Local DC conservative talker Chris Plante announced that Washington Post political writer Aaron Blake on Wednesday had “just exposed your own bias” for this sentence as he delighted in Newt Gingrich’s high unfavorable ratings: “Sarah Palin, even at her most divisive, never saw her unfavorable rating rise above 60 percent in the CNN poll. And even when Republicans were demonizing Nancy Pelosi in the runup to the 2010 election, her unfavorable rating never climbed beyond the high-50s.”
Palin was “divisive” in the active voice, while Pelosi was passively demonized by Republicans. Blake began by citing a joke from Al Franken as a “fun fact” of some kind:
A CNN/Opinion Research poll on Monday showed 63 percent of All Americans viewed Gingrich unfavorably, compared to just 25 percent who saw him in a positive light.
And today, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows a similar split: 54 percent view Gingrich unfavorably, compared to 16 percent who say they feel positively predisposed towards him.
Those 38-point spreads between his favorable and unfavorable ratings are a new high for Gingrich in the 2012 campaign and tie his worst numbers from 1997, when he faced ethics troubles and a GOP revolt during his time as speaker of the House. (Fun fact: now-Sen. Al Franken joked in 1996 that Gingrich’s “favorable rating is only four points higher than the Unabomber.”)
Blake seems like that outlandish joke, but remember, this is the same jerk that went on Twitter to beg "Hey Tweeps: looking for outlandish/incorrect predictions and quotes from Newt Gingrich's past. Any ideas for me?"
