Obama might well pay attention to the old saying: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.”
He has dug deep with policies that the public dislikes, but he refuses to deviate from his hard-left agenda. One example: his decision to pursue a lawsuit against the consistently popular Arizona law against border anarchy. Another is the budget-buster socialist healthcare Obama drove to passage, which a majority of voters would like repealed.
The Rasmussen pollsters recently tested the popularity of two top administration lieutenants, Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and both garnered significant disapproval.
Those polled may have had in mind Holder’s continuing effort to have top terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed tried in New York City as well as his lawsuit against Arizona.
Napolitano’s perfidy was exemplified by her April observation of border conditions:
Napolitano: U.S.- Mexico Border ‘As Secure Now As It Has Ever Been’, CNS News, April 29, 2010
“I say this again as someone who has walked that border,” she said. “I’ve ridden that border. I’ve flown it. I’ve driven it. I know that border I think as well as anyone, and I will tell you it is as secure now as it has ever been.”
As a result of such shenanigans, the public does not hold either official in high regard.
Just 32% View Holder, Napolitano Favorably, Rasmussen Reports, June 27, 2010
Next week is likely to be a big one for Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if the Obama administration moves ahead with its threatened legal challenge of Arizona’s popular new immigration law.
Right now, Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds that just 32% of U.S. voters have at least somewhat favorable opinions of the two top Cabinet players. In Holder’s case, this includes 12% with a Very Favorable opinion, while 11% have a Very Favorable view of Napolitano.
Forty-two percent (42%) regard the attorney general unfavorably, with 26% who have a Very Unfavorable opinion. One-in-four voters (26%) still don’t know enough about Holder to venture any kind of opinion of him.
This marks a very slight worsening of the numbers for Holder from last August just after his announcement that the Justice Department was investigating how the Bush administration treated imprisoned terrorists. At that time, 35% held a favorable view of him, and 39% did not.
In Napolitano’s case, 47% now view her unfavorably, including 28% Very Unfavorable. Twenty-one percent (21%) have no opinion of the Homeland Security secretary.
Napolitano’s unfavorables have changed little since last spring following her department’s release of a controversial report on right-wing extremist groups. But her favorables are up slightly from January shortly after a failed terrorist bombing attempt on an airliner landing in Detroit. [...]
Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters nationwide oppose a Justice Department challenge of the Arizona immigration law. Just 26% think the challenge is a good idea.
Sixty-four percent (64%) believe the federal government by failing to enforce immigration law is more to blame for the current controversy over Arizona’s new statute than state officials are for passing it.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) now favor passage of an immigration law like Arizona’s in their own state.
Ironically, Napolitano was the governor of Arizona at the time President Obama asked her to serve in his Cabinet, and she was replaced by Jan Brewer, then serving as secretary of state. Brewer’s signing and championing of the immigration law has pushed her far ahead in the Arizona’s GOP Primary race for governor. Her likely Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Terry Goddard, is an opponent of the law, which sets up the gubernatorial contest as a potential voter referendum on the measure.
Male voters are more strongly critical than women of both Holder and Napolitano.
Fifty percent (50%) of Democrats hold a favorable opinion of Holder. Sixty-six percent (66%) of Republicans and a plurality (44%) of voters not affiliated with either major party do not.
Similarly, 55% of Democrats view Napolitano favorably, while 78% of Republicans and 47% of unaffiliated voters regard her unfavorably.
The Political Class has strongly favorable views of the two Cabinet members, but most Mainstream voters don’t share their enthusiasm.
While a sizable number of voters don’t know much about Holder and Napolitano, they’re still better known than Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, even though they are key players in two of the federal government’s largest concerns – the Gulf oil leak and the new national health care plan.
Despite White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s reputation for hardball politics, voters have a slightly higher opinion of him these days than they did at the beginning of the year.
Voters now think another Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is more qualified to be in the White House than President Obama.
