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Understanding the Approval Polls

by Rush Limbaugh - Jun 16,2010

RUSH: Garden State Parkway with Julie. Welcome to the EIB Network, and I really thank you for your patience.

CALLER: Oh, hi, Rush. First of all, congratulations on your marriage and best wishes to you and Kathryn.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: I’ve been a loooongtime listener, and I agree with you on so many things. One thing that I do not see Obama as, and that is a leader. I have found that, from the beginning of his presidency there has been what I see and what I would call an underlying theme of his governing style. There’s a pretty clear pattern to me. And this has to do with all his policies, from terrorism, to the economy —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — the military, and that is, you know, so much he does love a crisis. I call it ‘destabilization,’ and that leads eventually to chaos and ultimately to what he loves above everything else and that is control of power — which you can read as control of our money. I do not consider him a leader at all. Regardless of what his law degree is or where he went to school, I don’t see him as a leader. I think he’s pretty much maybe even an empty suit. His cronies will befriend him and say that maybe he’s not a leader because he does a lot of delegating which is fine, but I believe that a true leader will take the bull by the horns in a time of crisis. I don’t even see this when he’s reading to the people of the United States when he’s giving his speeches. I mean he sounds okay, although I think he sounds a little robotic, but his unscripted messages, which are the ones that really come from the heart —

RUSH: Well, but, you know, you said at the very beginning here. You touched on it better than anything else when you said that he’s come to destabilize, destabilizing the country. I actually think what’s going on here is dividing the country. He’s come to divide, not to unify. I don’t think there’s any question about it. I’m glad you called. Thanks so much, Julie, appreciate it. Here’s Yvonne in Tampa. You’re next on the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. I just had a quick question. I don’t understand why his poll numbers are so high. I would expect them to be in the thirties and I don’t understand why they’re holding up at about 50 that approve of him.

RUSH: Well, I don’t see that. Where do you see a 50% approval number for Obama? Gallup has him down to 46. He’s at 42% in Rasmussen today.

CALLER: Yeah?

RUSH: I don’t see him above 50% or at 50% in any poll. There may be one, but you can get anything you want out of a poll, and depending on how you weight and if you want to have more Democrats than Republicans or independents in your respondent field you can do it that way. But I don’t think there’s enamored of the guy anymore, clearly not the way they were during his campaign.

CALLER: Okay. I’ve just been wondering if people just haven’t had the impact of his policies hit them directly yet and that’s why he would be where he is. I really am surprised he’s not down in the thirties, especially with how he’s handling the oil spill.

RUSH: Well, there’s a reason why Bush ended up down in the thirties and it’s not happening here — and we just got a little tickle of it yesterday. But for six years the media did their level best to destroy George W. Bush. They tried to tell us we were in a recession when we weren’t. They tried to tell us we were in a losing war when we weren’t. It was one negative drumbeat after another — and after a certain passage of time, it worked. There hasn’t been that with Obama. There hasn’t been any of the similar criticism of Bush. There hasn’t been any accountability. There has been no effort to be suspicious of the power that’s being amassed here. Only last night, after the speech, has there been a real indication that some in the left-wing media here are not just nonplused and bamboozled over all this.

Now, if that were to keep up, and I don’t expect it to, you would see an approval number that continues to plummet. I think the fact he’s 42 Rasmussen, 46 Gallup and continuing to fall is striking considering that the media has been doing everything it can to prop him up. So I wouldn’t worry about it. You talk about people haven’t been personally affected? My gosh, how many people who own homes, who own stocks? How many people who are out of work and want to work? There’s nothing good going on out there. So I think that you can look at all of the polls. By the way, the polling data on the elections in November, the generic ballot, Republican versus Democrat, it’s looking like a bloodbath right now. So I think the bloom is way off the rose. Remember, polls are used to make news, not reflect anything, and so you have to keep all that in perspective. There’s a clear difference in the way the media covers Democrat or Republican presidents, the way they poll them. Clear difference.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: For those of you who are also curious about Obama’s approval numbers in the polls, don’t forget, now, 46% or so, approximately 46% of the American people get benefits from the federal government. So that is a factor. It’s going to be pretty hard to get his numbers much lower than that without a drastic 180-degree turn by the media. For example, if Bush were president we would be getting live shots of the oil gushing and on a split screen Bush playing golf. Had Bush delivered a speech from the Oval Office last night on the oil well, there would be a split screen of the gusher while Bush was making his speech. We’re not gonna get that with this media. We’re not going to get split screens of the oil gushing while Obama is out playing golf or shooting hoops or drinking bushwhackers down in the Gulf or delivering speeches from the Oval Office.


Cybercast News Service today with a news story out that really the only groups of people that still give Obama majority approval support are people that make less than $2,000 a month and about 90% of the African-American vote. And that’s enough to keep him at 42%, 44% — 46% receive government benefits. So it’s not hard to understand. And that could be brought lower if we got conventional Republican coverage by the media in a situation like this. We’re not going to get it. But don’t worry about it, folks. Country knows, the country knows.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Williamstown, New Jersey, Tony, welcome to the EIB Network, sir, glad that you waited, too. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: What I’m concerned about is no one’s talking about what Joe Biden said prior to the election, that there was going to be an international disaster that this president was going to be slow to respond to. Is this the disaster and did they know about it beforehand? And if they did, did they cause it?

RUSH: You mean the spill?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, let’s go back and look at what Biden said. Biden said to a bunch of people, (paraphrasing) ‘We’re going to be tested. They’re going to really test us out there. And we’re gonna need your love and we’re gonna need your support because you’re going to think we don’t know what we’re doing. You’re going to think that we might be in over our heads.’ I forget exactly what he said, but this was the message he conveyed.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: So your theory, Tony, is that the oil spill is the international disaster he’s going to be slow to respond to?

CALLER: Yes. And one of the reasons they’re slow to respond is because if you tried to do the cleanup immediately, the longer you wait the more evidence you lose.

RUSH: The more evidence of what?

CALLER: Of who caused it, how it happened. No one knows how it happened yet.

RUSH: No, we don’t. Well, I know where you’re going on this. (laughing) And I think it’s just sad that we have an occupant of the Oval Office that inspires in reasonable, intelligent people the thought that somebody at the highest levels of our regime either knew about or was behind the oil well leak. I find that disgusting. I’m not blaming you out there, Tony. We don’t know what caused it, you’re right. We don’t know what caused the Mexican spill in 1979. We still don’t know. Or if they do know, they haven’t said. But the public knowledge there is we don’t know. Here’s what Biden said: ‘This guy has it, Obama has it, he’s going to need your help because I promise you, you all are going to be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh, my God, why are they there in the polls, why is the polling so down, why is this so tough?’ We’re going to have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years, so I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.’ That’s October of 2008. Now, everybody assumed he was talking about some sort of military attack. I will remain mute on whether Biden knew about an oil well leak. I’m just not going to go there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s also what Joe Biden said about Obama. He said, ‘Mark my words.’ This was in Seattle. ‘It’s not going to be six months before the world tests Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old Senator president of the US. Remember, I said it standing here. If you don’t remember anything else I said, watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis to test the mettle of this guy in the first six months.’ Obviously Biden wasn’t talking about an oil leak that he knew was going to happen because the leak didn’t happen the first six months, and I don’t think there was a generated crisis. But more on that here in just a second.