Glenn Reynolds @ USA Today:
The NRA has a higher approval rating than the president because it’s in sync with Americans’ beliefs.
Ever since the Sandy Hook shootings, we’ve been hearing that now, at last, it’s time for the National Rifle Association to drop its “extremist” views and accept the sort of gun control that Democrats — and their allies in the press — were pushing long before Sandy Hook. When NRA Executive Vice President Wayne La Pierre proposed armed guards in schools, it was portrayed as evidence of how out-of-touch the organization was. Democratic pundits called on Obama to crush the NRA while it was on the ropes — when they weren’t calling for its members and officers to be killed.
Whose idea was it anyway?
But then a funny thing happened. After the NRA school-guard strategy was roundly denounced as outright crazy by the pundits, — the editors of theNew York Times called it “delusional, almost deranged” — President Obama came out with … aproposal for armed guards in schools. It is no small feat for an out-of-touch, on-the-ropes organization to get the president to basically endorse its signature policy proposal at a time of national debate.
But, then again, it turned out that 55% of Americans supported the NRA proposal. Turns out, it was the people calling it crazy — like the editors of the New York Times— who were out of the mainstream.
