Quotes of the Morning: Polling with the Big Dick

“My sense of it is that what’s happened here now over the last few weeks is that the president has shored up his position with the speech he made a couple of weeks ago, specifically on Iraq. And I think the speech, frankly Tuesday night, the State of the Union address was one of his best. I think there’s been a very positive reaction of people who saw the speech. And I think to some extent that’s helped shore us up inside the party on the Hill.”
-Vice President Dick Cheney, January 25, 2007

“That must have been one heck of a State of the Union speech. I watched it, but I apparently didn’t appreciate it on enough levels. I mean, going into it, after that first speech that Cheney mentioned, things were looking pretty bleak for Fearless Leader.”
-Skippy

“President Bush’s address to the nation last week failed to move public opinion in support of his plan to increase U.S. troop levels in Iraq and left Americans more pessimistic about the likely outcome of the war.”
-USA Today, January 15, 2007-01-29

“The findings of the survey, conducted after Bush’s primetime speech, represent an initial rebuke to the White House goal of generating additional public support for the mission in Iraq. The poll found that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, with 52 percent saying they strongly oppose the plan. Just 36 percent said they back the president’s new proposal.”
-Washington Post, January 11, 2007

“Americans were not swayed very much by President Bush’s speech Wednesday night outlining his new strategy for the war in Iraq, according to a CBS News poll.”
-CBS News, January 11, 2007

“If he has shored up his position, then it must all have been due to that incredible State of the Union address. Wow.. People must have seen a lot more in that speech than I did.”
-Skippy

“President Bush's approval rating is at an all-time low of 30 percent after his State of the Union speech last week, a Newsweek magazine poll found.
That compares with 31 percent who approved of the president's job performance in Newsweek's poll the week before.
The new poll also found that 58 percent of respondents said they ‘personally wish’ Bush's presidency was over, and 53 percent said they think history will see him as a below-average president.
Bush's decisions about policy in Iraq and other areas are influenced more by his personal beliefs than the facts, according to 67 percent of those polled.
The poll, scheduled for publication in the magazine's Feb. 5 edition, was based on interviews of 1,003 adults on Thursday and Friday.”
-Bloomberg News, January 27, 2006

“President Bush, battered by the war in Iraq, has become one of the least-popular presidents in the country's history, new polls reveal.
According to a CBS News poll, his approval rating is down to a paltry 28 percent.
Newsweek's survey gives him a slightly better 30 percent and the latest Gallup Poll says 31 percent of Americans approve of the way he's doing his job.
Not since Jimmy Carter and the Iran hostage crisis, or Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, has a modern president gotten such dismal numbers.
Carter's approval rating at his lowest point in the polls was 26 percent, according to CBS. Nixon's was 24 percent, according to Gallup.
The Nixon poll was conducted in August 1974, just days before he became the only president to resign from office.
Bush is so unpopular that more than half the country wishes he would leave office now. The explosive Newsweek survey, released yesterday, says 58 percent of Americans would be happy to see him step down immediately.”
-New York Post, January 27, 2007

“Well, you really have to go back to Vietnam and Watergate to find presidential speeches on television that didn’t give the President at least a little bump in the polls. Let me give you an example here. In the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton went on television to give his State of the Union address. Even in the midst of that scandal, Mr. Clinton went up 16 points in the polls. Going on prime time TV and nothing changes, that is fairly extraordinary, Katie.”
-Bob Schieffer, January 11, 2007

“That can’t be right.. I mean, if Fearless Leader was that unpopular you’d thing that Vice-Leader Cheney would know about it. He wouldn’t lie to us. The Big Dick has always been so honest before.”
-Skippy

“With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack.”
-Dick Cheney, September 14, 2003

“Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.”
-Dick Cheney, December 9, 2001

“Borger: ‘Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, ‘pretty well confirmed.’ ‘
Cheney: ‘No, I never said that.’
Borger: ‘Okay.'
Cheney: ‘Never said that.’
Borger: ‘I think that is . . . ‘
Cheney: ‘Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down.’”
-Dick Cheney Interview with Gloria Borger, June 17, 2004

“And for those of you keeping track at home.. At the start of Bill Clinton’s seventh year in office (you know, after the Monica Lewinsky lovin’) he was at 65% in the polls. I’m beginning to thing that Vice-Leader Cheney is somewhat deluded.”
-Skippy

“The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone – but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history. We’re going to continue throwing their own words back at them.”
-Dick Cheney, November 16, 2005

"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!"
-Homer J. Simpson