Gallup: More Americans than ever name “big government” as the biggest threat to U.S.

Hot Air ^ | 18 Dec 2013 | ERIKA JOHNSEN

[mandaladon]

That escalated quickly.

Seventy-two percent of Americans say big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than is big business or big labor, a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. The prior high for big government was 65% in 1999 and 2000. Big government has always topped big business and big labor, including in the initial asking in 1965, but just 35% named it at that time. It wasn’t so very long ago — as in, 2009, hem hem — when Americans’ primary concern for big government as a threat to the country’s future rested at around 55 percent, before hitting 64 percent near the end of 2011 and finally 72 percent today. Whatever do we suppose might have prompted such a thing, I wonder? Gigantic corporate bailouts, Scandalabra, NSA spying, ObamaCare… I don’t even know where to begin.

It’s no surprise that 92 percent of Republicans most closely identify with the big-government threat under a Democratic regime, but it’s pretty telling that a full 56 percent of Democrats are now doing the same. Their concern about big government peaked at 62 percent during the Bush administration, but it was back in the mid-thirties by the time President Obama took office and is now up a full 20 points.

Americans have always ranked “big government” as their primary concern, but now so more than ever before; looks like there’s been plenty of “change,” but Americans’ are not so big on the “hope” right now, huh?

[BlueStateRightist]

Yet most of the citizenry supports an ever-increasing Big Government check in their mailbox.

[Right Brother]

Exactly. And public opinion is a weather vane in the media’s wind.

[Democrat_media]

democrats love and trust government

[SunkenCiv]

LGBT and the BlacKKK are still 100 percent in favor of even more.

Thanks mandaladon.

[Theodore R.]

If people felt that way, they would not repeatedly elect liberals to office. So such feelings must be secondary to their desire to get largesse fron taxpayers.

[exDemMom]

Then why do they keep on voting for politicians who are in favor of expanding government?

We vote for the politicians who will represent us. Those politicians then go to Washington, where they are surrounded by people who use the government for personal gain, whether they are mainstream media, special interest lobbyists, or Democrats. They are emotionally abused by those who own the power structure in Washington (e.g. constantly being battered with lies like "the war on women").

In short, Republicans going to Washington are afflicted with the Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome can be seen as a form of traumatic bonding, which does not necessarily require a hostage scenario, but which describes “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” They may not have shared liberal "values" when they were elected, but adopt those "values" as a form of emotional self-protection.

We need term-limits. We also need to minimize the amount of time politicians spend in Washington exposed to that toxic and hostile environment. Keep them at home, where they have constant reminders and emotional support from the people who elected them.

[Luke21]

The truth is that voting is always a choice between two pre-arranged statists.

[i_robot73]

Term limits will do bumpkis when it’s the ‘behind-the-scenes’ gang doing all the writing/etc.

Kill the 17th
Restore the gold standard
Abolish all donations from all that cannot pull the lever on election day (no PACs, no corps, no NOTHING)

Just to start... :)

[Monorprise]

Well you Would have to be a liberal idiot to fear big business more than Big government. Big Business does not have the power of force to get you to do or not do anything, all they can do is offer you money.

It is big government and big government alone that holds and often abuses that power.

[353FMG]

>>At that point everything will be cut back to the minimum where it should be.<<

.
You must be kidding — everything will be cut back for you and me but not for Congress.

And to lessen their pain, they will vote themselves a substantial pay raise and more perks.

I see that you make a poor congresscritter — you are too pragmatic.

[Cen-Tejas]

.......I have had the tag of “it’s the debt bomb stupid” for years because of exactly what you say! This debt will blow up and going through that PROCESS is the only thing that “CAN” save us.

Given the welfare state the democrats have now built up, it’s just a matter of how much blood gets spilled because when those EBT cards stop getting accepted all hell is going to break loose. The government knows that and that is why they have been arming up. They literally are worried about their sorry asses and their families.

[SisterK]

BINGO!!!
“The truth is that voting is always a choice between two pre-arranged statists”.

[chiller]

..."how much blood gets spilled because when those EBT cards stop getting accepted all hell is going to break loose. The government knows that and that is why they have been arming up. :...

I've yet to hear ANY other rational explanation for the billions of rounds of ammunition they've purchased.

[2harddrive]

Nothing else is a large and oppressive as the Federal Leviathan with its militarized “police”, so nothing else is as threatening. Q.E.D.