It may sound shocking that Republican voters have a more favorable opinion of a guy known best for killing an unarmed teenager than the president of the United States, but it sort of makes sense once you realize that that killer is George Zimmerman and that that president is Barack Obama.
According to a new Fox News poll, Republican voters are two-and-a-half times more likely to have a favorable opinion of Zimmerman than Obama, Marc Caputo points out. Just 18 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of the man elected twice to lead the most powerful country in the world, while 79 have an unfavorable opinion of him. When it comes to Zimmerman, who was acquitted recently for killing Florida teen Trayvon Martin, 45 percent of GOP voters have a favorable opinion, compared to 27 percent who have a negative one.
In case there was any doubt just how deeply GOP antipathy runs towards the first African-American president, or just how important the victim complex has become in many conservatives' worldview, this should probably put that to rest. Zimmerman is popular among conservatives precisely because he was attacked by liberals, they would say unfairly, and any enemy of a liberal is a friend to Fox News. It doesn't matter if liberals' or the mainstream media's criticism has any merit, as long is it's perceived on the right as being even a little unfair (as some of the attacks on Zimmerman certainly were). It's the same mechanism that turns compromised mainstream journalists into paragons of excellence on the right, or turns failed politicians into winners at CPAC.
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