{"id":9674,"date":"2007-01-19T15:56:12","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T20:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9674.html"},"modified":"2007-01-19T15:56:12","modified_gmt":"2007-01-19T20:56:12","slug":"one-in-three-americans-hate-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/one-in-three-americans-hate-america\/","title":{"rendered":"One-in-three Americans hate America?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted this<\/a> over at my other gig<\/a>, but it’s probably worth taking a moment to consider in more detail.<\/p>\n

Dean Barnett, filling in for Hugh Hewitt, highlighted the results of the latest Fox News poll<\/a> (.pdf), which, among other things, asked respondents, “Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?” The results were fairly surprising.<\/p>\n

Overall: 63% Yes, 22% No, 15% Don\u2019t Know
\nDemocrats: 51% Yes, 34% No, 15% Don’t Know
\nRepublicans: 79% Yes, 11% No, 10% Don’t Know
\nIndependents: 63% Yes, 19% No, 17% Don’t Know<\/p>\n

The responses led Barnett to label this the “most depressing poll ever<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Friends, I’ll allow you a minute to wrap your minds around this, for we are truly through the looking class. Even though we have some 150,000 troops in harm’s way and we universally profess to “support the troops,” over 1\/3 of our society either wants them to fail or doesn’t know if they want them to succeed. Even more chilling are the results regarding our currently dominant political party. 49% of Democrats either want us to lose in Iraq or “don’t know” if they want us to succeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At first blush, it looks like Barnett might have a point. If someone doesn’t “want” Bush’s escalation plan to succeed, he or she apparently wants it to fail, which would mean more casualties, more chaos, more bloodshed, and more disaster. More than a third of the country wants that?<\/p>\n

It seems highly unlikely. Barnett can believe what he wants, but I’m inclined to give Americans a little more benefit of the doubt.
\n
\nThe question may seem fairly straightforward, but it’s a little too cute. “Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?” Why even ask such a question, unless Fox News is hoping for a high traitor quotient in the results? The fact that this was even in the poll probably threw respondents, who likely assumed the question meant something different.<\/p>\n

For that matter, there are nuances to public opinion. For those who said they don’t want to see Bush’s escalation plan succeed, it’s certainly possible they want to see an end of the war, and believe the so-called “surge,” if perceived as a success, could lead to an even longer conflict. It’s equally possible people began offering reflexive answers after a series of questions about the president’s policy, and started answering “oppose” to all questions, as a means of expressive blanket disapproval of Bush’s handling of the crisis.<\/p>\n

Even taken at face value, the poll probably doesn’t mean what Barnett thinks it means. Is he willing to argue that one in five Republicans in this country are hoping<\/i> for disaster in Iraq?<\/p>\n

John Cole concluded<\/a>, “Until a more reputable firm with a clearer question releases the poll, I will treat this as silliness.” I’m very much inclined to agree. Here’s a poll idea for Fox News: ask respondents, “Do you want to see the bloodbath in Iraq get worse?” If more than a third of Americans say “yes,” I’ll gladly retract this post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted this over at my other gig, but it’s probably worth taking a moment to consider in more detail. Dean Barnett, filling in for Hugh Hewitt, highlighted the results of the latest Fox News poll (.pdf), which, among other things, asked respondents, “Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}