Of course that poll also found that nearly 70% of Americans oppose extending the tax to banks that did not receive bailout money while 72% believe that bailout recipients like Fannie Mae and Freddie Macshould be required to pay any new tax, as well.
Next up on the agenda for Obamas crass populist propagandists? Spending.
Because polling has consistently shown that independent voters are leery of government's unsustainable deficit spending, Obama's next move was to unveil a so-called freeze on budget growth. Unfortunately, his freeze only applied to 17% of the budget, and whatever deficit reduction it purports to accomplish would be completely consumed by growth in entitlement spending as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments that taxpayers are forced to pick up as a result of our skyrocketing national debt.
Yet while these two populist stories were being pushed by the White House press office, behind closed doors top Obama administration officials were working harder than ever to resuscitate the very radical policies that spawned all this voter angst and distrust in the first place.
Just four days after Brown's victory in Massachusetts, for example, Obama's chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel met with a group of Senators at the White House in an effort to revive cap and trade, Obama's massive energy tax hike. Similarly, Obama has been meeting regularly with Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in a no-holds-barred effort to ram his socialized medicine proposal through Congress despite its collapsing public support and weakened legislative position.
Clearly a string of defeats for Obama including a historic setback in Massachusetts has done nothing to deter him from his leftward march.
Of course the silver lining is that the more stridently Obama pursues these objectives in the face of mounting public and Congressional opposition, the more strident public and legislative opposition becomes toward him.