{"id":126,"date":"2006-02-04T11:10:37","date_gmt":"2006-02-04T16:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=126"},"modified":"2006-02-04T11:49:07","modified_gmt":"2006-02-04T16:49:07","slug":"is-there-a-middle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2006\/02\/04\/is-there-a-middle\/","title":{"rendered":"is there a middle?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Feel Bush Deliberately Misled Country on Iraq WMD<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

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A new Gallup Poll, conducted in late January, reveals that just 39% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling Iraq, with 58% disapproving. <\/div>\n

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Over half (53%) now say the administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction," with 46% disagreeing. Gallup notes that this finding is "essentially reversed" from one year ago. <\/div>\n

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Further, some 51% say the U.S. "made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq."<\/div>\n
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I wonder how that translates into a change in support for the Republican Party, or the Neoconservative ideals, or the big Religious Right issues like abortion or gay marriage. Maybe I can reframe my question. Is the current Rightward shift in the American political scene something that is primary that the current Administration opportunized on, or did they actually create it? If it’s the former, I think we on the Left need to consider why.<\/p>\n

It is so much a part of the Reagan\/Bush\/Bush mantra to demonize the Left, and, to be honest, so much a part of the Left’s M.O. to do the same thing to the Right, that it’s time to begin to think about getting our political pendulum near the middle for a while. It would be a big mistake to recover from Bush by staying as divided as we currently are. I think it is a shaky proposition to presume that these disapproval ratings will translate into either Democratic votes or into a shift away from the current Conservativism. I think that at least some of the current split was actually created by the Bush Administration as a strategy. If that is true, it would be tragic to let it persist.<\/p>\n

I was personally disillusioned with Bill Clinton. While I thought he was a good President, and that his thinking about the country was sincere, his personal sheenanigans were too much for me. It wasn’t just Monica. His philandering and story telling were already legend. I just didn’t like it being part of the presidency. I didn’t vote for him the second time [No, I certainly didn’t vote for  the Republican either!]. But my disillusionment with Clinton didn’t change my politics at all. My worry is that these polls are measuring disillusionment with the man<\/strike> boy, George W. Bush, not with the extremely conservative\/reactionary trend in the political climate that he has participated in creating. George W. Bush is going to be very hard to get over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gallup: More Than Half of Americans Feel Bush Deliberately Misled Country on Iraq WMD A new Gallup Poll, conducted in late January, reveals that just 39% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling Iraq, with 58% disapproving. Over half (53%) now say the administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}