However, I'm particularly focused on two points. First, Obama's support is based more on his personal appeal than his fleshed-out liberal policies and initiatives. For example, support for the recently enacted "stimulus" plan barely has majority support, with nearly two-thirds of respondents expressing elevated concern for the escalating national debt. The public is also lukewarm about initiatives to bail out certain politically-favored industries (in particular, banks and automakers). I do not believe, however, the American public, still a center-right nation, has quite grasped with Obama is trying to do here, which is to use this economic crisis as a Trojan horse to rationalize the largest government expansion since the mid-60's.
The second thing, however, is that the Republicans are losing the public relations battle with Obama in terms of bipartisan efforts. Obama has been successful in convincing many gullible Americans that symbolic acts like nominating three Republicans to his cabinet (one, the senior New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg, whom withdrew over the stimulus bill with which he philosophically disagreed, the incumbent Defense Department Secretary whom even Majority Leader Reid did not consider a Republican but an independent, and the third, the Transportation Secretary, whom is an Illinois Republican Obama rebuked after LaHood suggested an alternative per-mile tax) and well-publicized informal gatherings to which GOP members, including Senator McCain, his general election opponent, or certain conservative press members were invited.
Does the public really believe that a so-called stimulus bill that Obama argued was needed, even before its details were fleshed out, was passed without full debate (in fact, even a reading before the Congress), contradicting Obama's repeated goal of transparency, an escalation of non-stimulative federal spending which even Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer termed "porky" (arguing that the American people don't really care) and Senator McCain, a bipartisan leader, looking to broker a compromise, found the Democrats unwilling to deal, feeling they had the vote count to push out a bill reflecting their fiscal priorities? Since when does peeling off the votes of the three most liberal Republicans in the Senate (Specter, Snowe, and Collins), the only three GOP votes in the entire Congress, constitute bipartisan compromise? How is this comparable to Reagan's having to work with a Democratic Speaker of the House to pass his tax cuts?
Everything with Obama is a gimmick. It's like listening to a songwriter whom accidentally writes a hit song and then tries to make a formula out of it. Make straw men out of Bush, McCain and the GOP majority since 1994 through 2006, allegedly greedy bankers, the "unregulated" financial services sector, and corporate law-writing lobbyists; then, with a straight face and full of hubris, proclaim that the very same party and goverment bureaucrats (whose state and local leadership in Louisiana failed to evacuate New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina approached, which stonewalled power plant development in California during the 1990's, leading to brownouts over the turn of the century, which has thrown massive amounts of money at urban public schools, resulting in no improvement in an attrition rate of 50% or more from high school graduation and other criteria (far greater than those for private and charter schools)--can somehow figure out and manage the economics of energy and health care better than industry leaders and veterans, whom have to carefully navigate through a constantly changing minefield of market-distorting government obstacles, regulations, reporting requirements and taxation. He solemnly pontificates his vision of energy independence, self-righteously promoting green technologies, largely dependent on federal subsidies and technological breakthroughs (e.g., storage capacity), while ignoring prior examples of escalated but ineffectively used public funds for the war on cancer and embryonic stem cell research (while pointedly ignoring America's own rich sources of oil, coal, and gas, which would immediately affect offset costly imports with today's technology and yield well-paying American jobs).
The very same Obama who, like all Democrats, seems to think that Bill Clinton stumbled across the holy grail of taxing the super-rich at 39.6% in achieving a prosperous 1990's and a balanced federal budget (never mind the fact that the Republicans were mostly responsible for derailing the Clinton attempt to nationalize health care and played bad cop to Clinton's spending initiatives during the last 6 years of his Presidency when the GOP controlled the House, and an easy Fed Reserve monetary policy propped up a superheated Nasdaq and its related capital gains taxes) and thinks INCREASING taxes on job creators (e.g., small business owners ) and raising investment taxes (in addition to maintaining an uncompetitive top business tax bracket) will result in higher growth and more, higher-paying jobs. The fact is that the 90's boom occurred despite counterproductive Clintonian economic policies, seeded by years of business investment under pro-growth policies of the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush administrations and benefiting from the peace dividend.
And so the Wizard of Obamia, the Pied Piper of Failed Liberalism, pontificates his radical social democratic agenda, instructing the American people to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", the inexperienced leader with no executive experience and 4 years in the Senate (much of which was spent running for the White House).
How do the Republicans and other conservatives deal with the fact that almost 70% of the American people think that their substantive criticisms are little more than political grandstanding or obstructionist in nature?
First, I think the Republicans need to demonstrate good faith in working with the President. This includes initiating and continuing high-profile meetings and appearances with the President. I think the Republicans should not respond to Obama's subtle partisan rhetoric, because it's a thing that only a few charismatically gifted politicians, like Reagan and Obama, can pull off. I think they should also find an agenda in common with Obama's own priorities. In that regard, I strongly suggest that Republicans look at areas of joint interest, evident through Obama's Senate agenda and Presidential run: e.g., immigration and ethics reform, budget and other legislative transparency, and charter and other school alternatives to failing public schools. I would suggest, in terms of the latter point, that federal aid to public schools be tied specifically to local/state commitment to choice of educational opportunity.
Second, I would like to see the Republicans coalesce around a positive, more efficient alternative to Democratic moves (especially towards a larger government footprint on health care, the auto industry, and banking). For example, we could focus on catastrophic health care, mandatory coverage requirements (like auto insurance), deductibles (to encourage cost savings behavior by patients) and guaranteed coverage through reinsured state risk pools.
Finally, I think (and the media conservatives will disagree with me) that the Republicans need to freshen up their messages and positions. I think that some of the more ideological stands are not good ones for winning over voters: I'm referring to things like the estate tax or getting involved in defense of things like torture policy and warrantless wiretaps. If the Republicans craft their message to appeal only to the top 10 percent whom pay the most tax revenue, the Democrats will take that any day. Lowering taxes is easy for voters to understand; it's less clear how government regulation affects goods and services, e.g., marketing insurance policies across states because of mandated coverages. I see mandates as the equivalent to state trade protectionism, and I would like to see increased competition between states by lowering relevant barriers and improved access of public information for consumers, e.g., prescription prices, health outcome statistics, etc.
