CBS Poll Claims Obama More Bipartisan Than Republicans

Photo of Kyle Drennen.
  • Bookmark and Share

Poll Numbers, CBS On Thursday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Chip Reid touted a new CBS News poll that portrayed Barack Obama as being more bipartisan on the current "stimulus" spending bill being debated in Congress, than Republicans: "The new CBS News poll shows 81 percent of Americans think the president is trying for bipartisanship, but less than half say congressional Republicans and Democrats are doing the same." The poll, which separated the president from his fellow Democrats in Congress, claimed 49 percent of Americans felt congressional Democrats were being bipartisan, while only 41 percent said the same of congressional Republicans.

However, those poll findings were not reported on Friday’s CBS Early Show. Perhaps because later Thursday night, speaking at a retreat for House Democrats, Obama declared: "Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis...We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin...We can't embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face, that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or failing schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees."

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

While introducing Reid’s report, anchor Katie Couric revealed another CBS poll that claimed that 51 percent of Americans still support the "stimulus" bill. That finding is at odds with other recently conducted polls, including a Rasmussen poll that placed public support at only 37 percent and a Gallup poll that found only 38 percent of Americans support the bill in its current form.

Here is the full transcript of Reid’s report:

6:37PM SEGMENT:

KATIE COURIC: Turning now to the health of the economy, the Labor Department reports 626,000 more Americans joined the line for unemployment benefits last week, the most in more than 26 years. They join a record 4.7 million already collecting. President Obama has a plan he says will create jobs but public support for it is shrinking. A CBS News poll out tonight finds it's fallen 12 points this month to just over 50%. But the president is not giving up. Here's Chip Reid.

CHIP REID: The president took direct aim today at Republican critics of his stimulus package, whose ideas, he said, have already been tried and failed.

BARACK OBAMA: And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment and now's the time to move forward, not back.

REID: The new CBS News poll shows 81% of Americans think the president is trying for bipartisanship, but less than half say congressional Republicans and Democrats are doing the same.

[ON SCREEN GRAPHIC: TRYING FOR BIPARTISANSHIP, PRESIDENT OBAMA: 81%, CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS: 41%, CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS: 49%]

REID: Today on the Senate floor, the partisan warfare continued as some Republicans complained that a bill full of wasteful spending is being shoved down their throats.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: This bill stinks. The process that's led to this bill stinks.

REID: Democrats fired back that Republicans are trying to tar the bill by focusing on a small number of questionable projects.

DICK DURBIN: That their measures account for one page. One page of this bill.

REID: But as the two parties point fingers, the size of the bill has soared in the Senate, with both parties voting overwhelmingly to add $69 billion to protect the middle class from the alternative minimum tax, $11 billion in tax credits for car buyers, and $19 billion in tax breaks for home buyers, bringing the total to more than $900 billion. Today a bipartisan group of about 16 senators who say they can't support a bill that big, met behind closed doors, seeking up to $100 billion in cuts, which they say is tough going.

BEN NELSON: Nobody said it would be easy, but it's very difficult to try to bring people together.

REID: Late today, the president boarded Marine One on the White House lawn for the first time, unlike past presidents, stopping to shake hands with the marine guard. Minutes later, he boarded Air Force One for his first out-of-town trip as president to a House Democrats' retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia. During the flight, the president, wearing his Air Force One jacket, went to the back of the plane and talked to reporters, sounding confident that a bill in the range of $800 billion will be passed. Katie.

COURIC: Chip Reid at the White House tonight. Thank you, Chip.

—Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.


Comments Policy

All comments are owned by whoever posted them and are subject to our terms of use. They should not be assumed to represent the views of NewsBusters.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Bipartisan = BS

Bipartisan is such an overused word!  Ugh!  Gimme a break. Pelosi yaps about bipartisanship and in her very next breath she says 'we won' and 'the republicans have bad ideas' etc.. it's a big joke.  And Pres. Obama has said the same thing 'we won'....translation, shut up and sit down Republicans, it's our time now.   

You can't be bipartisan when it's convenient, you are or you aren't.  

Oh, and does anyone know why the heck Pres. Obama was passive and hands-off, delegating the drafting of the stimulus bill to Pelosi and team?  What a stupid and weak move...I don't get it.  He better start leading and grow a pair or he's going to lose control of his own Presidency.

Agreed

You are only bipartisan if you are Democrat and voting on Obama's spending spree.

If you get it through, you get a sailor's suit and an unlimited balance charge card.

Sailor's suit

Not in my navy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

$100 billion in cuts, which

$100 billion in cuts, which they say is tough going

What? Tough going? Here's a handy list. There's damn near $300 billion here. How tough can it be?

rimsky

Excellant link

In other news, it was

In other news, it was reported today that the deer and antelope in our national parks have suffered record layoffs.  However, bambi, the first stupid liberal and his congressional dimocrats are on top of it.  They have allocated nearly $2 billion dollars, should the porkulus bill pass, to this tragic million year unemployment record low that the dear and the antelope are experiencing.

bambi, stateed, " . . . this will get the deer and the antelope back to work . . .  This is a must pass bill.  I want all Americans to be able to go where the deer and the antelope play!"

In other news, still one more prospective cabinet post member "forgot" to pay her taxes in what many are calling the worst start to any presidential term in anyone's memory.  

Finally, this just in, Chris, tingly leg, Matthews, will be staying overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom.  We can't wait until tingly reports on his "experience."

Katie . . .

 

And much less respectful of others......

 Obama's Tardiness Sets Him Apart From Bush

WASHINGTON -- There's a new time zone in the nation's capital: Obama Time.

Barely two weeks into his presidency, Barack Obama has made a clean break from George W. Bush in several high-profile moves, including reversing a number of the 43rd president's policies. 

He's also reversed an unwritten but much-noticed Bush policy: Be on time, all the time. 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/05/obamas-tardiness-sets-apart-predecessor/

But when you're the Messiah people aren't just going to have to wait, aren't they?

Reworking the Spectrum

I see an active movement among the liberals and the liberal media to redefine the political poles. Far-left marxists like Obammy are being reimaged into 'centrists', and ANYone on the conservative side is being reimaged as an 'extremist'. In the new remade political spectrum someone like Hillary Clinton might be the only '(new) conservative' not labeled an extremist.

If successful this of course benefits the democratics enormously. Now, most of us are smart enough to not care what someone like Stephanopopolis labels us, but there is a slightly-dimwitted portion of the voting population and those coming up that are susceptible to this kind of reprogramming.

He says that the "failed

He says that the "failed policies of the last 8 years" are ones we cannot go back to. But, it was Bush's over spending, NOT the tax cuts, that double the debt. Yet Obama wants to go and spend a trillion or two dollars that we do not have. Hypocrisy anyone?

Obama is a masterful

Obama is a masterful manipulator of the public with he help of the media.  All he has to do is say bipartisan and take a meeting or two, and *poof* he's making all the effort.  Congress, on the other hand, has to do all the dirty work and is taking the fall.  Barack always has it both ways.  If it succeeds, he brought people together.  If it fails, it's all Pelosi or Reed's fault.

He may be naive when it comes to running a country, but he's a pro at information warfare.

The cookies--don't forget them

He gave the nasty old Republicans cookies--and they still questioned him. The horror.

You gotta give president

You gotta give president obama a lot of credit.  Nobody thought that a presidential administration could be so f***ed up so quickly.  His problem is that he hasn't gotten to the chapter in saul ansky's book where he learns to make everyone bow to him and do whatever he wants.  Unfortunately for that little prick, the modern American conservative has an advanced bulls*** detection system.  "Transparancy" - Bulls***.  "we won, meaning we have a mandate to do whatever we want" - Bulls***.  "No lobbyists" - Bulls***.  "Ethics in the administration" - Double Bulls*** (why is geithner still in his administration???).  "There's no pork in this bill" - Super Bulls***.  "A catastrophe if this bill is not passed NOW!" - The same bulls*** they told us with the first 700 billion bailout.  

 

This little freak is destroying the trust and the sanctity of the office of the President.  He wants to pass a spending bill to pay back all the little libtard special interest groups that emptied their wallets for him.  He desperately needs Republican support so WHEN this bill doesn't do jack-diddly-s***, he can have someone to blame it on.  This bill is 1.2 trillion dollars worth of everything obama/pelosi/reed stand for:

 

Bulls***

 

obama's notion of bi-partisanship is telling conservatives to shut up and do what he wants.

For other than the Kool-Aid drinkers.....

....I think his act is going to get very old, very, very quickly. 

It's one thing to be preached to by a preacher, it's another to be preached to by a con artist.

Prester, just what do you

Prester, just what do you mean by "going to get..."? It was real old by January.

Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!

I guess I was referring....

...to those non-Kool Aid drinking Dems and moderates who felt it was worth the risk voting for the Annointed One.

Anyone who saw through this of course is already changing the channel whenever he shows up.

"The American Express Infinity Card"

"You gotta give president obama a lot of credit." 

We are -a Trillion Dollars is a lot of credit...

The "Mainstream" Media: By liberals. For liberals.

Crumbling America, thanks to Obama

". . . .crumbling bridges and roads and levees."

Ummm didn't we already pay to repair these bridges, roads and levees with tax dollars from fuel taxes (and more)? If not, then what are those taxes and highway funds for??

D

Keep the ILLEGALS out, join NumbersUSA to send free faxes to your reps.

Before we believe, or

Before we believe, or really understand, what a poll is actually describing, we should know the following:

1. Who is paying for it?

2. What are the specific questions? What hypothesis are they testing? What do the sponsors  really want to know?

3. Have the questions been field tested?

4. What is the sponsor of the poll trying to measure? And how do they define it (in this case, "bipartisan")

5. What statistical package is being used to run the numbers?

6. Who came up with the questions? Why did they chose these questions?

7. What is the internal reliability of the poll?

8. Who was sampled and on what basis? M/F, income level, etc. Not in general, but in specific details.

9. How were the questions designed? How was the design chosen? Who were the questions tested on? What were the results of the field tests?

10 Are the questions correlated. If so, how?

11. How are the results going to be used?

12. How was the poll administered?

There are many more issues to consider, as well.

Unless we know the answers to at least some of these questions, it's nearly impossible to know what the poll is actually describing.  

For liberal Democrats and the Old Media, everything is crisis, chaos, calamity and catastrophe. That justifies stealing your property and liberties.

Gosh Durn it,

another poll they left me out of. Don't you just wonder who they do ask anyway? Bipartisan for obama = if you agree with me okay and if not I'll do the best I can to destroy you. I'm pretty sure I aint seeing no give and take in his way of doing business.

hhahaha

 

Communist Backing Nuts??????? 

well obama is reaching out

well obama is reaching out to the republicans, and they are saying no

pelosi and her crowd, heck john  kerry even said - who cares what the republicans want?  we have the votes, and they do, i don't know why they would try to appease the GOP at all?

because he wants to share the blame when it goes south

REID: Late today, the

REID: Late today, the president boarded Marine One on the White House lawn for the first time, unlike past presidents, stopping to shake hands with the marine guard.

Oh please....ROFLMAO!!

Leave it to the press to cover this blunder of his....as usual.

Polls like these are all

Polls like these are all smoke and mirrors. Actually, all polls are smoke and mirrors.

Evil California

 

 Making Fun of AGW http://giovanniworld.wordpress.com/  

CBS has their own polls,

CBS has their own polls, but I talk with ordinary people everyday who, have come to realize that 'Network News' cannot be trusted.  People have really had it with the MSM bias...and that's no bull!

 

Most Americans can't even

Most Americans can't even say 'bipartisanship' much less know what it means.

It certainly doesn't mean bullying the other party into accepting over-the-top ideological legislation.  The Democrats in Congress were truly bi-partisan in backing President Bush in going to Iraq and Afghanistan (though they surely sniped at him from the outside).

The argument between Republicans and Democrats should be about the extent of the role of government in the American People's lives-neither side needs to be running the whole show.

If hardcore Conservatives ran everything you wouldn't even get unemployment and millions would have nothing, not even Social Security for retirement.

If the Social Democrats ran everything there would only be government-sponsored employment and a lifetime of living on SSI.

One of the 24% who thinks George W. Bush was a great President. One of the 89% who wants to bring back the stock and pillory.

Viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.