NBC’s Lauer Asks if Voters Have ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ of GOP Governors, No Mention of Obama’s Sagging Poll Numbers
Talking to former Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer touted low approval ratings for some newly elected Republican governors and theorized: “They went into office with messages of austerity. And now a year later, you look at their approval ratings and they're falling. Is this buyer's remorse?” A graphic appeared on screen showing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker with a 43% approval rating, Ohio's John Kasich at 33% and Florida's Rick Scott at 29%. Lauer failed to mention that President Obama's own approval rating stood at 43%, according to a Thursday Gallup poll , with his disapproval hitting 50%. In addition, Lauer failed to note that the source for those low Republican approval ratings, Public Policy Polling, was a Democratic polling firm. Earlier in the segment, Lauer did point out that “44% of the American people now feel they're worse off today than they were when President Obama took office two years ago.” Brokaw claimed that was just because the economy had hit a “soft patch,” quickly adding, “No one expects this to be a second wave of a recession.” Brokaw then shifted focus to the GOP: “But at the same time, people are saying, 'We'd like to see more cuts and cutting back.' Let's show you now what's going on with some Republican Governors, if we can.” In response to Lauer's speculation that voters were having “buyer's remorse” over electing Republican governors, Brokaw observed: “It's not buyer's remorse. I think it's always a conundrum, the people say, 'We want to get government under control, but do it to someone else.'” He cited Republican efforts to reform Medicare as an example: “You already saw it start to play out with the Medicare debate, as proposed by Paul Ryan. Democrats jumped all over that. Some of the Republicans began to peel back from that. They're going to probably try to find more of a middle ground for it.”
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on June 23, 2011. Filed under