How Obama's Enemies May Give Him a Boost

[rpannier]

The late, longtime New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was said to have expressed confusion over Richard Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972 — because no one she knew had voted for him. To borrow that notion, conservatives today imagine that everyone views the current occupant of the White House as they do: Barack Obama is the worst President ever. Conventional wisdom posits that this potent right-wing, anti-Obama sentiment will diminish the President's power — enough for Republicans to vanquish Democrats in November, regain control of Congress and weaken the incumbent for 2012.

But this myopia has been created within an electronic cocoon of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites and rhetoric from Republican leaders, all passionately reinforcing the message that the Obama Administration is disastrous on a historic scale. It's a message that is being transported as gamely by rank-and-file Republicans as it is by erudite conservative columnists with national readerships.

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Conservatives from the upper echelons of elected officials in Washington and state capitals, presidential-candidates-in-waiting such as Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, 2010 stars such as Rand Paul, and testy Tea Party activists all believe they have an objective case to rank Obama as 44th out of 44 Presidents. Not only do they think his policies are misguided and out of step with America's greatest traditions of individual liberty and free enterprise, but they are convinced that his relative lack of experience and youth confirm the pre-election suspicions that he is not up to the job.

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Within the overheated conservative bubble there is little room for discussions of serious policy alternatives to deal with America's problems, reminders that the country is typically drawn to optimistic candidates (like Reagan and Obama) and weighty appeals to the center of the electorate. If Obama is the worst President ever, as conservatives seem to believe, why do they need to say anything more than that to take control of Congress and then get rid of him? But while the conservatives' ultimate condemnation rallies their core supporters and resonates with some centrist voters, over time it is unlikely to produce a majority against the Administration.

link:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1993050,00.html?xid=rss-politics-huffpo