Cheney is Unpopular, Not “Polarizing”
An interesting Politico piece about how folks charged with Republican Party politics in the real world aren’t so thrilled with the Newt/Cheney Comeback Tour is far too kind about public’s view of Dick Cheney:
After a one-two punch from Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and other Republican lawmakers worry that their party has overplayed its hand on Nancy Pelosi.
The Republicans’ fear: Gingrich’s call for Pelosi’s ouster has set an unattainable goal, and Cheney’s jabs at her during a speech Thursday will allow Democrats to portray the controversy as a partisan attack by one of the GOP’s most polarizing figures.
“If the story becomes about us and not her, it’s a problem for us,” said a senior Republican lawmaker.
When I think of a “polarizing” figure, I think of someone about whom the public has strong, but closely divided feelings. Like if you were at 45 percent “strongly favorable” and 45 percent “strongly unfavorable” with only a few people in the middle. Cheney is just unpopular:
That’s different, I think, from being polarizing. And note that the poll from which I’ve taken that lower-than-Cuba favorablerating for Cheney gave him an unusually high rating. It’s possible that strident public advocacy of torture and law breaking has, in fact, raised his popularity to within spitting distance of an impoverished Communist dictatorship. But it’s also possible that that poll was an outlier and that Cheney’s true favorable rating is considerably lower.
29 Responses to “Cheney is Unpopular, Not “Polarizing””
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May 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
CIA admits to lying to Pelosi! Read the link: tiny.cc/CIA-Pelosi
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Cheney is Unpopular, Not “Polarizing”
He’s also an evil peckerhead.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
Cheney is both unpopular and polarizing. They are not mutually exclusive. As long as there is a significant group that has strong positive feelings about him (10 or 20 percent, maybe) then its fine to call him polarizing.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
When I think of a “polarizing” figure, I think of someone about whom the public has strong, but closely divided feelings.
“Closely divided” is doing a lot of work here. Some might suggest that if 70% of the country intensely hates you and 30% of the country intensely loves you, you are still “polarizing” even though the one group is much larger than the other.
In this case, I actually think this really depends on the “middle” groups–self-described independents, moderates, centrists, and so on. If most of them disliked Cheney (assuming self-described Democrats, liberals, progressives, and so forth dislike him a lot as well), then I think it would be fair to say Cheney was more “marginalizing” than “polarizing”.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Dick Cheney let Osama bin Laden get away. While nobody in DC is allowed to mention this for reasons I can’t understand, the American people appear aware of it and skeptical of Cheney’s claims. It’s kind of like the way normal people were way out in front on Iraq.
That said, I can see where over time this reality-based consensus will fade. After all, people will follow the lead of the people they trust in government. And if nobody in power thinks it’s a big deal Dick Cheney let Osama bin laden get away, maybe they know something we don’t, right?
This, of course, will be a huge problem if we ever get hit again.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
‘Polarizing’ implies, I think, opposite equalities. Like Good v Evil, or something.
Few people like raw oysters or the ghost stories of Lafcadio Hearn, but neither LH’s ghost stories nor raw oysters are thought of as a polarizing issue. Cheney’s a lying, surly dickhead. A taste for lying surly dickheads (Republicanism) isn’t polarizing because, fortunately, a taste for lying surly dickheadedness hasn’t reached a critical mass.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
That chart was too effective of a troll to let go un-reused. You should also do one showing Obama’s approval in the context of select prime time sitcoms.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
Cheney is setting this up as a partisan fight so if he is ever indicted he can claim this is a political hit instead of a crime against humanity.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
I’m from Canada, and I’m scared of Dick Cheney.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 am
Big whup, so he has managed to convince a few people outside of his base…
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:08 am
OK, following my own suggestion, here is a CBS/NYT poll from April 2009 (sorry if this is hard to read):
OPINION OF DICK CHENEY
Total Dems Reps Ind
Favorable 19% 7% 50% 14%
Not favorable 42 61 15 37
Undecided/Don’t know 38 31 32 47
Assuming that is a representative party breakdown, I’m going to go with Cheney being more marginalizing than polarizing: although Independents don’t dislike him quite as much as Democrats, they are still solidly weighted against him, whereas the Republicans are the opposite. Therefore, it is less that Cheney has polarized the electorate as that he has marginalized Republicans.
Obama, by the way, has a similar effect: Democrats like him a lot, and Independents like him quite a bit too, whereas Republicans dislike him. Again, that places Republicans out on the margins largely by themselves.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
But, but, but…where it matters most Cheney is admired and his lies are taken for truth.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
Who cares? This only goes to show how inane popular opinion can be. Especially when dictatorships that regularly kill the “disappeared” get a better rating. Not to mention that totalitarians get better press.
Perhaps you should be more concerned about what this poll says regarding the left and their predilection for thuggish despots. By that measure, Cheney as billed, should be a crowd favorite here.
But that would require some honesty.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:14 am
Dick Cheney eats babies.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
yesh! The relationship between Cheney and the Republican party is like Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:19 am
Pelosi favorability: 39%. Lower than Venezuela and China!
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:22 am
Oops… His Base…
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:30 am
Al, who cares if Pelosi is also unliked. That was all well an good when Pelosi was the head Dem but these days it has a much lower impact. Meanwhile, right doesnt really have an established leader or set of leaders, which is allowing the left and the MSM to find the least likable members of the right and promote them as the “face”. Cheney isn’t doing us any favors here. So what if people acknowledge that Pelosi sucks. Micahel Moore and Rush have similar numbers among independants, which is to say terrible, but it never mattered to the left that people hate Moore because no one ever managed to convince people that he was speaking for all Dems.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
The problem for the Republicans is that Cheney, Limbaugh, and a few others are doing all the work for the Democrats. That is, as long as the Democrats only have to point to that group and say “Look who’s still running things over there,” the middle is going to keep shifting away from the Republicans.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Al, who cares if Pelosi is also unliked.
Um, I would think Democrats should care if Pelosi is unpopular. After all, unlike Dick Cheney, Nancy Pelosi is actually in office. She is the leader of one of the two houses of Congress. She is third in line for the Presidency. Dick Cheney, OTOH, is retired, and never running for any office ever again.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
“Few people like raw oysters or the ghost stories of Lafcadio Hearn”
I think lots of people would love the ghost stories of Hearn if they read them. I think they’re great.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Personally, Al, I’m not the least bit concerned about Pelosi’s approval rating. Republicans have decided that’s she’s the strawman (strawwoman?) for every attack they’re going to make on liberals and Democrats, and so obviously they’re driving her negatives down. But Obama is the leader of the party. 434/435 of the country are going to be voting for or against him, not Pelosi, and he’s the one who’s going to be showing up in all those tight Senate races. I’m perfectly happy with her being the sacrifical lamb who absorbs all their attacks while Obama remains highly popular.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
And to clarify why that’s different from Cheney/Rush/etc: when Republicans try to associate someone with Pelosi and drive up their negatives, we can counter with associating him with the very popular Obama. Republicans don’t have this option. You tie a Republican to the very unpopular Rush, what do they do? There’s no popular Republican leader they can turn to. That’s why you absolutely have to have a Crist or Huntsman that independents actually like in a highly visible role in order to win elections. And why it’s so completely idiotic to keep making your party more and more party-line ideological. That only works as long as your ideas are, you know, popular.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
The issue with Cheney today is not whether he is “polarizing” or “unpopular” – but that he is continuing to whip up a froth of publicity over his support for state-sanctioned torture.
Yesterday was unprecedented. We had two leading political figures – the president and the former vice president – making very public addresses about the use and value of torture in US foreign policy.
In this framework, who cares about Cheney’s popularity?
What Cheney does not realize is that in arguing against Obama’s decision to walk away from torture, he has aligned himself with another powerful African American – Malcolm X – who advocated the achievement of human rights for blacks “by any means necessary.”
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
She is third in line for the Presidency.
Properly understood, this is exactly why Democrats really don’t care very much about Pelosi’s popularity–she is only third in line, in a contest where even second place typically barely matters.
In fact, if Bush hadn’t been so feckless and had only given Cheney a normal portfolio for a VP, Cheney probably wouldn’t have such a strong claim to the loyalty of the GOP’s partisan hacks (and incidentally, the country would have been much, much better off).
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service.”
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Oh, and I will note again that Dennis Hastert is just as wrapped up in this as Pelosi, but Democrats similarly don’t really care as compared to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, Addington, and so on.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 am
True Global Happiness could be achieved if all of the “centrists who love Cuba would trade places with the Cubans literally dying to leave. Who’s first? Don’t be shy!
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Couldn’t agree more.
That’s really a good move.