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Posts Tagged ‘Left Wing’

Democrats & Media Try To Shift Obamacare Opinion with Shaky one-day Gallup Poll

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

The establishment media and the Obama Administration have been hyping Gallup's one-day poll taken the day after Obamacare's passage and ignoring all other polling data, which explicitly contradict those Gallup results

As many are undoubtedly already aware, the polling outfit Gallup, as well as all Democrats and establishment media, have been pushing a one-day poll done on Monday, March 22, 2010, the day after the House of Representatives’ historic passage of Obamacare, to “prove” that American opinion simply shifted overnight to support Obamacare by a 9 point margin, 49%-40%.  Anyone who has seen Gallup boss Frank Newport interviewed or read a Gallup release is well aware of the left-leaning nature of Newport’s views. As will be described in detail below, this over-reliance on a one-day poll, taken on perhaps the most positive media day for the Obama Administration ever, appears to be an attempt by the Democrats and the establishment media to actually shift public opinion in America in favor of Obamacare based on a poll that is dubious at best.

The Obama Administration, Democratic politicians and the establishment media have been harping on the one-day Gallup poll showing Americans approved of the House’s actions by a 49%/40% margin since Tuesday and up to and including today, as Gallup trumpets favorable polling to Obama on its front page asking whether Obamacare was a “good first step” or not and cable networks continue to discuss the Monday poll. Amazingly, the media and the Democrats continue to trumpet these one-day results from Monday nearly a week after the poll was taken while Gallup fails to do any further polling on this issue.  This conduct clearly begs the question: why not continue the polling on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a proper three day sample? Perhaps the left-leaning Gallup obtained the results it and its left-wing allies wanted on Monday and feared a dilution of the outlier results obtained on Monday with additional days of polling, which, of course, would have enhanced the accuracy and reliability of the polling overall.

Many factors point towards a conclusion that this one-day Gallup poll is an outlier at best or an manufactured result at worst, as every other poll released since the House vote has shown Obamacare remaining unpopular with Americans, clearly contradicting the one-day Gallup results.   For instance, Quinnipiac did a poll over two days, March 22 and 23, demonstrating that Obamacare remained quite unpopular with Americans, with 49% opposing and only 40% in favor (the exact opposite of Gallup’s findings). That same Quinnipiac post-Obamacare poll showed President Obama at the low of his Presidency for approval, 45%, which is “President Obama’s worst grades so far, tying his 45 – 46 percent approval February 11.”  It certainly defies belief that Obama himself would be less popular overall (45%) than his signature initiative which has been his primary focus for his entire Presidency so far (49%, according to Gallup’s one-day sample).    Indeed, today Gallup itself shows Obama’s approval is down to 48%, again casting doubt on the legitimacy of their one-day poll on Obamacare approval.

Bloomberg's Poll Found Obamacare remains unpopular with "no meaningful movement of opinion the final night of interviewing, after the vote was taken“, explicitly contradicting Gallup's findings

Another post-Obamacare poll which casts serious doubt upon Gallup’s one-day polling results is from Bloomberg News, which noted in its release of a March 19-22, 2010 poll that the final day of polling, the same day in which Gallup’s one-day poll was in the field, showed “Americans remain skeptical” of Obamacare with “no meaningful movement of opinion the final night of interviewing, after the vote was taken“:

Americans remain skeptical about the health-care overhaul even after the U.S. House passed landmark legislation that promises to provide access to medical coverage for tens of millions of the uninsured.

At the same time, most say the government should play a role in ensuring everyone has access to affordable care, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. A majority also agree that health care is a private matter and consider the new rules approved by Congress to be a government takeover.

The poll found the percentage of Americans who favor the almost $1 trillion 10-year plan remained at about just four in 10 following the House vote on March 21 to send the bill to President Barack Obama, who signed it into law today.

The poll of 1,002 adults was conducted March 19-22 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent. There was no meaningful movement of opinion the final night of interviewing, after the vote was taken.

Of course, the Bloomberg and Quinnipiac findings received little to no attention from the establishment media or Democrats, who were busy pushing the one-day Gallup poll in every possible medium. Also, Rasmussen polling, which was nearly alone in correctly calling the New Jersey Governor’s race for Chris Christie (R-NJ)  and came within one point of calling the exact final results of the 2008 Presidential election, found that by a 55%/42% margin Americans want Obamacare repealed, with independents favoring repeal by a massive 59%/35% margin:

Just before the House of Representatives passed sweeping health care legislation last Sunday, 41% of voters nationwide favored the legislation while 54% were opposed. Now that President Obama has signed the legislation into law, most voters want to see it repealed.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, conducted on the first two nights after the president signed the bill, shows that 55% favor repealing the legislation. Forty-two percent (42%) oppose repeal. Those figures include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal and 35% who Strongly Oppose it.

In terms of Election 2010, 52% say they’d vote for a candidate who favors repeal over one who does not. Forty-one percent (41%) would cast their vote for someone who opposes repeal.

Not surprisingly, Republicans overwhelmingly favor repeal while most Democrats are opposed. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 59% favor repeal, and 35% are against it.

Apparently Gallup would have us believe independents support Obamacare by a 46%/45% margin, despite Rasmussen’s findings, from a more reliable two day sample, that independents favor repeal by a whopping 24 point margin (59%-35%).  Finally, CBS News did a two-day poll after Obamacare’s passage which showed Obamacare underwater by a 42%/46% margin and finding that “nearly two in three Americans want Republicans in Congress to continue to challenge parts of the health care reform bill.” Obviously, when 2/3 of Americans desire continued GOP resistance to the implementation of Obamacare, it is spurious to claim that Obamacare has magically transformed overnight into a popular piece of legislation.

Was USA Today Carrying Water for the Obama Administration when it hyped a one-day Gallup poll on its front page this week despite other polling data which explicitly contradicted Gallup's findings?

Despite four other pollsters directly repudiating the results of the one-day Gallup poll showing Obamacare favored by the public by a 49%/41% margin, the establishment media continues to this day to trumpet the one-day Gallup poll to “prove” that Americans now support the Obamacare package. Epitomizing the establishment media’s extraordinary over-reliance upon this one-day Gallup poll, national newspaper USA Today used its entire front page above the fold on Wednesday to push the idea that Obamacare has suddenly become popular, literally overnight, based on the single day of Gallup polling. Of course, USA Today makes no mention of the contradictory Bloomberg results in its “objective” report on Americans’ views on Obamacare on Wednesday. It appears that the establishment media and Democrats are attempting to push low information voters who are not paying close attention into supporting Obamacare by bombarding such voters with the message that Obamacare is now favored by most Americans.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs Strongly Pushed the one-day Gallup Poll showing Obamacare to be popular, despite previously slamming day to day fluctuations in Gallup polling as "meaningless"

Further, the Obama Administration has happily pushed the Gallup poll as hard as it could, with senior White House spokeman Robert Gibbs going so far as to tweet out a link to the poll while saying this:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, amid the glee of the healthcare bill signing Tuesday, tweeted @PressSec “In the polling obsessed town of Washington, DC this will give the nattering nabobs of negativity something to chew on” with a link to a story about the USA Today/Gallup poll that said 49 percent vs. 40 percent saw passage of the bill as “a good thing.”

Gibbs wrapped the Obama Administration up into the “credibility” of the one-day Gallup poll despite having specifically slammed Gallup’s polling as unreliable on a day to day basis several months ago, calling such daily fluctuations “meaningless” then:

The White House lashed out at the Gallup Poll on Tuesday after the survey’s daily tracking numbers showed President Obama’s approval rating dropping to a new low of 47 percent.

Asked for a response to Monday’s tracking poll, which placed Obama’s approval numbers among the lowest of any recent president in December of his first year in office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs mocked the reliability of the widely respected polling firm.

“I tell you, if I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I’d visit my doctor,” Gibbs said. “If you look back, I think five days ago, there was an 11-point spread, now there’s a 1-point spread. I mean, I’m sure a 6-year-old with a crayon could do something not unlike that. I don’t put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is the daily Gallup trend.”

He added: “I don’t pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it.”

For the White House, it appears, Gallup’s daily one-day samples are “meaningless” and comparable to what a “6-year-old with a crayon” would do, unless, of course, that one-day sample supports the Obama Administration. Then, as Gibbs tweeted out after the publication of the full, front page USA Today story on the Gallup numbers, Gallup’s one-day sample should be treated as irrefutable truth that “will give the nattering nabobs of negativity something to chew on.” Such explicit hypocrisy and doublespeak from the Obama Administration has gone completely un-noted in the past week by the media, and it falls to a tiny centrist blog such as this one to point out the objective facts surrounding this matter.

Indeed, most pollsters agree that one-day polls are less reliable than samples taken over several days because of the natural variability of the polling sample obtained in any given day, which of course is smoothed out by having multiple days of polling.   ABC News, another left-leaning pollster, explains this “night to night variability” in its polling experience:

Our practice is informed by the fact that, in all our polling, we see night-to-night variability in party ID that appears to represent trendless sampling variability rather than actual changes in partisan self-identification.

Gallup, of course, did not release its methods in weighting, or not weighting, the data it obtained for its one-day poll on Obamacare’s approval. However, the application of simple logic indicates that the day after the passage of a massive legislative package which has been a “dream” of Democrats for nearly a 100 years, the sample obtained would skew towards Democratic voters whose enthusiasm was surely spiking. Conversely, independents and Republicans, who both strongly opposed the Obamacare package before its passage, would have been more likely to avoid any pollster calls on Monday as the depressing news sunk in that the Democrats managed to ram through the massive legislative package.  This type of self-selection bias, on perhaps the most favorable media coverage day of the Obama Administration ever, is again ignored by every mainstream media report on the Gallup poll.

Finally, as is obvious to anyone who was watching the news or reading newspapers or websites on Sunday night and Monday, the establishment media has been in full celebratory mode regarding the passage of Obamacare, with newspaper headlines screaming in 6 inch print about the “historic” nature of the passage of Obamacare as finally completing the century-long “dream” for such legislation. Monday was perhaps the most positive media day ever during the Obama Administration, with the possible exception of Inauguration Day. Regardless, such overwhelmingly positive, saturation coverage of the Sunday night passage of Obamacare by the media undoubtedly had an effect on those polled by Gallup on Monday. Despite this, Gallup chose to only poll on that one day, and thereafter the Democrats and establishment media have focused solely upon this one-day outlier poll while ignoring all other polls which explicitly contradict its findings, four of which are noted above.

It remains to be seen if this gambit by the Obama Administration and the establishment media to shift public opinion in favor of Obamacare via the use of the dubious one-day poll taken on perhaps the most favorable media day ever for the Obama Administration will work.  In the history of the United States, never before has any poll, let alone a one-day poll, been afforded such prominence in reporting across all media sources and in repeated use by a national political party. What is certain is that the media is ignoring the other polls which all contradict the Gallup results, and the facts on the ground, such as today’s overflow crowd at the tea party rally in Searchlight, Nevada, and the million folks who signed up to oppose Obamacare within 11 days on a Facebook page, continue to indicate strong opposition to the Obamacare package, notwithstanding the preferences of the Obama Administration and the establishment media.

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Media Misleads Americans About Left-Leaning Attackers Bedell, Stack and Bishop

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

John Patrick Bedell, the now-deceased deranged gunman who opened fire at police officers guarding the Pentagon, was a registered Democrat, Bush-hater and 9/11 Truther

If your only source of information was establishment media reporting, it would be easy to draw an altogether false conclusion from the recent attacks by John Patrick Bedell (Pentagon gunman) and Joseph Andrew Stack (suicide pilot) that a wave of “right wing extremism” or “tea party terrorism” is descending upon America.   This narrative is being pushed relentlessly by the establishment media, despite indisputable countervailing facts as shown in detail below.  An objective review of the writings and activities of the suspects in each of the recent horrific terrorist attacks by Americans on Americans – Joseph Andrew Stack (airplane suicide bomber), John Patrick Bedell (gunman at Pentagon), and Amy Bishop (massacred fellow professors) – unequivocally demonstrates that each of these deranged individuals actually have closer ties to the American left than any right wing group.

First, regarding John Patrick Bedell, the gunman who opened fire outside the Pentagon a few days ago, wounding two police officers in a shootout that cost Bedell his life, the establishment media essentially ignored that Bedell was a registered Democrat as of 2008, a fervent Bush/Cheney hater and a strong believer in the anti-Bush “9/11 Truth” conspiracy theory that claims Bush personally arranged for the 9/11 attacks to be committed.  Media coverage has asserted, falsely, that Bedell was a “right wing extremist” based on some anti-government internet postings by Bedell while ignoring Bedell’s indisputable status as a registered Democrat who hated Bush and a 9/11 Truther (a left wing conspiracy theory). The NYT spends several thousand words detailing Bedell’s background but fails to note his status as a registered Democrat as of 2008 or his extreme hatred for former President Bush and VP Cheney.  The seminal article pushing the “right wing extremist” narrative in the Christian Science Monitor expressly states Bedell is a right wing extremist while also dishonestly censoring any reference to Bedell’s status as a registered Democrat or Bush/Cheney hater.

Suicide Pilot Joe Stack Concluded His Suicide Note by Praising Communism and Condemning Capitalism

Similarly, suicide pilot Joseph Andrew Stack, who flew his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas a few weeks ago, was famously labeled the “first tea party terrorist” by the narrative-setting, highly ideological New York Times. The facts, of course, point in a different direction as Stack’s suicide note conclusion strongly praises Communism while attacking Capitalism – views that no tea party protester hold and views that are certainly more in line with the American left than any right wing ideology. The Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and CNN went so far as to censor the final lines of Stack’s suicide note (which praised Communism and attacked Capitalism) and instead falsely and dishonestly reported that Stack concluded his suicide note with an anti-IRS threat on the day of the incident. The final two lines of Stack’s suicide note, which apparently did not exist according to the American media, were as follows:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Further, the seminal opinion piece claiming that Stack was the “first tea party terrorist” in the New York Times also dishonestly omits any reference to Stack’s far left statements in praise of Communism as well as Stack’s hatred for Bush and attacks on drug and insurance companies that echo Democratic talking points in furtherance of the false, yet preferred “right wing extremist” narrative.

Accordingly, a casual observer of establishment media reports on Bedell and Stack would conclude, falsely, that both were “right wing extremists” despite the indisputable facts that both men strongly hated the former Republican Bush/Cheney Administration while one (Stack) was a proponent of Communism and another (Bedell) was a registered Democrat. While it is true that both men engaged in anti-government rantings, such rantings alone do not prove that either man was a “right wing extremist”.  Neither man was a registered Republican or had any history of tea party activism or right wing activism, yet the establishment media made exactly those claims in its “reporting”. Such intentionally misleading reporting by the establishment media on Bedell and Stack are examples of the most odious aspects of the establishment media’s strong left wing bias in its reporting.

Former Professor Amy Bishop, who murdered three colleagues and injured others at a faculty meeting, is a "far left political extremist" who was "obsessed" with expressing support for President Obama to friends and family

A final example, mass murdering Professor Amy Bishop, also demonstrates the establishment media’s strong left wing bias in its reporting of terrorist or extremist attacks in the United States by Americans against Americans. Bishop opened fire on her longtime professorial colleagues in a department meeting at an Alabama university, killing three and wounding several more until her gun jammed and she fled the horrific scene. Bishop came from a well-connected liberal family in Boston and was “a far-left political extremist who was ‘obsessed’ with President Barack Obama to the point of being off-putting.” It bears mentioning that if either Bedell, Stack or Bishop were registered Republicans or strong Bush supporters, those facts would have probably led the establishment media’s reporting of the incidents themselves. While ignoring Bishop’s political leanings in all of its reporting on Bishop, and declining to issue editorials about “left wing extremism” regarding Bishop’s horrific rampage, the NYT did report on the execution-style murders by Bishop, halting only when her gun jammed:

In an e-mail message describing the event, another professor, Joseph Ng, wrote, “She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head.” He continued: “Blood was everywhere with crying and moaning. We were in a pool of blood in disbelief of what had happened.” The message was published on the Web site of The Orange County Register after Dr. Ng, who had not intended to make it public, sent it to a friend.

Dr. Ng, Dr. Moriarity and the others on the far end of the room dove under the conference table. Dr. Moriarity crawled over to Dr. Bishop and grabbed her by the leg, yelling, “Amy, think about my grandson! Think about my daughter! I helped you, I helped you before, and I’ll help you now,” she said.

Dr. Moriarity said she had often acted as a “sounding board” for Dr. Bishop and had given her advice when she came up for tenure.

But in the room, any such relationship seemed forgotten. Dr. Bishop shook Dr. Moriarty off, turned, and pointed the gun down at her. “She looked at me and fired — and it clicked,” Dr. Moriarity said.

Dr. Bishop did not speak, Dr. Moriarity said. “She just looked angry,” she said. “The expression on her face never changed. Until the gun jammed — the last expression I saw was more of a perplexed look.”

Indeed, the NYT spends literally 1000’s of words describing every detail of Bishop’s life, yet somehow fails to even address Bishop’s political leanings. This glaring omission of reporting by the NYT in the Bishop case, as compared to the NYT’s relentless pushing of the “right wing extremist” narrative regarding the Stack and Bedell cases, clearly demonstrates the left wing, ideological filter the NYT applies to its reporting. Following the lead of the Times, in contrast to the Bedell and Stack reporting, which primarily focused on the political leanings of the deranged attackers, the Bishop establishment media coverage  ignored Bishop’s indisputably left wing political leanings and express, enthusiastic support for President Obama.

While we believe that no political party or politician deserves any blame for the actions of deranged individuals such as Bedell, Stack and Bishop, the American left’s use of these recent terrorist or extremist incidents to “prove” that a wave of “right wing extremist” or “tea party terrorist” attacks are hitting America is intentionally dishonest and appears motivated by a left wing ideological desire to use the tragic incidents to score political points against Republicans as the high-stakes partisan debate over health care unfolds in Washington, D.C. Considering the dishonest cherry-picking of facts by the establishment media in their relentless efforts to portray Stack and Bedell as “right wing extremists”, the media’s failure to report, let alone pursue, the clear indications that Bishop was a “far left political extremist” is clear evidence of untoward ideological left-wing bias and screening at work in today’s media reporting to the American people. One can only hope that Americans are not taken by the dishonest, ideological narrative creation engaged in by the likes of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and Christian Science Monitor and instead the media is shamed into reporting all the facts on these matters.

UPDATE: The Christian Science Monitor is now trying to back away from its ridiculous claim that Bedell is a “right wing extremist”.

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Breaking News: Pilot Intentionally Slams Plane into Federal Building in Texas: Echos of 9/11? UPDATED: Suicide Pilot Identified as Joseph Andrew Stack; Leftwing Media Moves to Blame the Tea Party as Stack Praises Communism and Attacks Bush in his Suicide Note; UPDATE #2: CBS News reports Stack’s Praise of Communism

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

The smoldering aftermath of a pilot's allegedly intentional suicide and destruction of a federal building in Austin, Texas

According to federal officials who spoke with CNN, a pilot intentionally flew his plane, at full speed, into a federal building in Austin, Texas today:

The pilot of the plane had set his house on fire beforehand….a federal official told CNN.

Two F-16’s were scrambled to the Austin, Texas area in the aftermath of the explosion, but it appears now that no other planes are involved. No official word as of yet regarding the identity of the pilot, however, CNN, Fox, and other media are now reporting that the pilot set fire to his own home before taking flight in a plane earlier today, a fire that continues as of 1PM today. The tragic spectacle of an unhinged pilot intentionally flying a plane into a building in America sadly reminds Americans of the horror of 9/11, albeit on a much smaller scale. The plane involved, Cirrus SR22, is a single-engine four-seat aircraft, much smaller than the airlines hijacked by the 9/11 terrorists on that awful day.

All told, it appears the unnamed pilot had a suicide wish, and he proceeded to implement that twisted desire by flying a plane at full speed (as reported by the Austin Statesman) into the side of a building which houses the IRS and other agencies in Austin, Texas. Whether this incident is a terrorist incident or whether there is any connection to overseas organizations is an open question at this hour.

UPDATE: The suicide pilot has been identified as Joseph Andrew Stack, and a lengthy suicide note was left on Stack’s website in which Stack attacks former President George W. Bush with “Bush and his cronies are puppets of plutocrats” and states his disapproval of the “joke we call the American medical system … [that’s] murdering tens of thousands of people a year”. Such sentiments clearly indicates that Stack strongly disapproved of former President George W. Bush and further strongly disapproved of the present American health care system. Indeed, the leftwing new media, the leftwing old media like the NYT and Democrats have often used the same line used by Stack regarding “tens of thousands” of deaths per year caused by the lack of reform of the American health care system.

The primary motivation, however, appears to be Stack’s vitriolic hatred for the IRS, as the building attacked housed IRS agents and his statement in his suicide note that “Well Mr. Big Brother IRS man… take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Predictably, the leftwing netroots new media contingent is in full dander, explicitly claiming that Stack was a “teabagger” associated with the Tea Party movement, with the Daily Kos attempting to set the media narrative that the suicide attack by Stack was a result of ideas pushed by “Teabaggers”:

This guy may not have been a member of any organized Tea Party, I have no way of knowing. He may have been a nut with a beef against the IRS. But the kind of crap he spews in this manifesto is just the sort of thing you will hear at a Teabagger rally. Will this be the beginning of further such events, or will the Teabaggers renounce this kind of violence?

Another large leftwing site, Democratic Underground, is also running with the “Suicide pilot is a teabagger” narrative. Of course, none of the leftwing new media sites mention Stack’s attack on former President George W. Bush or his use of the Democrat health care reform talking point regarding the “thousands” who die every year because of the present system. Considering recent reports that the Democrat Party is planning on digging up dirt on Tea Party leaders and otherwise smearing the Tea Party as unhinged extremists in the leadup to the November 2010 elections, it makes sense that the leftwing new media is pushing the clearly unsubstantiated claim that Stack was a tea party member or sympathizer.

However, the most telling part of Stack’s suicide note may be the part that appears at the very end, in bold, regarding the virtues of communism and the vices of capitalism:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Stack’s clear denunciation of the capitalist system and praise for the communist system, in the last two lines of his suicide note, appear to definitely state a portion of Stack’s ideological makeup. Whether the mainstream media takes its cues from the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground in reporting this horrific attack as the work of a deranged tea partier or whether the mainstream media instead actually reviews Stack’s words and reports on the evidence of his potential motivations objectively will be an interesting test of the media’s level of left wing bias as America moves into a general election season.

UPDATE #2:  CBS News becomes the first mainstream media organization to report Stack’s praise of Communism at the conclusion of Stack’s six page long, rambling suicide note.  CNN continues, via Rick Sanchez and others, to falsely report that the anti-IRS statements were the conclusion of the Stack suicide note. CBS News headlines the anti-IRS speech, and only reports the conclusion of Stack’s letter in the last paragraph of his suicide note:

He ended with,” The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”

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Obama Returns to Rhetoric of Bipartisanship, One Year Later; Reality Mixed

Monday, February 15th, 2010

A week and a year after formally eschewing bipartisan governance with his speech at the House Democratic Retreat on February 6, 2009, in the aftermath of Republican Scott Brown’s election to the Senate in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama has returned to the rhetoric of bipartisanship as a central focus. As the polls were set to close on Brown’s January 19, 2010 Election day shocker, Obama summoned his former campaign manager, David Pfloffe, to the White House for a lengthy meeting to plan a strategic response. It appears to this observer that Pfloffe’s strategy, as adopted by Obama in the past few weeks, is to have Obama use his personal charisma to talk up the themes of the 2008 campaigh: the need for “change” regarding partisan governance, “Washington’s ways” and the dominance of special interests.

According to post-January 19, 2010 Obama, all of the above problems in Washington can be solved if the GOP would just “come to the table” and negotiate bipartisan policies with a willing Obama. From a communications strategy viewpoint, it appears the Pfloffe bipartisanship strategy has been fairly successful, as it appears that Obama has stanched the bleeding somewhat as his recent fall in approval has slowed to stabilize at approximately 48-49% approval. The key question, of course, for a centrist observer of these events is whether Obama’s return to the rhetoric of bipartisanship will be matched by actual negotiations with the GOP that result in centrist policy proposals or just more advocacy of his present left-wing agenda. Indeed, as former Office of Personnel Management Director Capretta posits:

In the daily back-and-forth of political news coverage, it is easy to lose sight of what a stunning turnabout this renewed interest in bipartisanship represents for Barack Obama. For more than a year, his administration attempted to govern based on an entirely different approach. The Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill welcomed any Republican willing to jump aboard their legislative plans. But, as the president and his top advisers repeatedly said, they were going to move ahead with “their agenda” — with or without willing Republican participation.

Any discussion of Obama’s proclivities and bipartisan bona fides must begin and essentially end with a discussion of the signature issue of his Presidency: health care reform. The next major event in the health care reform debate is the President’s “Health Care Summit” designed by the Administration and set for February 25, 2010. The Administration has noted it will produce a “compromise” version of its health care reform legislation before the summit, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid, along with Administration officials, are negotiating that “compromise” version this week.

As it stands now, there is no GOP input into these final negotiations between Obama and Congress regarding health care reform. Indeed, as the Democrats are negotiating a “compromise” version of health care reform now, and will produce it prior to the 2.25.2010 Health Care Summit with the GOP, the likelihood of an true centrist compromise between liberals and conservatives seems highly unlikely.

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