{"id":2283,"date":"2010-02-02T17:07:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T22:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2010-02-03T11:43:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T16:43:27","slug":"a-wow-poll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2010\/02\/02\/a-wow-poll\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wow!! Poll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research 2000<\/a> has a shudder inducing poll on Republican attitudes and beliefs regarding Pres. Obama. Here are the highlights via Ben Smith (Politico)
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
\nYes 39
\nNo 32
\nNot Sure 29<\/p>\n

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
\nYes 63
\nNo 21
\nNot Sure 16<\/p>\n

Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
\nYes 42
\nNo 36
\nNot Sure 22<\/p>\n

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
\nYes 21
\nNo 24
\nNot Sure 55<\/p>\n

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
\nYes 8
\nNo 73
\nNot Sure 19<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure which one of these results is more startling. Let’s go with 63% of Republicans believing that Pres. Obama is a socialist. This suggests to me that level-headed, moderates have fled the party. I still content that this “lunatic fringe” is only a fraction of the U.S. electorate and the Republicans still have structural problems they need to work out. They are primed to get closer to control of both houses of congress, but to do that, they’ll have to win back moderates and become a “normal” party again with the same problems the Dems currently enjoy.<\/p>\n

A few caveats are in order. Research 2000 was contracted by Daily Kos<\/a> to do the poll, which doesn’t mean anything in particular, but it would be useful to look at the methodology more closely. Having said that, these results give us some good insight as to why the current president is having such trouble getting health care passed through Congress. If this poll is accurate, the Republican party is a right wing party. If you’re a Republican legislator, you run a serious risk of losing your seat to a “real republican” in upcoming primaries. This fear is allowing the Republicans to enjoy an amazing amount of party discipline. In our system, the minority always wants to be the “party of no” but is usually not able to because there are centrists who can be “peeled off” by the majority. Not so with this group of Republicans.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> Nate Silver looks at the crosstabs<\/a> and finds marginal difference between demographic groups. Take the “socialist” question for instance:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Translation…the Republican tent is shrinking. Good for maintaining party discipline…let’s see about governing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research 2000 has a shudder inducing poll on Republican attitudes and beliefs regarding Pres. Obama. Here are the highlights via Ben Smith (Politico) Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not? Yes 39 No 32 Not Sure 29 Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist? Yes 63 No 21 Not Sure 16 Do you believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[194,3944,1610],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-obama","tag-poll","tag-republicans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions\/2294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}