Posted on 06/21/2006 4:00:10 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
Sen. Rick Santorum's approval rating has skidded to a four-year low, the latest sign of distress for the outspoken conservative and ally of President Bush, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The lead for Santorum's Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Bob Casey, has stretched to 18 percentage points since early May.
Casey leads Santorum by 52 percent to 34 percent - the biggest margin since October, when the numbers were the same, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.
Only 38 percent of respondents said they approved of the way Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, is handling his job. Forty-five percent said they disapproved and 16 percent did not express an opinion.
It was the first time Santorum's approval rating dropped below 40 percent since Quinnipiac began measuring it in June 2002.
Bush's approval rating in the state rebounded somewhat in the latest poll, to 34 percent from 30 percent in May. The proportion of Pennsylvania voters who approved of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq increased to 35 percent from 29 percent.
"Senator Santorum appears to be his own worst enemy in his battle for re-election," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Connecticut-based university's polling institute.
In the May survey, Casey, the son of late Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey, led Santorum by 49 percent to 36 percent.
More than 40 percent of Casey's supporters said they are more against electing Santorum to a third term than for Casey, the poll showed.
Virginia Davis, a Santorum campaign spokesman, said polls are unreliable at this stage in the campaign. Santorum plans to air the first statewide TV commercials of his campaign on Friday, she said. Larry Smar, a spokesman for the Casey campaign, agreed that it is too early to read too much into the polls but that Casey's continuing strength in polling bodes well for the November election.
Quinnipiac conducted telephone interviews with 1,076 Pennsylvania voters between June 13 and Monday. The results carry a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
And he was marginalized and pushed aside by the Democratic party for it... Casey Jr. is NOT his father... not remotely.
I don't. I'd rather have Santorum than Kean any day.
I was speaking strictly about the Senate numbers.
There are polling services that do a good job, and do it correctly, but Quinnipiac is a known scandal when it comes to polls. Never trust Quinnipiac.
Go ahead and research their poll results over the last decade or two.
Of course, as you know, Hafer left the GOP in a fit of pique because they didn't nominate her for Governor in 2002.
"DJ, you got the colors backwards. Remember, Red State/Blue State are now fixed terms, not colors that can be used indiscriminately."
This remains my single biggest pet peeve in the political world, and was the subject of my last entry on my blog 11 months ago: http://antiochagonistes.blogspot.com/
I have never been inconsistent in labelling Republican = Blue and Democrat = Red for over 20 years. It remains such an affront to common sense, reason, and history (and OUTSIDE the U.S., including Canada, still employ this proper color scheme, Tory/Conservative = Blue; Liberal/Labour = Red. Leftist Tories are called RED Tories) that it's as if not only the colors, but political labels were switched around, Liberal is now Conservative, Conservative is now Liberal, Republican is Democrat, Democrat is Republican.
I remain disgusted that we allowed the media to deliberately mislabel us, and will continue to fight for what is right and traditional, as per not only my own works, but also those of Dave Leip and Professor Kenneth Martis. If we allow them to label us in THEIR manner and choosing with this, they'll continue to do it in other ways, too, and I refuse to accept it, period. I will NEVER be anything but a Blue Conservative Republican, and better dead than a liberal RED.
To be honest, it's not something that bothers me. Most non-political Americans (most of the voting public) is unaware of these distinctions, so the media's color scheme (if it's intentional) has no effect on their voting behavior.
Amen.
AMEN. Most folks do not have the slightest idea how hard Rick Santorum has worked on the judicial nominations issue. That is where the rubber meets the road on the whole "But Casey is pro-life" argument.
Casey, who won't even whisper a word about abortion will block any constitutionalist judge that Bush tries to put on the Court and if, heaven forbid, a Democrat is elected to the WH in 2008, activist judges who will twist the Constitution to fit their ideological goals will find a true friend in Bob Casey. The critical, all-important third seat to the Supreme Court could be in play after this election...maybe sooner than that, but what if it happens after November? Do Pennsylvania Republicans really want to give this White House any reason to put forth a nominee that meets Kennedy/Schumer's definition of "mainstream" (e.g. agrees with them?) out of fear that Bob Casey and his buddies in the Dem Caucus of the Senate, much less the so-called "Gang of 14" will furrow their brows over someone like Janice Rogers Brown?
Come on, folks, think about this just for a moment.
There are so, so, so few conservative in the Republican caucus of the Senate. To turn out Rick Santorum is the most foolish idea to date. You instantly put one of the biggest issues -- the next Supreme Court nomination -- into jeopardy.
And for those of us who lament the millions of babies slaughtered, the erosion of property rights, the terrorists turned loose, the eradication of God from any public utterance, the empowerment of government over the people, the continual blockade by the courts of the will of the people over and over and over by out of control activist judges.....electing Casey over Santorum is frankly too high a price to pay.
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