Friday, April 23, 2010

FOX POLL'S PETRAEUS TRIAL BALLOON

Fox News employs three potential GOP presidential candidates -- Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich -- in various capacities, but the 2012 trial balloon in the latest Fox News poll doesn't involve any of them. Here it is, from the PDF of the poll data (click to enlarge):



Oops! The public didn't bite. Respondents were supposed to say that Petraeus's manly bearing would make everything all better, but two thirds of voters said either that he'd be doing about the same as Obama or (the most popular answer) that they just didn't know.

Funny thing: Fox's write-up of the poll makes no mention of this trial-balloon flameout.

As others have noted, the GOP doesn't have a really good candidate pool for 2012 -- which may be what saves President Obama when he runs for reelection. Clearly, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes have noticed. But if they want to solve this problem for the party they serve so loyally, I'm afraid they may have to go back to the drawing board.

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