NBC's Chuck Todd took Karl Rove and other Republicans to task today for outright lying about Obama being "the most polarizing president in American history." Todd said it's not true. He also explained that Republicans ought to be careful about what polls they use to push this phony storyline. The problem, as Todd explains it (hat tip DKos), is that Republicans have fled their own party, so the remaining pool of "Republicans" in polls are uber-conservative, and dwindling:
And then the other thing that Republicans ought to be aware of when they're making these charges, is that the pool of Republicans has gotten smaller, and so sure, the most conservative part of the party is still identifying themselves as Republicans, and absolutely, three out of four disapprove of the President's job. But there are a lot of former Republicans sitting in that independent category now, Nora, and a majority of independents do approve of the President's job. So it is a, it's one of these things that Republicans ought to be careful about how they're writing it because it's not, it's not the best news. It's a smaller group of Republicans that are identifying themselves that way and when you're getting shellacked in the middle like that, it doesn't matter what the ends look like. The middle is what decides these elections and right now we're seeing the President, he had big numbers with the middle during the election and he still has big numbers with them now.This is a point I made the other day. Here is the video of Todd:
