Charlie Cook at the National Journal makes a good point about why the Scandal of the Week is having no impact on the president’s approval rating.
The current situation is reminding many folks of the impeachment controversy in 1998. Blinded by their hatred for President Clinton, Republicans made irrational decisions then, and they are making the same mistakes today. For some House Republicans, their view of the president is a natural by-product of representing districts that are custom-drawn, conservative cocoons, where everyone pretty much thinks the same. These districts aren’t representative of the nation as a whole.
Cook’s basic point is that the Republicans are having a hard time tarnishing the president’s credibility because they themselves have no credibility. And I would posit that the beltway media is also running low on credibility especially after the doctored Benghazi emails were exposed last week as a fraud.
More importantly, as Cook points out, President Obama will never appear on a ballot again, but the Republicans are still obsessed with opposing him.
It doesn’t seem far fetched to me to say the president’s approval rating could remain more or less static over the next four years unless something financially catastrophic were to happen.
Voters saw fit to elect the president twice and at this point lines of division in the electorate are fairly clear. And that’s bad news for Republicans, because the current electorate is not one they can win with.