Barnes Raiser
For some reason, polls by Rasmussen Reports always give Bush a higher approval rating than other leading polls - Gallup, Harris, Fox News. That's probably the Reason "The Beltway Boys" co-host and journeyman pundit Fred Barnes cites them whenever he wants to re-make the case that Bush is a history-shiftin' rebel who will lead us joyfully into the Rapture. From last Saturday's episode of "The Beltway Boys":
BARNES: Mort, have you been watching Bush's presidential approval rating not surge, but creep up?
KONDRACKE: You know I always watch polls.
BARNES: Well, OK. I thought you did. So it's up to 45 percent in the Rasmussen poll. A little lower than that in others. But it's getting to the point, if Bush gets up to, you know, bumping up on 50 percent, it means a couple things that are important. One, it means that Republicans won't panic. Because when he got down in the 30s, they all - you know, just panicked and thought they had to run away from him. And also it will mean that - that he may not be the serious drag on - on Republican candidates that we all thought he was going to be in the fall.
Since Barnes said that, the Rasmussen poll has clocked an 8-point drop in Bush's approval rating, putting him at 37 percent . For three days in a row. What have we learned?
1) You play with Rasmussen, you get burned.
2) Fred Barnes: What the hell? (And that is a lesson, because it's a rhetorical question.)
President Bush Job Approval [Rasmussen Reports]
-- David Weigel