Now this is a helpful poll

January 8, 2006

On Dec. 28, Rasmussen Reports released a poll on the controversy of the day: Bush’s warrantless-search program. It was, unfortunately, largely useless, since it failed to ask respondents about the most controversial aspects of the domestic spying program.

Of course, that didn’t stop the White House and its allies from touting the poll as proof of American support for Bush’s conduct. Just last week, Scott McClellan, who claims to reject polls in general, bragged about the results of the Rasmussen poll, twice.

To its credit, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll addressed the controversy directly. The White House probably won’t be touting this one.

A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows.

Over the past three weeks, President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

One disappointing result was the partisan breakdown. About three-fourths of Democrats want the president to get a warrant, but and two-thirds of Republicans don’t. There’s no reason for this. One of the GOP’s guiding principles is supposed to be limited government.

For what it’s worth, the AP did follow-up interviews with many respondents, some of whom seemed to appreciate the issue at hand.

But Peter Ahr of Caldwell, N.J., a religious studies professor at Seton Hall University, said he could not find a justification for skipping judicial approvals. Nor did he believe the administration’s argument that such a step would impair terrorism investigations.

“We’re a nation of laws. … That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration,” said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances. “For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else’s say-so is a violation of that principle.”

Apparently, that sentiment is now held by the majority.

These people got themselves elected on the basis on their “spin” of the truth – In the reality based community this is usually called lieing.
Why should we now expect them to become honest?

  • We are a nation of laws and an elected government including the President. Our troops are dying in the name of democracy and this elected official is declaring himself Dictator.How completely ignorant you would have to support this total failure of a President.

  • “One of the GOP’s guiding principles is supposed to be limited government.” Oh, come on. Are you really that naive? The current GOP has abandoned its traditional preference for small, limited government. It has now become the party of authoritarianism. The signs are everywhere: Schiavo, gay marriage, abortion: the Party wants to tell people how to live their lives. Meanwhile, the administration operates in extreme secrecy, even hiding information from their supposed allies in Congress, while Congress holds votes in the dead of night and shuts Dems out of decision-making every chance they get. Bush’ appropriation of kingly powers, and the majority of GOPers agreeing with this, are just part of the same pattern, and therefore not surprising at all.

  • “One of the GOP’s guiding principles is supposed to be limited government.”

    I’ve never believed this was true. This is not a Bush creation; conservatives have always wanted to limit certain parts of government, but not all government, regardless of what they claim to believe.

    In my lifetime, for instance, conservatives have always been in favor of a large military. How can you favor small, unobtrusive government AND an active military that’s ALWAYS involved in some damn war or other?

    Well, if you’re a conservative you can, and with a straight face, too.

  • There is a reason why 2/3 of republicans oppose this: 2/3 of republicans are, in fact, thugs, at least conceptually.

    more politely, they are willing to go along with authoritarian tendencies as long as its their guy who is the authoritarian.

    we shouldn’t be surprised by this, nor should we care all that much. That 2/3 of the 1/3 who are republicans are beyond the reach of reason and/or democratic politicians is nothing to be concerned about.

    it’s my longstanding belief that the ripest hunting ground for the dems to pluck off from the gop are within that other 1/3 of republicans, a good number of whom are, in fact, reasonably honest conservatives.

    A sort of “coalition of the reason-based” could begin to undo the damage of bushism, and is potentially an outcome of the 2006 election if the dems cut the gap in congress to something much tighter.

  • About three-fourths of Democrats want the president to get a warrant, but and two-thirds of Republicans don’t.

    It would be rather easy to get the average myopic GOP voter to change their mind on this– ask them if they’d feel the same way if the president was, say, Hillary Clinton.

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