The new Pew Poll takes on the “Obama is doing too much” meme:
So far, do you think Barack Obama is …
Trying to address too many issues at once – 35%
Focusing on too few issues – 4%
Doing about right – 56%
As one might expect, the “too many issues” response is being driven by 53% of Republicans, with 37% of GOPers saying he’s doing about right. It would make perfect sense for Republicans to think Obama is doing too much — quite a lot of them don’t like what he’s doing to begin with.
The poll also contains an interesting piece of data about Republican attitudes: Not only is disproval of President Obama going up as the honeymoon effect wears off — which was to be expected — but approval of their own GOP Congressional leaders is going down, too.
In the Pew poll from a month ago, Republican respondents approved of the GOP leadership by a 55%-33% margin. But now, that numbers is down to 43%-37%. Among all respondents, the GOP leadership’s approval is at 28%-51%, down from 34%-51%, so they’re definitely not succeeding politically right now.
Overall, Obama’s approval has gone from 65%-17% in February to 59%-26% now. Republican disapproval of Obama has gone up from 41% to 56%, disapproval among independents has gone from 14% to 27%, and Democratic disapproval has gone from three percent to…five percent.
