This week we learned from Pew that President ObamaPrompter is the most polarizing first term president in their polling history. That isn't very surprising given the speed that he's lurched to the extreme left in area after area. But that polarization is hardly politically fatal to him. After all, Pelosi's House is a one party operation where the opinions of Republicans matter less than zero. In the Senate, especially with the addition of Senator Smiley from MN just around the corner, there are many things that he can ram through without a Republican vote. His bloated deficit-laden budget didn't get a single R vote in either house, not even from the Maine gals or Arlen. So he can have a single digit approval from Republicans and still do his dirty work without much concern.
But that doesn't mean that political trouble isn't right around the corner. ObamaPrompter's stated priorities are government run health care, tax "fairness" AKA: income redistribution, and extreme carbon taxing to combat the climate change hoax. Iran, North Korea, Israel's defense etc. are just things that get in the way of his sweeping leftward campaign domestically. But, he can't keep attention on his priorities if something captures the brains of the American electorate and overwhelms everything else. Not long ago we saw this happen during President Bush's second term. That something that swamped his presidency was illegal immigration. Now it looks like ObamaPrompter is walking into the same briar patch.
The conventional wisdom is that President Bush saw his approval go from the low 50's/high 40's to the low 30's/ high 20's because of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I never agreed with that assessment. At the time I felt he lost nearly half of his political base over his approach to illegal immigration and the characterization of his position as amnesty. I never believed that the legacy media quite understood what was going on during that period in his second term. Based in DC and NYC and traveling in circles with like-minded liberals they didn't see how many Americans were very upset about illegal immigration and about President Bush's approach to the issue. They saw his numbers go down and assumed it meant people were turning against him because of their efforts against the US interest in Iraq. They were too busy congratulating themselves for wrecking him that they never dipped their ears into talk radio during that period. If they had they would have gotten a blast of what was happening in the country. That mass of the nation they never pay much attention to. Hell, if they'd ever even bothered to read the angry exchanges between different parts of the Conservative base-- the National Review position as opposed to the WSJ editorial page position for one example-- they might have correctly figure out what happened to GWB's popularity ratings during that period. Once the issue died in Congress it left the radar screen, but the president's approval numbers never recovered.
Now along comes our whirling dervish new president who wants to change everything in the world in his first six months. He was overwhelmingly supported in November by the fast-growing Hispanic voter base. He clearly sees immigration reform as a payback to this constituency. Will taking on this issue be a benefit to him, or will he unleash a political backlash the likes of which he's never seen in his cloistered career? This time the Democrat handmaiden media will have to pay attention.
If you think that every Democrat will simply fall in line with an amnesty approach to illegal immigration at a time of great job insecurity you weren't paying attention to the Dem primaries in 2008. This group in the White House running things, ObamaPrompter, Axelrod, and Rahm are full of hubris. They don't even know what it is that they don't know. Yet.
