The honeymoon is over

I was stunned by these polls showing Obama in a dead heat with Romney in 2012. Even more stunning is that Sarah Palin polls at 42 percent against Obama.

That was a fast honeymoon given the extent of the love-fest in January and on-going fawning from much of the mainstream press.

One explanation for the rapid dissipation is that Obama gave away too much political / moral capital with the stimulus bill. While there is no realistic scenario in which the bill would have had no pork, it could have had a lot less. The fact that it had so much was an early signal to the electorate that the Obama administration would be more about politics as usual and less about change to be believed in than even cynics like me expected.

Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics has a thoughtful related post.