Favorability rating drops by 17 percentage points – UN-favorability rating almost doubles.
Pope Francis’ favorability rating in the U.S. is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014.
However, Francis’ unfavorable rating almost doubled, increasing to 16% from 9% in 2014.
Drop even starker among conservatives
The drop is even starker among conservatives — 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year.
Many conservatives and Republicans balked at the Pope’s environmental encyclical – Laudato Si – delivered last month, which called climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
Americans may not be as stupid as the Pope thinks. His denouncing of “the idolatry of money” and linking climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs.They also realize that following his ill-conceived policies could destroy the United States as we know it.
“I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope,” GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush told supporters at the time.
As energy analyst Roger Bezdek points out, “abundant, reliable, affordable motor fuels and electricity empower people and support mobility, modern agriculture, homes and hospitals, computers and communications, lights and refrigerators, job creation, life and study after sundown, indoor plumbing, safe drinking water, less disease and longer lives. In conjunction with property rights and entrepreneurship, protected by laws enforced by limited, responsive, responsible governments, fossil fuels will continue transforming lives and nations the world over.”
In “Laudato Si, the Pope made “an almost antihuman call,” said Steven Malanga in an excellent commentary.
“The nearly 38,000-word document—most of which is not about climate change—actually reads like a giant step backward for the Church’s social teaching, ” says Malanga.
The encyclical is “a rejection of technological progress – a dark, narrow vision of human nature that ignores the enormous gains the world has made in alleviating human suffering; and an almost antihuman call, reminiscent of the most radical environmentalists, to reduce human activity drastically as the only way to save the planet.”
Laudato Si devolves into a long rant against consumerism that ignores the many benefits produced by human innovation through free markets.
Let’s hope that the rest of the world also begins seeing the irrationality of the Pope’s Laudato Si.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/184283/pope-francis-favorable-rating-drops.aspx
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/poll-pope-francis-popularity-us-120457.html
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