this, whether the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress -- and the press that shelters and flatters them -- face up to it, or just carry on whistling past the graveyard. They've got their presidency and Congressional supermajorities still, but they've lost the people. All they've got are Democrats, and on a bad day they don't have all of those. The ground has shifted under their feet, and in record time. They've abused what the people granted them, and the people have turned. Now all that's left is a naked push to get their way until their hourglass runs out.

(Much more on the Canadian Press Washington bureau here and here.)

America's conservatism not melting for Obama

Conservative nation: Gallup polling as of August 2009 showed "self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the Union," by statistically-significant margins in all states but three. Graphic from Gallup.com.

America is a fundamentally conservative nation, and the most un-conservative of American presidents has thus far not shifted America's conservatism so much as reinforced it. President Obama has run up against D.H. Lawrence's observation on "the essential American soul": "It has never yet melted."

At the six-month mark of Obama's presidency, the USA Today/Gallup poll ranked his job approval rating "10th among the 12 post-World War II presidents at this point in their tenures."

By late July and early August, the average of all the current polling at Real Clear Politics showed Obama's job approval dipping into the 53rd percentile. Obama was down to his baseline of 53 per cent which had voted to make him president nine months earlier.

And it mostly gets worse from the job approval ratings. Disapproval of Obama on health-care hit 52 per cent in the August Quinnipiac poll, with 39 per cent approving.

Obama's $787 billion "stimulus" had become such an anathema by June that the Rasmussen poll found a plurality actually wanted the unspent provisions "canceled," 45-36 per cent. Only 34 per cent in the July Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll were calling the stimulus a "good idea."
Even after several days of press enthusing over Obama's "wildly popular" cash-for-clunkers handout, 54 per cent opposed extending the program in an August Rasmussen poll, with just 33 per cent in support. The press was apparently using some alternate definition of "popular."

And 65 per cent opposed Obama's intended closure of the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp in the June USA Today/Gallup poll, with only 18 per cent accepting Obama's claim that Guantanamo "has weakened American national security."

So far in this "Age of Obama," the Gallup poll has registered an upswing in even the more controversial conservatism in America. In March, Americans placed economic growth ahead of "environmental protection," 51-42 per cent: a reversal from 42-49 per cent in 2008 and the worst showing for environmentalism in the quarter-century of Gallup polling on the question.

In April, Gallup recorded a new low in support for a handgun ban: 29 per cent. Which is half the 60 per cent that favoured the ban when Gallup began polling the question -- in the late 1950s.

In May, Gallup found pro-lifers outnumbering pro-choicers 51-45 per cent: a reversal from 44-50 per cent in '08 and "the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995."

In June, Gallup's ideology survey showed conservatives unmoved, at 40 per cent "conservative" to 21 per cent "liberal." That breakdown was 40-19 per cent in 2004, when President Bush and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress were re-elected.

Then a July Gallup poll made it explicit: Americans reported becoming more conservative in their politics, 39-18 per cent. The nation is actually more conservative in Obama's first year than it was in Bush's last.

Then there are the unforgiving tendencies of American democracy. In the century and a half since the Civil War, the party holding the presidency has lost seats in every mid-term Congressional election but three.

In the past four decades, the very longest any party has held the White House and both houses of Congress is four years. By election day in November of next year, Democrats will have controlled both houses of Congress for four years and the White House for two.

Congress' job approval rating in the Real Clear Politics average recently went below 30 per cent. And the Rasmussen "who do you trust" survey which had Democrats leading Republicans on ten issues out of ten before the election, had been turned upside-down nine months later, with Republicans leading Democrats on eight issues out of ten.

So it's not the wildest guess that Republicans will gain in the midterm elections of November next year. Which doesn't necessarily mean they'll form majorities in one or both houses of Congress: the Democrat advantage in the 435-member House is 78 seats, and it typically takes more than a single election to dislodge so many incumbents. But Republicans should have a stronger hand after the midterms, and should be better able to tie Obama's hands in the second half of his presidency.

Obama and his Congress are up against a clock. They're unlikely to see such supermajorities past November of next year, and the closer to the fall of 2010 they come, the more fearful they'll have to be of pushing the trickier items on their agenda -- like legalizing 11 million illegal aliens while the unemployment rate is around 10 per cent and governments can't cover their liabilities as it is. Not to mention the unforeseeable events that distract and preoccupy a government, or blow it off its intended course altogether.

Polls are not static, of course, and neither are they elections. It's better to hold the power and lose the polls than vice-versa. But there has to be some significance in polling that's this soft, this soon.

Fraudulently campaigning on the likes of "a net spending cut," and proclaiming oneself the "change" when the system has crashed just a month and a half before election day, can go a long way to winning votes -- once. But it did nothing to alter the fact of America's conservatism. America is a fundamentally conservative nation that's got itself a radicalized leftist national government, and that discrepancy will have to be resolved somehow or other, sooner or later.

Andrew W. Smith, published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia