Fox is touting their latest Fox Poll, which not only claims that Hillary Clinton’s popularity is slipping, but shows that people think Hillary is less ethical than other politicians. Fox News asks, is this a “[t]roubling trend for [the] Democratic presidential candidate?”
No. But it’s funny to hear appallingly unethical Fox News talk about anyone else being unethical.
Look, first of all, it’s Fox News, where at least half of what they say is a complete fabrication. You can do the calculus there, I think. But for the record, here are their talking points:
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But no, the answer would seem to be, this dubious piece of reporting is not at all troubling. Not only because Fox News itself has been unable to wish Hillary away in previous polls, but for the simple reason that as we can easily discern from Gallup’s latest findings, Republican attempts to derail Hillary Clinton seem to have failed miserably, and not only in Iowa.
While “42% say Clinton would do good job on foreign policy as president” (68 percent if you add the “fair” ratings to the “good”) she rates even higher with race relations. In fact, Gallup says, the “Public perceives Clinton’s greatest strength would be race relations,” where she tops out at 44 percent “good” and 33 percent “fair.”
Despite getting mixed reviews from those polled for her tenure as Secretary of State, Gallup found that,
Americans are more likely to say Hillary Clinton would do a good job handling foreign affairs as president than to say she would do a bad job, but this rating is no higher than her rating on the economy and healthcare, and is lower than her rating on handling race relations.
It just doesn’t matter how many bad things they say about Hillary, does it? They’ve got to be stomping their little feet, wondering what it will take to destroy Hillary Clinton.
As you can see, people are more likely to believe Hillary will do a good job in all the important areas, though Gallup warns that,
Clinton’s perceived strengths on various issues are not closely synchronized with the importance Americans put on those same issues. The issue Americans think Clinton would handle best — race relations — receives the lowest importance in terms of potential voting considerations. The three issues on which Clinton receives her next highest ratings are spread out across the issue importance spectrum: the economy is at the top of the importance list, healthcare policy in the middle and foreign affairs near the bottom.
This may not be as critical as you would think, once you factor in that she has handily defeated every potential Republican contender in polling, sometimes in their own states.
Even Fox News admits that Hillary gets a favorable rating from 82 percent of Democrats, while “There are four on the GOP side who receive 50 percent or better among self-identified Republicans: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (58 percent), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (56 percent), Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (54 percent) and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (51 percent).”
Remember, those scary 50 percenters are from Republicans. And if her strengths are not synchronized with the importance of various issues, it has not been proven that the Republicans have any strengths at all.
For example, Republicans fail miserably at race relations. My own chiropractor told me the other day that “all these protesters” don’t want equal rights. They want special rights, he said. I was speechless. It’s special rights to want to be treated equally under the law? Really?
We have already seen the laughable approach Republican candidates have to ISIL. And Jeb Bush…well he can’t decide if it was a good idea to invade Iraq or not, and his final response, which finally brought him into general alignment with other Republican hopefuls, lacked sincerity, to say the least. One gets the impression he would second guess himself over which pen to use, or which shoe to tie first.
Republicans are against immigration, some even against legal immigration, and they love how wealth is being distributed in favor of their rich owners, which is not how the American people feel about those issues. They want to take away our healthcare and make us by Apple watches instead. And they already showed they will run the economy into the ground again, first chance they get. Just look at Kansas and Michigan and Wisconsin. Look at Red States in general.
On the issues? Not a good area for Republicans. Which is why they spend all their time attacking Hillary. They’ve got nothing else to talk about. Nothing that won’t make them sound less clueless and incompetent than they already do. Meanwhile, Hillary has put them on the defensive on nearly every issue over the past days.
Bottom line, says Gallup,
Hillary Clinton’s experience as secretary of state does not appear to be either an exceptionally strong positive for her or a strong negative with the U.S. public. Americans rate her potential performance as president on the foreign policy dimension about the same as several other issues and below how she would do on what appears to be a more distinctive strength — her ability to deal with race relations. Looking back, less than half of Americans say she did an outstanding or above average job as secretary of state, a rating that is below her current overall favorable rating.
That is bad news for Republicans. They have dedicated the past few years to using Benghazi to crush Hillary, and they have failed. They have tarnished her reputation a bit through their baseless and unrelenting attacks, and with the full cooperation of the mainstream media, which loves to bash Hillary while ignoring Republican buffoonery, but it would appear the public – minus Republicans – is more discerning.
If Republican policy positions are going to be based on nothing but finding a point opposite Hillary Clinton, as the last six years have been based on opposing Barack Obama, we might suggest they think again.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
