June 8, 2013

"Americans Think Officials Knew About IRS Political Targeting/Majority disapproves of the way Obama has handled the matter."

A new Gallup poll.
Americans generally see the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS as a serious problem, and they don't believe it was merely a function of rogue behavior at the local IRS branch responsible for processing the applications, but something top-ranking officials at the IRS or within the Obama administration were aware of. Importantly, independents join Republicans in expressing these concerns.

How damaging this will be for President Obama is still unclear, however. On the one hand, his overall job approval rating continues to register well above his rating on the IRS matter, suggesting that other issues matter more to Americans....
Or people just insist on liking Obama.

39 comments:

campy said...

It's racist to dislike Obama.

rhhardin said...

Community organizers stir things up and walk away.

Consequences aren't in their act.

MayBee said...

You have to say you like Obama. Otherwise you might get audited.

Rusty said...

What federal agency is not targeting conservatives?

rhhardin said...

The lately-in-the-news Professor Miller wrote a book, according to Derbyshire, about sexual selection. Species evolve with each sex doing things pleasing to the opposite sex.

I'd like to see the male/female breakdown of Obama approval.

Obama is a con man aiming at women, which also gets him MSM approval. Women are their audience because they'll tune in for pap, and pap is easy to produce.

MarkD said...

When westop liking him, he quits?

viator said...

Because, as Chris Matthews will lecture you, if you don't like him you are a racist.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

"Or people just insist on liking Obama."

Or people are very aware that their opinion means jack shit.

Sharc said...

I say, and I say it again: you been had, you been took, you been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok! This is what he does.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

I'm so old that I can remember when Democrats thought using the agencies and power of government against people for their political beliefs and speech was an impeachable crime. Now many Leftists are cheering the government attacks against Conservatives.

Michael Haz said...

Do you think that Obama actually cares about polls at this point? He isn't going to run for re-election, so he can do whatever he damn well pleases, and there will be no consequence for him.

Mogget said...

The only that worries Obama is the nature of his "legacy."

campy said...

The only that worries Obama is the nature of his "legacy."

As long as lefties rule academe, Obama can be confident he'll be acclaimed as a great president.

Renee said...

The country is in tough shape. We don't want Obama to fail for the sake of the country. I unfortunately disagree with him a lot, but somehow wish it could get better. Supporters are defensive, but to what point?

Progressivism is as dead as social conservatism, and liberals claim that republicans don't care about the little people, but democrats don't either.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

How damaging this will be for President Obama is still unclear...

And conveniently so... I mean Who wants to speculate on how damaging it might be?... Because if we did we would have to make a judgment on all these things that we would rather let history handle... or something.

tim maguire said...

Peope are personally invested in liking Obama. They had such high hopes, made and believed such grand pronouncements of his greatness, that they can't face the reality without admitting they were suckered. And nobody wants to do that.

viator said...

"The President has put in place an
organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday."That's going to be very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that
it's never been done before"

LiveLeak

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Or people just insist on liking Obama.

In the midst of Monica people insisted on giving Clinton a good job approval.

It was said that people separated Clintons personal life from his job performance.

With Obama people are separating his public life from his job performance?

Got to go with Althouse's people just insist on liking him... or, There is a lot more to liking than meets the eye.

Saint Croix said...

I would like Gallop to start polling news organizations.

Were high-ranking IRS officials aware of conservative targeting?

This is a yes or no question. If you think the answer is no, you don't look into it. If you think the answer is yes, you dig.

Were high-ranking Obama administration officials aware of conservative targeting?

Ditto. These questions are measuring our bias, our prejudice, and our suspicions.

If you want the facts to get out, it's up to the media.

So poll the media!

And if the media bias does not measure up with popular bias, that itself is newsworthy.

KCFleming said...

If only we had been warned.

Here I have to agree with Hillary.
What difference at this point does it make?

We're screwed whether he's popular or reviled.
Thanks, Obama voters!

Saint Croix said...

Attention paid to news stories.

Another question that should be asked of journalists.

"How closely are you following the news about..."

Don Imus' remark about Rutgers women basketball players - 72%

Murder trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell - 25%

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If only we had been warned.

Do I detect a flicker of hope in Pogos remarks?

Levi Starks said...

Oh yes!
We hate the things Obama is doing.
But he's still such a great guy, Don't you think?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

An IRS Political Timeline

These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative "front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in "unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy. Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for Prosperity"?

This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.



Last I checked The Koch brothers are American citizens-- so too is Karl Rove.

On the other hand - George Soros is a foreign entity.

Anonymous said...

Or decent ordinary Americans live in mortal fear of being called racists.

Sorun said...

I had a dream last night that Althouse declared she was still an Obama supporter, even though...

Sorun said...

Disapproving of Obama generally would be like admitting that FOX News was right.

edutcher said...

Lessee now, the Choom Gang leaned on Gallup all last year, so why should we trust them when they say people just insist on liking Obama, is that because of another visit from Solly an' da boys?

PS All that extract shows is that Demos are as dictatorially-inclined as he is.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Everyone likes a fascist until they lose his favor. They should sacrifice another human life to appease his ego.

Remember, this is about control of sentient beings. Of which there is no greater creation than human beings. The control of people represents the greatest achievement by man or mortal god.

Illuninati said...

Perhaps people like Obama because he is a celebrity not because of what he has done or not done. The media has created an image of a man which has little correlation with the real individual, but people are unable to separate the image from reality. Obama is the Kardashian president.

William said...

Amen to Illuminati......Throughout his long tenure in office, the press didn't print one picture of FDR in a wheelchair. The media didn't so much cover up for JFK's sex scandals as they actively helped him get laid. Why should Obama be treated any more harshly. He's their President.

Chip S. said...

viator's clip is chilling. Everyone should watch it.

If only we had been warned.

Those of us who paid attention to Obama's history of hard leftism and his uncanny access to sealed divorce records and all the stuff Stanley Kurtz wrote about understandably sounded like partisan fantasists. Who could believe such things about such a reasonable-sounding man and his organization?

People accustomed to a reasonable status quo can't adequately conceive of a fascist's true agenda.

By the time the reasonable people realize what's happening, it's too late to stop it.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

I'm not sure that any thought uttered by Maxine Walters should be considered as any thing other than stupid, certainly not chilling.

I like Obama. I didn't vote for him in 2008 but I preferred him to Hilary. I did vote for him in 2012. He is a conservative liberal. I am generally happy with him so far. Both the economy and the foreign wars were a mess went he took over.

With the economy he obviously couldn't fix the collapse of the housing bubble. That was 'wealth' that wasn't coming back. The loss of that 'wealth' undermined consumers ability to spend. Ultimately consumers had to dig themselves out of a hole largely of their own making, which is taking a long time.

My main complaint is the failure to break up the banks. The democrats are largely captured by the finance industry and that is very dangerous for the country's long term economic prospects. The republicans are just as bad. If I was going to identify the single greatest internal threat to this country it is the rise and rise of the finance industry. It is fundamentally parasitic on the the productive sectors of the economy.

With the wars, he's against them, correctly. I supported the intervention in Libya because the europeans took the lead and we were largely just fulfilling our NATO role. He has kept us out of Syria. There's not much to not like.

avwh said...

He's still "liked" because he's the first American Idol President - the same reason he got elected. Made the inattentive voter and all academic elites feel good about themselves, his lack of qualifications and inexperience be damned.

With the full complicity of the MSM, his past (which told those who did their homework EXACTLY who he was - which is what we're getting now in spades) was conveniently ignored.

Chip S. said...

I'm not sure that any thought uttered by Maxine Walters should be considered as any thing other than stupid, certainly not chilling.

There couldn't be a more perfect example of what I'm talking about than this. It's either very reasonable skepticism, or a very reasonable form of cognitive dissonance.

Imagine Maxine Waters--or any other prominent Dem--appearing on that same show a year or two ago and describing the IRS targeting and PRISM. Wouldn't that have seemed utterly incredible?

Given all that we now know, I am far less inclined to dismiss her than I would've been a year ago.

Simon said...

It makes no difference. Who cares? He won. A President who wins reelection never has to care what anyone thinks again.

Rusty said...

ARM has quaffed long and deep of that draught of progressivism.

Saint Croix said...

viator's clip is chilling. Everyone should watch it.

I'll try to watch it again. But that giant "Black Ho" in the background is both distracting and hilarious.