xtcian

Some weeks ago, I also declared a news blackout.

Last night, waiting for "Lost" to record, I cautiously dipped into the news only to see a report on the referenced poll. Then almost immediately heard McCain declare (however obliquely) that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should not be repealed. And then another grumpy old white man began talking about how gays would become predators in the barracks.

My news blackout curtain came back down with a thud. "Lost" was a mess, but a whole lot less crazy than the news.

A "massive non-partisan survey" commissioned by Daily Kos? And you actually took that poll seriously?

Time to take a long hard look at the basic premise that you are living a better and more sane existence than any of the people you choose to denigrate.

Maybe you should start a secessionist movement?

J.G. - the poll was conducted by Research 2000, a non-partisan research firm. You are welcome to give a link to a poll showing other results that support your arguments. I would bet that you could do that on charity e.g. ... on the "sane" part, not so much. :-) Your innuendo is not impressive to adults.

The Republicans may have bigger problems, like evaporating ... http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/parsing-the-polls/21-percent.html.

Since Ian's Coastopia seems unlikely to happen, voting with our feet may be next. I've heard nice things about Nova Scotia.... and Costa Rica... and Vancouver... and some other spots where paranoid looniness, if any, exists on a small, personal, eccentric scale. Where to retire, where to retire...?

you should have shared that poll with those knuckle dragging republican voters of massachusetts two weeks ago. oh wait...

Anne - I'd recommend Chapel Hill as a great retirement location. Jesse Helms hated this place with a passion but sadly even good old liberal CH got close to electing a Republican mayor recently due to a lot of "not in my backyard" sentiment re:homelessness.

Thanks, Neva. I was thinking of places outside the U.S. where I could ignore American politics permanently. ;-)

JG is an idiot, obviously, but nothing in this poll makes any sense. I just don't believe that people would answer these questions like this. I know a lot of Republicans, and most of them wouldn't answer these questions this way.

I know that a very, very small minority of people think this way, but I simply can't believe that most Republicans think this way. Even JG says the poll is crap, he doesn't support these points of view, and he's a kool-aid drinking ass. If I saw a poll saying that 75% of theater people hate gays, I would say there's something wrong with the poll, I wouldn't say, "sure, we do!"

This poll just goes against everything I know to be true. We are all a lot more alike than this.

Sean, my immediate reaction is to agree with you 100%... and then I reflect on the various polls I've seen on Facebook: about 75% of FB poll-responders identify themselves as conservative and/or Republican. Ask the above questions in FB polls and I expect you'll get very similar results to Research 2000's.

Could it be that our Republican friends are cooler than most Repubs? Seems like they'd have to be or we couldn't stand them!

Remember that traditional Northeastern (or should I say "Coastopian") Republicans are primary concerned with economic issues, whereas Heartland Republicans are likelier to be concerned with social issues. Heartlanders vastly outnumber Coastopians; we just don't know many of them.

I have to think a lot of our Republican friends are quietly wondering when Silly Season is going to end, others are considering switching parties and others have already become Independents or Lieberman Democrats.

I didn't google to confirm this, but hasn't the number of folks who self-identify as "Republican" fallen? (Maybe it's rebounded in the last year.) I'm saying, if Markos is just sampling the residual Republicans that are left after many conservatives relinquished the party affiliation, even informally, then 77% of the residue responding as you quote... sure, I can see that. The numbers aren't encouraging, but not as threatening when normalized to the total population.

While I classify myself as a conservative, I don't align with pretty much everything that was stated in the poll. Obviously, they didn't poll me or I'm in the other quarter of the Republican Party. That said, I take issue with the statement that we are not the United States of America. I actually think we are closer to what the founding fathers wanted as far as a Republic than we think. These were men who fought against Britain largely because they were being taxed without representation. And no, I'm not getting on a Tea Party soapbox. This country is great simply because you can state your opinion openly and freely and not have a tank mow you down because you disagree with the ruling party. The one thing I think our founding fathers would hang their head about is that the debate is not as civil as it was in the 1770s (of course, civil is a relative term when you have a gun pointed at you, but I digress). I actually applaud Obama's words on wanting to change the discourse and have open debate. What I disagree with him on is continuing to campaign with the American public through sound bites in the press. He won the election, now lead. Of course, I do think he is trying and the 8 years of Bush and Rove heavyhandedness and bullying still has the hair on the dog in Washington on end.
Of course, I think the people that were polled are the fringe of the party and the people really running the country are the independent thinkers who want a more centrist approach to governing, want there to be solid debate and don't just drink their party's Kool Aid. I believe that was proven with the Scott Brown victory in Massachussetts and we will see more independents or centrist-minded candidates win election in the Fall. And I don't think that will be a bad thing for our country or for Obama's presidency. If we truly moves to the center, where most of America wants him to be, he will go down as a great president similar to Clinton (this looks like the same thing that happened in the mid-90s). The question is whether Obama has the ability to corral the extreme left (Reid and Pelosi) and move to the center while addressing the platform he has laid out.

some of my best friends are Republicans.

As a unashamed liberal who has recently (and perhaps permanently) checked out and stopped giving a damn about national politics, can I make one last plea for some bipartisan support of something? Can we all just agree that Nancy Pelosi should crawl back into her crypt and go away? Who knew that when the Cryptkeeper went off the air in 1996 that he would go through a gender transformation and reappear on the national political stage? Every time that I see her rictus on television or on the web, I have almost the same disgusted and angry feeling that I used to have when W (the President, not the Coach)was plastered all over every available media outlet.

Big Scott: Could we restrict our critiques of politicians to their actions, not their appearances?

Nancy Pelosi has been a fantastic Speaker of the House. She's held her caucus together and delivered on the legislative agenda requested by the president. My only complaint is that she hasn't been forcing the Republicans to cast difficult votes, but maybe that'll change.

For those old school Republicans disbelieving of these poll results... the truth hurts, but this is what has become of what once was, in all fairness, a grand old party. I wish you the best of luck in reclaiming it.

As I assumed, there are some real mistakes with this poll. Yes, these are self-identified Republicans but

a) there are less conservatives willing to identify with the Republican party right now (which is why the "democratic" majority in congress doesn't seem to be remotely interested in a progressive agenda),

b) the questions were outrageous enough to force out any who may find the possibilities repulsive. By the time reasonable conservatives had heard three or four questions, they probably hung up.

c) There is something called "acquiescence bias", which is better explained here - http://www.pollster.com/blogs/acquiescence_bias_more_on_the.php

I think it's important when a poll like this comes up, we need to stand up and say, not only "this isn't me", but also, "I don't believe this is you." It's the same thinking that leads us to think that muslims, as a whole, don't mind dying in suicide bombings. It isn't true.

I agree with Sean on this. Something is wrong with this poll.
The first thing I think is wrong with it is that out of 55 million registered Republicans, 2000 were surveyed???? That is .003%. You may give a very detailed survey out, but if you give it to one person, all it is is a survey of one person's opinion. I think that is what this is equal to.

culture is what is cultured in the dish.......stereotypes are
the beat of the mainstream ...but you are you.
x

Emma, a sampling size of 2000, if chosen correctly, is actually pretty huge. There is a "sweet spot" of random sampling a population, and if you go over it, your results get skewed. So in essence, this survey does a pretty accurate job of getting a snapshot of 55 million.

Sean, I wish I shared your good faith, but there's no reason to think this isn't exactly how most republicans feel, except for one's own anecdotal experience.

Dude, you said there's no reason, but I gave you three reasons. My anecdotal experience is that even the crazies don't believe *all* of this. Our *cousins* think that Jesus left us magic golden books and decoder rings to read them, and *they* don't believe *all* this stuff.

Believing this is exactly like believing that Islam teaches hate, or that Palestinians want their children to die. You can find stuff to back up this points of view, but... you *gotta* know that this poll is skewed.

Thanks, Sean. I completely agreed with you on (a) to begin with--and (b) and (c) make me feel slightly less bad about the political landscape.

Of course, even corrected by 10-20 pts to account for acquiescence bias, some of those numbers are still disturbing. Large numbers of people actually believe those things. I'm surrounded by such people when I visit small-town NC and that experience always makes me feel much worse about the prospect for consensus and progress. Seriously, read the letters to the editor at statesville dot com and I think you'll get a feeling for what I'm talking about....

Hello, old friends. Sorry to have missed this post when it was current. Speaking as a knuckle-dragging mouth-breather, the only poll question cited above to which I would answer in the affirmative is the one about the only way to eternal life. Further, I know a lot of conservative Republicans and none of them have ever expressed to me any of the other views attributed to the greater community of bigoted rednecks (except for perhaps a few more excitable types with views on Obama's citizenship). There's clearly something wrong with this poll, although I'm sure it's comforting for liberal Democrats to believe it. Similar polls, but with the opposite target, were popping up just a few years ago, when I last cared about politics.

Hope all of you in the DC area rode out the storm safely.

Comforting to liberal Democrats to believe it? God amighty, it's frightening as all get-out.