Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas probably put it best in a remark to Fox & Friends Tuesday morning about the chaos with the Iowa Caucus Monday evening: “Dems, right now, they can’t stand in a gymnasium and count who stands under which sign and they’re the ones that want to be in charge of our healthcare and everything else in our life.”
That would include convincing Americans they can set and guide national gun policy. There are a lot of gun owners in Iowa. Chances are, they were not impressed Monday night.
Embarrassing is putting things lightly for Democrats who couldn’t determine who finished where Monday evening. According to The Intercept.com, the Bernie Sanders campaign was claiming it had collected numbers from “nearly 40 percent of precincts, tabulated by its campaign organizers.”
“The Sanders campaign reported that it received 29.7 percent of the vote,” the story said, “closely followed by former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 24.6 percent. Sen. Elizabeth Warren came in at 21.2 percent, and former Vice President Joe Biden was fourth at 12.4 percent.”
But all that did was add fuel to the conspiracy theorists that the Democratic National Committee may have been reluctant to announce caucus results Monday night because they simply dread the prospect of Sanders taking the lead.
Adding to the almost clown car atmosphere was Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who spearheaded the impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, arguing, “If abuse of power is not impeachable…Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision whether to go to war.”
There’s that “Russia thing” again, one might observe.
Fox News described what happened in Iowa as a “technical meltdown.”
“The Iowa Democratic Party blamed the debacle on a ‘coding issue’ in its reporting app and pledged to release the caucus results starting late Tuesday afternoon,” Fox News reported.
But that really won’t erase the doubts about Democrats that have gained strength overnight. Here is a party hoping to take over Congress and the White House in November but it cannot even run a state caucus vote effectively.
Adding further to the party’s headaches, Gallup is out with a new poll showing Trump’s approval rating at 49 percent, his best with the polling agency since taking office. More importantly, according to Gallup, “(President Trump’s) 94% approval rating among Republicans is up six percentage points from early January and is three points higher than his previous best among his fellow partisans. The 42% approval rating among independents is up five points, and ties three other polls as his best among that group. Democratic approval is 7%, down slightly from 10%.
“Sixty-three percent of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the economy,” Gallup continued, “up six points from the prior reading in November. It is the highest economic approval rating not only for Trump, but for any president since George W. Bush enjoyed stratospheric job approval ratings in the first few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”
There has been only one president since George W. Bush. His name is Barack Obama.
Rasmussen is reporting that only 10 percent of likely voters have changed their opinion about Trump’s impeachment since the Senate trial began.
And the Rasmussen daily presidential tracking poll shows Trump with a 48 percent job approval rating from voters, while 51 percent disapprove.