There’s a great line in ‘Enter The Dragon’ where Bruce Lee, at the island martial arts tournament that figures in the film, is preparing to fight the big, scarred, violent-looking martial artist (Bob Wall) who killed his sister.<\/p>\n
Wall tosses a board up in the air, and shatters it midair with a blow.<\/p>\n
Lee looks at him, smiles slightly, and says: “Boards don’t hit back” and then proceeds to do a martial arts clinic on Wall’s body.<\/p>\n
I actually got to use a line like that once…<\/p>\n
Looking over at Atrios’ site today, I notice him rhapsodizing<\/a> about this map<\/a>, over on Daily Kos – showing the depth and geographic spread of national disapproval of President Bush.<\/p>\n The first thought I had when I saw it was “Polls don’t pass laws.<\/i>” Now polls do matter – just as breaking boards in midair matters in demonstrating martial arts expertise.<\/p>\n But the problem with approval\/disapproval polls is that they don’t factor well for people like me – who didn’t approve much of what Bush had done in 2004, but when looking at who he was running against, approved even less.<\/p>\n As an example, Kaus points us<\/a> at some recent California polls (where the Governator is doing about as badly as Bush in the polls) for two of his possible rivals –<\/p>\n They don’t like you! They really don’t like you! Warren Beatty and Rob Reiner aren’t nearly as popular as their backers thought they were<\/a>, according to the latest Field Poll. Beatty’s rating is 40% unfavorable\/27% favorable–among Democrats! Yikes. .. Reiner is at least more popular than unpopular within his own party, but overall his unfavorables outweigh his favorables among independents (34\/24) and overall (41\/25). …<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So I keep bringing it home to two simple points:<\/p>\n # I’m not so convinced that “Not Bush” is a winning campaign strategy; can we possibly come up with some better ones?<\/p>\n \n# And I’m absolutely convinced that if we could win an election with this, it’d be a recipe for disaster as a strategy for governing.<\/p>\n
\nYes, Bush and his administration are struggling with their popularity. But the Republican Party is likely to survive the mid-term elections with control of Congress (thanks in no small part to gerrymandering), and it is likely that the GOP will continue to control the apparatus of power until 2008.<\/p>\n