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The media is aflutter! The president’s job approval rating fell below 50% for the first time since September. Yes, he’s slid all the way down. So far down, you’d think he was a Republican. Oh, wait. That’s not true.

Obama now sits at an overall approval rating of 49%, last seen by these pollsters on Sept. 9, according to a new poll for ABC by Langer Research Associates. “… just 45 percent approve specifically of his handling of the economy, and 60 percent say the country’s headed seriously off on the wrong track.”

Similarly, while 60 percent say the country’s headed on the wrong track – a sentiment with a strong economic component – that’s down from a recent high of 77 percent in fall 2011 and a record 90 percent in fall 2008. As not-great as things are, they’ve been worse, a point Obama may seek to make on his campaign-style tour focused on economic issues this week.

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But still, President Obama has an overall 49% approval rating. Congress has a 21% approval rating.

The fact that the President only slid ONE POINT is almost funny given the deliberate and sustained effort House Republicans have put into assassinating Obama’s character with planted scandals, fake accusations, false charges, and a televised witch trial to boot — in which only those who say what Darrell Issa wants them to say get to be on the tee-vee.

After the spring of scandals played up by a complicit media (ABC still proud to have lied to you about Benghazi emails!), shouldn’t Obama’s approval rating be somewhere near Congress’?

Oh, I guess we’ll discuss the ramifications of Republican blindness in another few years, when the media finally catches on that the country has left them and their corporate/Republican narratives behind.

In the meantime, the economy is recovering although we could sure use some help in the form of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) doing his job and allowing Obama’s jobs bills to come up for a vote. But the House of Representatives is very busy planting fake scandals about your president in the news so that they can then spend your money investigating said fake scandal, and then spend all of their time and energy orchestrating the propaganda for best effect, not letting actual experts testify, and keeping anyone who disagrees with their fiction off camera.

Buoyant Barack must really frustrate Republicans, who have literally spent all of their energy and resources on bringing Obama down. That was their stated goal from 2008-2012. When they failed, and he won by quite a bit in 2012, they went the scandal route (desperation alley).

They’ve done everything they can to destroy this man, from calling him a Kenyan without a birth certificate to saying he pals around with terrorists. They say he’s Nixon. They say he’s Bush. They label every weather pattern Obama’s Katrina. They scream and holler about his racism. They jump up and down accusing him of being worse than anyone ever even Hitler!!!!!! They accuse him of trying to kill Sarah Palin’s baby. They whine about whether or not he should be allowed to speak about his childhood, since his being black is so “divisive”. They call him a murderer over an array of issues.

The media carries all of these lies to the headlines for Republicans, passing off Republican congressional aides’ version of reality as news, and even lying to you and telling you they have read the Benghazi emails when they are actually being told by Congressional Republicans what the emails said (and of course, they did not say what Republicans claimed they did).

Yet, in the end, Americans shrug. Americans still like and trust this president a heck of a lot more than they do Republicans.

49%? Republicans only got 1% knocked off this President’s approval ratings, as they obstruct the economic recovery and manufacture scandals meant to hurt his overall character/trustworthiness?

This, my friends, is what we call an epic fail.

I really don’t know what pollsters expect Obama’s approval ratings to be in his second term, in the midst of scandalmania and a Republican determination to kill any economic recovery. President Clinton dropped to 51% from 61% when the Lewinski story first broke, before the public caught on to the Republican hypocrisy and agenda. His personal approval ratings tumbled and Gallup found that only 33% said he had the honesty and integrity to serve as President.

This is exactly why Republicans decided to go the scandal route with Obama. Nothing else was working. Clinton’s numbers quickly rebounded and went up during the impeachment trial, by the way, which is yet another reason why Republicans keep introducing a new and shiny scandal. The scandal approach only hurts in the beginning, so they have to keep new ones coming and move on before the public can get too close a look behind little man Oz Issa.

The fact that Obama maintained a 50% job approval rating during the slow recovery from the Bush crash is a testament to the public’s feelings about him. Americans have always liked and trusted Obama, even when they think the country is going in the wrong direction. That is why Republicans hoped their fake scandals would finally poke a big enough hole in Obama’s overall approval ratings that Congressional Republicans would be able to run successfully run against the Evil Fictional Obama in 2014.

Republicans failed miserably. Buoyant Barack must be having a bit of a laugh over Darrell Issa’s widely watched failure (R-CA) right about now.