Rasmussen: ObamaCare hits highest disapproval rate yet

The bounce from Barack Obama’s speech last week to Congress continues to amplify … to Obama’s detriment.  Rasmussen now reports that opposition to ObamaCare has reached its highest level yet, at 56%, while only 43% support it.  Majorities now believe that health care would get worse and more expensive under Obama’s overhaul of the American health-care system:

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters nationwide now oppose the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the highest level of opposition yet measured and includes 44% who are Strongly Opposed.

Just 43% now favor the proposal, including 24% who Strongly Favor it. …

If the plan passes, 26% of voters say the quality of care will get better, and 51% say it will get worse. In August, the numbers were 23% better and 50% worse.

Fifty-one percent (51%) say passage of the plan will make the cost of health care go up while 20% say it will make costs go down. In August, 52% thought the plan would lead to higher costs, and just 17% thought it would achieve the stated goal of lowering costs.

President Obama plans a media blitz this weekend to make his case — again – for ObamaCare.  So far, his media blitzes appear to have had the opposite reaction as he hopes.  Obama hasn’t exactly been shy about his media appearances, as Jim Geraghty notes from a USA Today report:

Obama will have done 124 print, broadcast and radio interviews by day’s end on Sunday, according to a tally by Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland. George W. Bush did 40 and Bill Clinton did 46 by the same point in their presidencies.

At times, it seems that the only strategy employed by this administration is to do the opposite of whatever the previous administration did.  That’s certainly true of media appearances, but the returns have been diminishing for some time.  Even while blanketing the media, Obama has dropped under 50% approval on a wide range of issues, including health care and the economy, two traditional Democratic strengths.

Part of the reason why this strategy has not been effective is because Obama has had nothing new to say in months.  He appears convinced that the answer to voter rejection of his arguments is to offer them repeatedly and in increasing loudness and anger.  His latest foray into prime time should have educated him to the folly of this approach.

That brings us to Sunday, when Obama will appear in five televised interviews.  Will the media press him for new arguments?  What exactly should they ask him, and what will Obama be prepared to tell them?  I have a few questions myself for the President, and any of the interviewers should feel free to use them:

• Why did your administration continue to insist publicly that cap-and-trade would cost the average household $175 per year when an analysis from Treasury showed the cost more than ten times that amount?  Why did it take a FOIA application to release that study in the “most transparent administration ever?”
• Why did you pick the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion to reverse course on missile defense in Poland?
• You suggested that an amnesty program would solve the problem of illegal immigrant access to the health-care system in the US after your overhaul.  Do you think Americans should subsidize health-insurance coverage for people who entered the country illegally?
• Two years ago, you told people on the campaign trail that paying for more coverage through efficiency savings in the health-care system was a myth, and that it would take higher taxes to overhaul the health care system.  Now you argue the opposite.  Why?

I’m sure I’ll add more later, and feel free to add yours in the comments.

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