Limbaugh versus Gallup and the Real World

Here's Limbaugh, agreeing with Cheney: "The biggest mistake Republicans can make is to follow Colin Powell's advice . . . to move to the center." Dick Cheney "knows that there's no such thing as a centrist . . . there's no such thing as a moderate."

Let’s compare Limbaugh’s lunacy with the latest Gallup polling. Which shows Obama’s approvals rising, by the way.

Democrats approve of Obama 92 percent to 4
Independents approve of Obama 66 to 25
Republicans: 30 to 66 against

Party affiliation nationally:
Democrats 36.3 percent
Independents 34.9
Republicans 25.9

All this data is from Gallup.

If you multiply the affiliation numbers by the approval numbers, Obama gets 33.396 percent of U.S. voter support from Democrats, 23.034 from Independents, 7.77 from Republicans, for 64.2 percent total.

What does this tell us?

Republican affiliation is dropping.

Independent affiliation is rising, contrary to Limbaugh’s belief that there is no such thing as a centrist.

And the Independents are supporting Obama in huge numbers, contrary to the beliefs of the Republican party. In fact, half of Obama’s support is coming from people who are not Democrats, and a lot of those Independents who support him were Republicans until recently. The last guy to Red-Rover a bunch of folks from the other team over into his own team was Reagan, just before he crushed Mondale.

Even if the Independents were to split evenly, for and against Obama, Obama still has a ten-point edge because the Democrats are out-registering the GOP by more than ten points. And that’s not counting his support among Republicans.

Even with a wobbly economy and a series of controversial political initiatives, Obama has kept his high approvals. With progress on health care, the budget and the economy in the next two years, he will remain solid in the polls. By the time the 2012 election arrives Obama won’t be the inexperienced black Muslim Marxist Kenyan kid with a funny name as in 2008: he will be a popular incumbent commander in chief, and incredibly tough to beat.

Eleven months of incessant GOP attacks against Obama have backfired and their message has been discredited. Party leaders equate moderation to treason; monthly they proclaim a new party overhaul, but daily they insist that the authentic game-changing party overhaul they need is just not in the cards. Their 2012 nominee will reflect the extremist views of GOP primary voters, someone with no chance to win back Independents. And it might not even be an A-list extremist: the A-list GOP prospects have seen the polls showing that none of them could come close to Obama in 2012, so many will wait until 2016, thus thinning out the 2012 GOP even more.

The GOP would need to steal a quarter of Obama’s support just to squeak out a narrow win in 2012. In November 2012 a few Republicans will come home, enough to pull their presidential nominee up into the 40s, but barring a huge change, that still adds up to a whupping for the Republicans.

Particularly if they keep letting Rush plan their strategy for them.