The Republican party now seems the party of consensus — of sorts: GOPers now seem to have settled on a theme that they are using against President Barack Obama…that he’s weak. It’s in a lot of the recent assertions and condemnations.
Hardball’s Chris Matthews covers this trend here:
Can this take hold and pay political dividends for the GOP? The best hunch is that right now it won’t. The reason: as we’ve noted here Obama seems to have pieced together a political coalition comprised of Democrats (who are generally very pleased with him), independent voters (not monolithic but so far in his camp) and non-talk-radio-political culture Republicans whose thinking and way of discussing issues isn’t in line with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or many conservative weblogs.
These GOP charges — so far at least — seem to be continuing examples of a party that seems to be stuck on shoring up its existing loyal base but unable to expand its coalition. Or unwilling.
Just look at this Gallup poll chart on Obama’s numbers. It shows him fairly constant in terms of support. Pollster.com shows him fairly constant also, with GOP opposition rising.
Now look at RealClearPolitics daily-required-reading graph of polls. What do you see again? Obama is holding his coalition.
So when GOPers brand Obama as weak because he smiled at Hugo Chavez (and it later turns out that video showed that was not entirely the case), or call him a socialist — so far it is NOT peeling away portions of the Obama-support coalition. Two problems that are increasingly evident: the GOP is a smaller party than it was a few years ago and it is a party in some ways at war with itself. GOP blasts at Obama are so far sparking debate on the ever-raging blogs, talk radio, screaming head cable TV shows — but in terms of polling (so far) there is little evidence that the GOP is making significant inroads.
The GOP’s modus operendi increasingly seems to be to find a theme, repeat it over and over and hope that it sticks. Obama is bound to stub his toe badly but the moment has not yet arrived, and GOP charges seem to be eliciting a shrug (or less) from the bulk of the American people.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.