Despite trumped up ‘scandals,’ Obama nearly as popular as when he was reelected

The Hill: President Obama’s approval ratings have increased since a trio of controversies involving his administration began dominating the news cycle.

Fifty percent of those surveyed in Gallup’s three-day tracking poll released Wednesday say they approve of the job the president is doing, compared to 43 percent who said they disapprove.

The 7-percentage point positive margin is better than where the president stood in the poll over the two weeks before the IRS and Department of Justice scandals broke, and is near Obama’s rating over the waning days of the 2012 campaign when voters convincingly elected him to a second term in office.

Obama’s Gallup numbers are up three percentage points since the pollster’s May 23-25 survey and suggest Obama’s approval ratings held steady, even as the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups made headlines.

No wonder Republicans are worried about overplaying their hand in the 2014 elections — they’re either overplaying it now or are damned close to it. In their glee over their scandal-mania, they’ve pretty much abandoned their rebranding effort, returning to the old political strategy of tearing the opponent down, rather than building yourself up. But their demolition project isn’t making a dent and people still don’t like the GOP any more than they did before. This is starting to look pretty unwise.

But of course, they can’t just drop it the bullshit or the base would be livid — they don’t think it’s bullshit. So they’re stuck with their failing strategy. As always, by overhyping everything, they’ve panicked the base and painted themselves into a corner. If they want Republican voters to turn out, it’s going to have to be all Benghazi, all the time. To get converts to turn out for them, they’re going to need to go back to drastically rejiggering the party.

They can’t do both.