The good folks over at Reason magazine seem perplexed, confused, and befuddled by the new SUSA poll for all the senators. Turns out that senators who acquire a whole lot of pork for their states tend to have very high approval ratings. I know!
It's not a clear-cut pattern, but the senators who do the most looting of taxpayer funds, and the least principled policy-making, are getting the fattest thumbs-ups from the voters. The senators better-known for their causes than their earmarking - anti-UN crusader Norm Coleman (MN), anti-ANWR-drilling Maria Cantwell (WA), uterus-repossession advocate Rick Santorum - appear near the bottom of the hit list.
And you should've seen Robin Hood's numbers among the poor. The reason guys like Byrd and Stevens are such enthusiastic looters is precisely because it makes them popular. Stevens didn't want the $250 million bridge to nowhere so he could take the scenic route and Byrd doesn't build all those useless museums so he's got more to do on weekends. States like getting federal money; it boosts the economy, provides jobs, buys toys. The better you are at it, the more likely your reelection. It's a feature, not a bug.
In other poll news, Nebraska's Ben Nelson is absurdly popular, with a towering 73%. Hillary's resting pretty at 63%, a point more popular among her constituents than John McCain, with his paltry 62%, is among his. McCain, incidentally, has been steadily drifting downward, as has Joe Lieberman, whose trend line among Democrats -- remember, he's in a primary -- is something to see.
