In this week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers, we see one of the largest splits between Left and Right bloggers ever recorded in this this poll (which is several months old). The first topic was a four part question about whether Obama was over-reaching with global warming tax, health care spending increase, doubling the national debt, or cutting itemized deductions for high earners. On the Left, the answer was a 100% “no” on three of those, with a 92% “no” on the debt. On the Right, the answer was 86-93% “yes” on all of them.
I voted “yes” on everything, and wrote: “He’s even worse than George W. Bush on wild spending increases and reckless deficits. That’s like being even fatter than Fat Albert.”
The second question was whether Obama was governing more to the left or more to the center than expected. For the Left bloggers, the plurality winner was the write-in: “about as expected.” Things were about equally divided between the other two choices.
For the Right bloggers, “more to the left” was the choice of 73%. I was among those who was surprised, and wrote: “Almost as far left as I feared he might be during the campaign, based on his record as an elected official. During the transition period, I mistakenly thought that some of the appointments portended a more centrist approach, but that has certainly not been the case on fiscal policy.”