Bloomberg News: Obama's Popularity Doesn't Sway Republican Critics

Friday, March 13, 2009

Obama’s Popularity Doesn’t Sway Republican Critics

By Nicholas Johnston

 

March 13 -- Jim Gerlach should be running scared.

 

The Republican congressman from Pennsylvania received almost 26,000 votes less than Barack Obama did in his district, and now he is running hard to oppose the president, voting against a centerpiece of his economic policy.

 

He isn’t alone.

 

Thirty-four House Republicans representing districts that Democrat Obama carried in November all opposed the president’s stimulus plan, a decision they said hasn’t angered their constituents.

 

There’s a paradox among voters. Polls show that more than 60 percent of Americans approve of the job the president is doing. They don’t feel the same about some of his proposals, particularly the stimulus.

 

"They’re separating out President Obama’s advocacy to do something and get something done versus what congressional leadership came up with,” Gerlach, a four-term congressman, said of the $787 billion economic spending measure that passed the House last month without a single Republican vote.

 

Gerlach said the public is blaming Democrats in Congress, not Obama, for crafting a stimulus plan that shut out Republican proposals.

 

Low Public Opinion

 

Republican lawmakers said they know there are limits to their opposition to Obama and the Democratic agenda. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published March 5 found the public’s opinion of the Republican Party near an all-time low. More than half of poll respondents said Republicans have opposed Obama to gain political advantage, compared with 30 percent who said the party’s lawmakers were acting on principle.

 

In response, the Republican lawmakers have come up with a hedging strategy: They are backing the White House on measures such as children’s health care or legislation to fund the federal government this year.

 

"That’s a challenge for each member to navigate, especially ones that are in marginal districts such as these,” said David Wasserman, House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, who compiled the district-by-district voting data.

 

Gerlach, 54, and two other Republicans elected from districts that backed Obama said in interviews that voters have flooded their offices with messages urging them to oppose the economic stimulus legislation and praising their votes against it.

No Support

 

David Reichert, who was re-elected to a third term representing a Washington state district, said a telephone town- hall meeting he conducted in February had 5,600 participants and not a single person spoke in favor of the measure.

"I didn’t get one,” said Reichert, 58, who ran almost 20,000 votes behind Obama in his suburban Seattle district in last year’s elections. "They see it all as one big spending bill.”

 

Ohio Representative Pat Tiberi, who trailed Obama by almost 5,000 votes to win a fifth House term in his district outside Columbus, said his constituents are "hopeful” and want the president to succeed, though they are expressing some doubts about his policies.

 

"There is beginning to be, I’ve noted over the last week, a bit of a buyer’s remorse,” he said. "The rhetoric hasn’t met the reality that’s been passed.”

 

‘Doubling Down’

 

Tiberi, 46, recalled speaking to a Democrat in his district on March 2 who accused the Obama administration of "doubling down” on the spending mistakes of President George W. Bush. Gerlach said calls to his office were 3-to-1 against the stimulus package and are beginning to come in against Obama’s proposed budget and housing programs.

 

"They wanted a good stimulus, they wanted the president to be successful when he started out his presidency,” Gerlach said. "A wide majority of people want us to do something on the stimulus, but they were opposed to the particular bill Congress wrote.”

 

In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of 1,007 adults conducted Feb. 26 to March 1, more than 60 percent of respondents said the legislation would help the economy only a little or not at all. The survey found that 60 percent approved of Obama’s performance.

 

Republicans haven’t benefited from their opposition to Obama’s policies, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,013 adults conducted Feb. 20-22. The poll found that 47 percent approved the performance of the congressional Democrats, compared with a 36 percent approval rating for Republicans.

 

Democratic Ads

 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began running advertisements criticizing a dozen House Republicans for their opposition to the measure, including Gerlach and Reichert, who won their districts last year with 52 percent and 53 percent of the vote, respectively. Tiberi won re-election with 55 percent of the vote.

 

Jennifer Crider, the spokeswoman for the DCCC, said the lawmakers’ opposition to Obama’s agenda would ultimately work against them.

 

"House Republicans who rubber-stamp the Republican leaders’ just-say-no strategy in Washington will pay a price with voters,” she said. "Folks are looking for Republican members to stop trying to score political points and start working with the president.”

 

Republicans said the stimulus included proposals that won’t help the economy and have criticized the proposed budget Obama presented Feb. 26 that would increase federal spending and deficits. At a March 4 House Ways and Means Committee hearing with White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, Tiberi said the increase in the national debt -- projected by the administration to grow to $13.8 trillion in 10 years from $5.3 trillion in 2008 –is "unbelievable.”

 

‘Four Kids’

 

"I’ve got four kids that are going to be paying for this stuff,” Tiberi said in an interview the next day.

 

Obama, 47, earned praise from Republicans for coming to the Capitol to personally lobby them for the economic-stimulus legislation. Since then, they have repeatedly accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of shutting them out of the measure’s drafting.

 

"They’ve reached out to us and they’ve wanted to talk to us and I think they’re sincere in that,” Gerlach said. "But I think they did make a mistake on the stimulus of delegating this to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid and that’s where the breakdown was.”

 

The three lawmakers said they haven’t opposed all the measures Obama has pushed in Congress. All three voted in favor of an expansion of children’s health care that had been vetoed by Bush.

 

Reichert and Gerlach backed the $410 billion Democratic spending bill to fund government operations for the rest of the fiscal year.

 

"When I ran two years ago, I was a Bush rubber-stamp, supposedly,” Reichert said. "Today, I’m supposed to be a total 100 percent Obama follower. What in fact I do is I think for myself, I think for my district.”

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