By The Numbers

The media, like the Lord, works in mysterious ways. For all its purported liberalism, the U.S. media sure makes you read between the lines. You'd think ye olde liberal media would beat us over the head with certain stories. Take Newsweek's recent "Republicans are in trouble" poll article. It's a pretty standard rundown of data (60 percent of white Evangelicals will vote Republican in the midterm elections, the President's approval rating is 35 percent, yada yada yada). But what is arguably the biggest news of the story is buried near the very end: Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a “top priority,” but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done. (Five percent of Republicans say it should be a top priority and 15 percent of Republicans say it should be a lower priority; 78 percent oppose impeachment.) Rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts would be contentious too: 38 percent of Americans say the Dems should make that a top priority; 28 percent say it should be a lower priority; and 28 percent say it shouldn’t be done at all. For the mathematically challenged, 28 percent of Americans plus 23 percent of Americans equals 51 percent of Americans. That means more than half of the country wants to see the President impeached. Given, polls are inaccurate, and you have to take the margin of error into account. Nonetheless, compare that 51 percent with the President's 35 percent approval rating. And compare that with Bill Clinton's numbers at the time of his impeachment. Only 35 percent of the country felt the House made the right decision in impeaching him. And his approval rating after the fact was 73 percent, the highest rating of Clinton's presidency at the time (and a higher approval rating than Ronald Reagan ever had). Sadly, impeachment is something you aren't likely to see in the liberal media's newspaper headlines anytime soon. Well, at least for a couple more weeks.