Poll: Romney’s Favorables Among Republicans Drop Below 50 Percent
Washington Independent ^ | 11/24/09 | David Weigel
Posted on Friday, November 27, 2009 3:27:00 PM by Leisler
This is a surprising result from Public Policy Polling, the occasionally partisan group which nonetheless called the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races accurately. Mitt Romney’s favorable rating among Republican voters has fallen to 48 percent–a plurality, but a weak one. And the trend lines are even more interesting. Since April, when PPP started asking the question, Sarah Palin’s favorable number has moved from 76 percent to 75 percent; Mike Huckabee’s has moved from 67 percent to 65 percent. Romney, alone, has seen a statistically significant drop from 60 percent down to 48.
The results are so strange that PPP’s Tom Jensen doesn’t have a theory. One possible explanation, though, is how health care has dominated the national political debate since early summer. It the spring, Romney bounced as high as 67 percent. The summer and fall have taken a toll on him. As Andy Barr astutely pointed out in September, Romney has been hamstrung by his health care record. As governor of Massachusetts, he compromised with Democrats and signed a mandate-driven health care bill, and ever since then Republicans have used that against him.
Inside the beltway, Romney is seen as a classic front-runner who’s picked his issues wisely–he’s four months away from publishing a book on “American greatness”–and retained smart campaign staffers. But Huckabee is leading the field in national and Iowa polls, and Palin clearly has the biggest following of any possible 2012 candidate.
Poll: Romney’s Favorables Among Republicans Drop Below 50 Percent
“Inside the beltway, Romney is seen as a classic front-runner who’s picked his issues wisely”
I agree with this assessment. He has picked his issues carefully and wisely. “I need conservative votes in the primaries. Let’s see, a conservative is pro-gun and anti-abortion, so I am too. A conservative’s fiscal stance is one that minimizes government influence, so that’s my stance...” “To beat Ted Kennedy, I must be more pro-gay, pro-choice, and anti-gun than he is perceived to be...”
He has failed to convince me that thee truly are his personal issues, though. Having looked up his senate campaign and gubernatorial campaigns, he picks his personal beliefs to win at the moment. It’s hard to see who he is and what he believes in until you see what he has actually DONE. And he can’t erase the facts that he disliked Reagan and his policies and followers.
As for Saving The Olympics and Ending Corruption, when you drill down into that issue, all you find is vague news releases claiming those things and other feats, with almost no detail as to just what he did other than donating a million or so of his own money. There is plenty of controversy there too, frosted over with vague Romney speeches about how nobody specifically banned Boy Scout participation, it was just a random set of rules that led to no uniformed Scout being seen on TV or any operations organized at the Boy Scout level.