{"id":9284,"date":"2006-12-08T12:30:57","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T17:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9284.html"},"modified":"2006-12-08T12:30:57","modified_gmt":"2006-12-08T17:30:57","slug":"support-is-continuing-to-erode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/support-is-continuing-to-erode\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Support is continuing to erode’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At yesterday’s White House press conference<\/a> with Tony Blair, the president used one phrase six times in reference to the war in Iraq: “the American people.” Bush kept referring to the electorate — the American people want Dems and Republicans to work together; the American people need to know we can’t quit in Iraq; the American people know that al Qaeda will not have safe haven in Iraq under the president’s strategy, and so on.<\/p>\n

Mr. President, I hate to break it to you, but you’ve lost<\/a> the American people.<\/p>\n

Americans are overwhelmingly resigned to something less than clear-cut victory in Iraq and growing numbers doubt the country will achieve a stable, democratic government no matter how the U.S. gets out, according to an AP poll.<\/p>\n

At the same time, dissatisfaction with President Bush’s handling of Iraq has climbed to an all-time high of 71 percent. The latest AP-Ipsos poll, taken as a bipartisan commission was releasing its recommendations for a new course in Iraq, found that just 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, down from his previous low of 31 percent in November.<\/p>\n

“Support is continuing to erode and there’s no particular reason to think it can be turned back,” said John Mueller, an Ohio State University political scientist and author of “War, Presidents and Public Opinion.” Mueller said that once people “drop off the bandwagon, it’s unlikely they’ll say ‘I’m for it again.’ Once they’re off, they’re off.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep in mind, the poll was conducted between Monday and Wednesday, which means the results don’t include Americans who heard the Iraq Study Group say that the Bush administration’s policy is “no longer viable<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In other words, given the last couple of days of coverage, support for the war and the president’s handling of the crisis is probably slightly worse.
\n<\/p>\n

Even so, Americans are not necessarily intent on getting all U.S. troops out right away, the poll indicated. The survey found strong support for a two-year timetable if that’s what it took to get U.S. troops out. Seventy-one percent said they would favor a two-year timeline from now until sometime in 2008, but when people are asked instead about a six-month timeline for withdrawal that number drops to 60 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, but let’s look at those results in a different way — three out of five Americans, a clear majority, want U.S. troops to be withdrawn on a six-month timeline. Based on the conventional wisdom, this is a fringe, radical approach to the war in Iraq, which just happens to enjoy the support of most Americans.<\/p>\n

And as long as we’re on the subject, an even larger number of Americans disagree<\/a> with the president’s policy on negotiations (or lack thereof) with Iran and Syria, including nearly three-in-four Republicans.<\/p>\n

Congressional Dems have nothing to fear by taking Bush on over Iraq policy. He has no allies left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At yesterday’s White House press conference with Tony Blair, the president used one phrase six times in reference to the war in Iraq: “the American people.” Bush kept referring to the electorate — the American people want Dems and Republicans to work together; the American people need to know we can’t quit in Iraq; the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}