Obama and California Republicans
A new L.A. Times poll takes an interesting temperature reading of Cal Republicans' feelings about the president.
Offered a choice of five terms - "pride," "hope," "disappointment," "anxiety," and "anger," only 21% of Republicans in the state chose the maximal answer, "anger." 22% expressed anxiety, 31% expressed disappointment.
(Among California voters generally, 60% offered one of the positive descriptors, "hope" or "pride.")
Message, as it seems to me:
In the country's biggest state, and one of its most economically hard-pressed, the Fox/talk radio project of trying to generate intense anti-Obama feelings is failing. There's enough background of goodwill toward the president even among Republicans that opposition expresses itself as doubt, not rage. You'd think that it would be smarter politics to work on the emotions people actually have: that the man's plans aren't working, not that his motives are malign.