It’s that time of year again. Progressives are mounting a campaign ahead of 2012 with all sorts of wild claims. Republicans want to kill social security! Republicans want to destroy the middle class! Republicans eat poor people for breakfast!
The claims are positively Swiftian.
With hysteria over a potential loss for President Barack Obama in mind, a new claim is circulating. Prog pundits are claiming Republicans are deliberately tanking the economy so Obama won’t be re-elected.
Only the dull-witted will fail to see the irony. Obama has consistently blamed President George W. Bush for economic misery although the historic deregulation of financial markets occurred during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Aside from that, everyone knows firms like Goldman Sachs played a role in the foolish aftermath bill—Dodd-Frank.
On weekend talk shows, two different progressive pundits repeated the same claim—Republicans are tanking the economy to harm Obama. Both pundits pointed to a poll conducted by Suffolk University.
Neither pundit probably realized the claim (allegedly based on the poll) was started by Kevin Drum who now writes for Mother Jones magazine. Drum is listed as a former Journolist member on The Vail Spot. Journolisters—hundreds of them working for corporatist media—colluded in hopes of seeing Obama win in 2008.
Drum apparently did not study the poll he cited. The Suffolk Poll questioned 800 registered voters in Florida. The poll is, like so many polls, based on self-reportage. No one matched party registration with voter registration.
Here are relevant facts about the poll Drum is using to advance a progressive talking point, probably in hopes of helping an administration that, even by accounts at some progressive sites, has not been successful:
- Of the 800 voters polled, 351 of those voters claimed to be conservatives.
- Only 78 ‘conservatives’ were polled in the state’s most conservative region, the North.
- Responding to a question about party affiliation, 326 identified as Democrats while only 287 identified as Republicans.
- Of the total number polled, 45 percent retained a favorable impression of former Gov. Charlie Crist who abandoned the Republican Party when he realized Sen. Marco Rubio was going to clean his clock in the midterm elections. Not a single true Republican has a positive opinion of Crist.
- Asked about party affiliation, 41 percent claimed to be Democrats while 36 percent claimed to be Republicans.
Polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Florida is the nation’s fourth largest state and political differences contrast sharply depending on the geographic area being polled.
Republicans are not trying to tank the economy. Obama routinely casts Republicans as the hyper-free market party. If that were true, the last thing the party would do is tank the economy. Furthermore, Republicans have no need to do that—Obama has done quite well in that regard all by himself, with help from Democrats in Congress.
Not a single talk show host has asked progs to substantiate their claims about this poll.
Obviously, prog pundits are making claims about a poll they didn’t take time to study. And obviously, considering the track record of Democrats between 2007 when the party concluded efforts to seize total control of the federal government and now, the only hope for victory in 2012 is to resort to attack mode on Republicans.
With food and energy prices at record highs and plummeting home equity, there’s no success record to tout despite Obama spending hundreds of billions on Stimulus 1.
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