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Stories tagged with “David Broder”

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Poll Shows Palin’s Unfavorability Ratings At All-Time High As Broder Extols Her ‘Populist’ Appeal

By Amanda Terkel on Feb 11, 2010 at 10:30 am

Sarah Palin In today’s Washington Post, David Broder has a prominent column titled, “Palin’s populism: It just might work,” which is devoted to extolling her appeal. He praised her recent Fox News Sunday interview, saying that she struck “a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past.” Some other highlights:

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously. [...]

But in the present mood of the country, Palin is by all odds a threat to the more uptight Republican aspirants such as Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty — and potentially, to Obama as well. [...]

Those who want to stop her will need more ammunition than deriding her habit of writing on her hand. The lady is good.

Palin may have won Broder’s heart, but he is significantly off the mark on her appeal to the rest of America. Also in today’s Washington Post, on page A3, is a report showing that Palin’s unfavorability ratings are at an all-time high. From the Washington Post/ABC News poll:

In a new Time article today, Joe Klein writes on the “brilliance of Sarah Palin,” asserting that she is “the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination and therefore someone to be taken absolutely seriously.” If he’s right, the Republican Party is in a sad state. According to the new poll, 71 percent of Americans say that Palin is “not qualified to serve as president.” That figure includes 52 percent of Republicans. Ironically, on Sunday, the Washington Post story about Palin’s speech at the Party convention read, “With her remarks, greeted with wild enthusiasm here and carried live by all three major cable news networks, Palin moved firmly to reestablish herself as a politician capable of national office.”

Moreover, the Tea Party movement that commentators have held up as one of the most significant forces in American politics, really isn’t all that popular with the public. Not only do most Americans not identify with the right-wing activists, but 64 percent say they know “some/little/nothing” about the Tea Party movement stands for.

Media

Bipartisanship in Lieu of Analysis

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 5, 2009 at 3:55 pm

us-capitol-1

Strikingly, David Broder thinks we could use more bipartisanship:

Scholars will also make the point that when such complex legislation is being shaped, the substance is likely to be improved when both sides of the aisle contribute ideas. And they will argue that public acceptance of the mandated changes in such programs will be greater if the law comes with the imprimatur of both parties.

I would be interested in a citation for scholarship which argues that complex legislation is likely to be improved by the contribution of ideas from both sides of the aisle. I have, in fact, looked at the question of whether or not bipartisanship enhances policy stability and there turns out not to be evidence for this theory. But, hey, “scholars” will make the point. But with Congressional Republicans currently earning a 29-56 approve/disapprove split it’s hard to argue that getting them on board is crucial to the popularity of a new initiative.

Scott Lemieux, meanwhile, reminds us of Broder’s classic attack on Al Gore for being too interested in public policy:

I have to confess, my attention wandered as he went on through page after page of other swell ideas, and somewhere between hate crimes legislation and a crime victim’s constitutional amendment, I almost nodded off.

My guess is that that’s the nub of the matter. It’s somewhat difficult to try to understand policy proposals on the merits. It’s easy, by contrast, to just look at who’s supporting legislation. You can just say, “good bills are bipartisan bills, partisan bills are bad” and then look at whether or not a proposal has bipartisan support. It’s simple if you’re the kind of person inclined to nodd off if forced to listen to a discussion of policy. Personally, I’m not sure why so many people who find policy so dull are in the field of political journalism. I find it perfectly understandable that it’s not something everyone’s interested in, but it seems to me that people who aren’t interested in policy debates should be in some other line of work rather than writing columns for David Broder.

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