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President Bush Allegedly Unpopular

I have made it well known that President Bush’s politics and my own are often in serious disagreement. However, I still put some energy into reading blogs and other alternative news sources from the pro-Bush side of the political spectrum. I like to think that I get some level of appreciation for what those who agree strongly with the president are thinking and feeling (at least to such a degree that they express such thoughts and feelings in writing).

This evening, I went to Blogs for Bush, a group blog founded by Matt Margolis. Among several posts that I read, I found one by Mark Noonan discussing President Bush and his role in the 2006 midterm elections. He gives his take on whether an attempt to “nationalize” the midterm elections by Democrats would be helpful or harmful to their chances of regaining majority status in the House and the Senate.

It’s not so much the crux of his argument in which I’m interested. Here is the first line from his post:

Around the left blogosphere, there is a conviction that President Bush’s alleged unpopularity is something that the Democrats can leverage into control of Congress in the November elections.

Mr. Noonan notes “President Bush’s alleged unpopularity”, as though this is indeed an allegation which Mr. Noonan believes has no basis in fact. Far from:

Bush is hardly in the clear: Just 38 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of his work in office, up from 33 percent last month, a gain chiefly among moderate Republicans who’d been inching away. Sixty percent still disapprove of his performance, including just shy of half, a new high, who disapprove “strongly.”

There is nothing alleged about this unpopularity. It’s documented fact. But reporting documented fact as it is doesn’t serve the interest of some in the blogosphere. It’s easier to blur facts, pretend they never existed, or just flat make up new ones. Mr. Noonan definitely took the easy way out here.