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Image by \u201ctswedensky\u201d<\/span> [Pixabay<\/a> \/ CC0 public domain<\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/span><\/p>\n This is an exchange from my Facebook page today.<\/span> \u00a0Brent Robbins<\/a>\u2018 words will be in<\/span> green<\/span>; Steven D. Greydanus<\/a>\u2018 words will be in<\/span> blue<\/span>. They are both Catholics.<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Wow\u2026you are voting for Trump, Dave? Such a wide variety of opinion. You are proactively voting Trump while many Catholics are voting 3rd party. Mark Shea basically considers Trump the worst ever as does Steven D. Greydanus.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Of course. I vote for the GOP, above all else because it is pro-life. Jeb (!!!!!) Bush, Graham, Cruz, Fiorina and others all pledged at the debates to support the GOP candidate. I guess that\u2019s how good they are for their word (which is one of Trump\u2019s points: politicians \u201csay one thing and do another\u201d).\u00a0Yep.\u00a0Christie, Carson, Huckabee, Perry, Rubio, and Jindal were true to their word.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If Satan himself won the GOP nomination, would you still vote for him because of party allegiance?<\/span><\/p>\n No: because Satan ain\u2019t pro-life. The babies are more important than anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n Well, I admire and respect your difference of opinion,\u00a0Dave.<\/span><\/p>\n My allegiances are, in order: 1) my Lord Jesus Christ, 2) The Catholic Church, set up by Jesus, 3) [politically] the pro-life issue. The GOP just happens to be the party that has had a pro-life platform since 1980 (not sure if it did in 1976 or not). Thus, it is a means to an end with regard to the paramount life issue.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a huge problem that Catholics don\u2019t vote GOP. That\u2019s what gave us eight years of Obama Paradise and Utopia (Catholic majority vote both times). Now lots of folks are working as hard as they can to give us a Billary presidency.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Reagan was hated every bit as much as Trump is: if not more<\/em>. I remember. I was there.<\/p>\n This appears to be untrue, at least in a measurable way.<\/span> [link to news article<\/a>\u00a0and a second related one<\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n If we are comparing Trump\u2019s unpopularity to Reagan\u2019s in 1980, this poll [first link] can\u2019t help, because you said it goes back \u201c32 years\u201d, which takes it back to 1984. Of course, Reagan was relatively popular then, whereas we need to go back to 1980 when Reagan first ran, and was 15-20 points behind at this stage of the campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n I simply vote for the candidate that most aligns with my views. If that\u2019s not a GOP candidate, so be it. And I don\u2019t think Trump is pro-life and I think electing him will hurt the pro-life cause, but that\u2019s just speculation and no way to prove\/disprove with certainty.<\/span><\/p>\n Lest we forget how Reagan was regarded . . .<\/span> [link to news article<\/a>\u00a0providing many quotes from liberals about Reagan]<\/span><\/p>\n Billary \u00a0favors partial-birth infanticide and no restrictions whatever.\u00a0Trump\u2019s stated position is identical to that of both Bushes, Dole, McCain, and Romney (and I believe, also Reagan).\u00a0Elder Bush, Romney, and Reagan (like Trump) were all pro-choice prior to being President.<\/span><\/p>\n [to Brent] And Billary Clinton will help the pro-life cause?<\/span><\/p>\n Indirectly. Similar to how Obama has increased gun ownership, though he is pro-gun control.<\/span><\/p>\n Pro-life is the paramount issue. Fortunately, I don\u2019t have to choose a hateful \/ bigoted pro-lifer over a cheerful, wonderfully nice pro-abort childkiller (as if those things can co-exist).<\/span><\/p>\n I reject the premise. Liberals claim every election cycle that all GOP candidates are bigots, sexist, and now homophobes, too. What else is new? Yawn (-_-) ZZZZzzzzzzz \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re in a culture that isn\u2019t taught to enter into objective political and cultural analysis. It\u2019s all slogans and sound bites and spin and party play books.\u00a0Theological discussion is largely the same, too, wherever there are heartfelt differences. It\u2019s my constant occupational hazard (and immense frustration).\u00a0Once in a while, true dialogue occurs, but it\u2019s about as rare as a needle in a haystack anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n Hey, here\u2019s another source, based on Gallup data<\/span> [link<\/a>], that goes back to 1980 (though strangely only lists Reagan\u2019s info for 1984; still, clearly<\/em>\u00a0Trump is an extreme outlier and Reagan\u2019s 1980 data couldn\u2019t be that<\/em>\u00a0different from his 1984 data). Is this source acceptable? <\/span><\/p>\n The 538<\/em> article shows me that this aspect is a wash, since it states: \u201cClinton and Trump are both more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles.\u201d\u00a0We haven\u2019t even seen the results of the FBI investigation and what it\u2019ll do to Billary\u2019s ratings.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course that is assuming that Democrats would even be concerned about running a reputedly felonious candidate. Seeing that they love Bill Clinton (convicted of perjury and lost his law license), that is not at all a foregone conclusion. But perhaps a few Democrats still care about the rule of law.<\/span><\/p>\n The national campaign has scarcely begun, so it is virtually irrelevant to note that he is hugely unpopular right now. Of course<\/em>\u00a0he is. He\u2019s been hit with multi-million dollars\u2019 worth of innumerable negative ads, mostly from his GOP rivals, who crap all over Reagan\u2019s 11th commandment and don\u2019t even keep to their supposed \u201cword\u201d regarding supporting whomever the GOP nominee is.<\/span><\/p>\n Once he starts fighting back and spends more than one-20th or so of what his opponents are spending on ads, then we\u2019ll see how the poll numbers change, as they obviously did with Reagan in 1980.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, when I look at this chart<\/span> [link<\/a>], even though it doesn\u2019t tell us where Reagan\u2019s strongly unfavorability ratings where in 1980, there\u2019s just no way that they were over 50% like Trump\u2019s today, but that four years later they plummeted to 20%.<\/span><\/p>\n Apples to apples comparisons are a wash?<\/span><\/p>\n If they are both<\/em> hugely unpopular, and we haven\u2019t even seen the FBI results, and Sanders is still there dividing the Democrats, why is is unreasonable to argue that this aspect is a wash?<\/span><\/p>\n Someone made the point that the way things are going and the government as a whole is even MORE unpopular.\u00a0Hence,<\/span> Real Clear Politics<\/em> polling<\/a>:<\/p>\n Direction of country: \u201cwrong track\u201d: 65.1% (- 38.5%)<\/span><\/p>\n Congress: 77% negative (- 63.2%)<\/span><\/p>\n Since Trump opposes this status quo and Billary represents it, it is advantage Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n The poll isn\u2019t telling us who is going to win. It\u2019s telling us about strongly unpopular ratings at T minus X weeks from election night. All these numbers (including the numbers of past candidates) will presumably change as X gets closer to the election. In a month, we can compare them all again and see how they look then. This is how they look now. It\u2019s not a perfect metric, but the fact that only Trump has ever broken the 50% strong disapproval threshold at this point in the campaign is pretty striking anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think so. No one has ever been hit with the avalanche of hit piece ads and ferocious internal GOP opposition, like he has. We\u2019re so damned stupid in the GOP that we think trashing our own nominee over and over, with anything, whether true or not, will help our prospects of winning in November.<\/span><\/p>\n But the people see through it: that\u2019s the good news. Trump said he is anti-establishment, and the proof is in how the establishment is now reacting: Chicken Little apocalypticism.\u00a0That gives him all the more credibility, whereas folks like Jeb Bush, Sen. Graham, Sen. Cruz, would-be VP (for a week) Fiorina, are all shown to be liars (the pledge they took) and disloyal to their own party.<\/span><\/p>\n Okay. We\u2019ll see what happens. Peace.<\/span><\/p>\n Things can go the other way, too. Elder Bush had an 89% approval rate in February 1991, and lost the election a year and nine months later. See Gallup<\/a>. President\u00a0Reagan had a 35% job approval rating at the beginning of 1983. Then in the election of 1984 he won 59% to 41%, with 525 electoral votes to Mondale\u2019s 13. In May 1986 he had a 68% favorability rating.<\/span> See Gallup again<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of this explains why I am not all that concerned with Trump\u2019s high negatives, though obviously one would hope they weren\u2019t as high as they are. I think they will come down, and Hillary\u2019s will go up, and that in the end it\u2019ll either be a wash or advantage Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/span><\/p>\n Meta Description:\u00a0Discussion of Donald Trump\u2019s \u201chistoric\u201d high negative poll numbers & whether they can change, & whether he can win with them.<\/span><\/p>\n Meta Keywords:\u00a02016 Presidential campaign, presidential election 2016, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, election polling, election polls<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Image by \u201ctswedensky\u201d [Pixabay \/ CC0 public domain] ***** This is an exchange from my Facebook page today. \u00a0Brent Robbins\u2018 words will be in green; Steven D. Greydanus\u2018 words will be in blue. They are both Catholics. ***** Wow\u2026you are voting for Trump, Dave? Such a wide variety of opinion. You are proactively voting Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":7407,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[289],"tags":[2768,1826,2797,2798,2424,2796],"class_list":["post-7406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-ethical-moral-issues","tag-2016-presidential-campaign","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-polling","tag-election-polls","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-presidential-election-2016"],"yoast_head":"\n