That Kos Poll

National Review Online ^ | 02/02/2010 | Stephen Spruiell

[GOP_Resurrected]

Greg Pollowitz nails it exactly. Has anyone else noticed that this poll was commissioned by a guy who is writing a book called American Taliban about how American conservatives are just like jihadist killers? The dissonance is baffling. It would be like if someone had written, "I was talking to the little man who lives in my sugar bowl and he told me that Republicans believe in some crazy things!" and everyone seized on the last part as the news hook.

[GOP_Resurrected]

Well, I guess this is payback for all those years of media-done polls showing how alarming numbers of Democrats believe:

- "Bush knew" or outright orchestrated 9/11
- Dick Cheney took orders from Halliburton
- Ariel Sharon was in control of foreign policy
- Bush was "doesn't care about black people"
- Diebold "stole" both elections, and on and on.

You DO remember all that hand-wringing about how Democrats embraced "the fringe," don't you? No?

[BobMV]

This poll was done by Research 2000, a reputable firm. Kos had nothing to do with the poll itself, is what I read. That’s how it works when an organization commissions a polling company to do a poll. Besides, the results seem fairly self evident from what I see on Free Republic. I don’t see why anyone on here would even want to dispute the results. Seems like we would celebrate it.

[GOP_Resurrected]

Oh, I understand that. My point was that Kos’s goal in feeding these questions to Research 2000 as they did was to highlight supposedly “extreme” views taken by the GOP base, and NOTHING SIMILAR was ever done, to my knowledge, under Bush.

There were, and are, sizable portions of self-I.D.’d Dems who would agree with nutty propositions like 9/11 “trutherism,” Bush is a “fascist,” Bush is a “racist,” etc. But since the left is getting so killed and discredited in the court of public opinion now, this is to serve as sort of a, “Hey, if you think we’re so bad, remember the alternative is THESE kooks! You really want to side with them?”

And yes, Research 2000 is reputable, but it also knows who signs its checks. You can tweak poll results based on your sample, question wording, etc, and I think they have every incentive to produce a product that keeps them Kos’s business.