Not Everybody's Doing The Michi-Gun Rag

The country's reaction to the horrific killings of 20 first-graders among others in Newtown, Connecticut is different this time.  There's action involved.  And normally staunch advocates of the expansion of guns and concealed carry are backing off in the wake of the massacre.  Michigan Republicans are in enough trouble as it is after passing a right-to-work bill to crush unions and a raft of massive and intrusive abortion regulations designed to close clinics in the state:

The approval rating of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is in the gutter, according to a poll released Tuesday, the strongest evidence yet of the political perils associated with the right-to-work legislation he signed into law last week.

According to the latest automated survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, only 38 percent of Michigan voters approve of the job Snyder is doing, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. In PPP's previous survey of Michigan in November, Snyder's approval rating was 10 points above water: 47 percent of voters approved of his performance as governor, while 37 percent disapproved.

Gov. Snyder's popularity has cratered.  So when the third leg of the wingnut trifecta arrived on his desk yesterday, a law expanding concealed carry in places like schools, Snyder quickly vetoed it.

In his veto letter to the state legislature Snyder said the legislation included a key loophole. The buildings in question, Snyder wrote, should be allowed to opt out of allowing concealed weapons.

"I believe that it is important that these public institutions have clear legal authority to ban weapons from their premises," Snyder wrote according to The Detroit Free Press. "Each is entrusted with the care of a vulnerable population and should have the authority to determine whether its mission would be enhanced by the addition of concealed weapons."

Snyder was mulling the bill over before and almost certainly would have been pressured into it, but seeing a nearly 30 point drop in his approval ratings (from plus 10 to minus 18) in the course of one month tends to change a guy's mind, especially since he's up for re-election in 2014.   Even he has his limits, it seems.

Of course, I fully expect the bill to be revised and put back on Snyder's desk in the future with the loophole he wants, and signed into law.  We'll see.

More on this, as always with Michigan politics, at Eclectablog.