President Obama “has picked up five points in public approval since he’s gone away to Hawaii for a year-end family vacation,” Bloomberg reports.
“The president’s public approval rating was hanging at 39% in the days before Christmas, by the Gallup Poll’s average of daily tracking surveys. Today… his approval has risen to 44%. His disapproval rating, 54% pre-Christmas, is down to 49%.”
Some will joke that going on vacation, and thus being allegedly off the job (though Presidents are never off the job), is the reason for the spike. I think people are calming down from the Obamacare site glitches and realizing, hey, I have insurance!
This is interesting and presents a possible paradox of conservative ideology that will destroy it once and for all. From Haaretz:
“Israel will pay for abortions for women aged 20 to 33 regardless of circumstance starting next year, health officials said Monday, adding that they hope to make eligibilty for state funding universal in the future.”
Conservatives, especially the theocons and neocons, place utmost importance on Israel. For the theocons, the reason is obvious, it is the Holy Land. For the neocons, it is the protection of Israel is almost the sole purpose of the existence of the United States. The conservative Likkud government of Israel is now going to provide not only free abortions, but they are going to do it through evil socialist universal healthcare.
Michael O’Brien thinks the GOP might want to change its mind about its 2014 strategy: “a referendum on the president and his health care law.”
Indeed, as Joan McCarter at Daily Kos points out:
“The law still has powerful enemies, like the Republican U.S. House of Representatives. But it also has more than six million new beneficiaries, by Kossack Brainwrap’s ongoing count: 2,104,332 in private plans and 4,002,609 in Medicaid/CHIP. For everyone in existing plans, annual and lifetime caps are gone. Some basic stuff–like hospitalizations, prescription drugs and mental health–now has to be covered…From now on, every attempt by Republicans to repeal the law means trying to take away those benefits and all the benefits that have already kicked in for millions of people. And that changes the politics of this law immeasurably.