On December 12th the Gallup Poll issued a press release about their
latest findings: fear of “big government” was at a near record level.
And even more strikingly, Democratic voters represented the largest
uptick since the last poll was taken. In 2009 32% of Democrats told
Gallup that they were afraid of big government, now the number is 48%.
As might be expected, conservative pundits embraced these findings as
proof that the country was tired of Obama, tired of liberalism, tired of
socialism, etc. David Brooks, the oleaginous NY Times op-ed contributor,
wrote:
The members of the Obama administration have many fine talents, but
making adept historical analogies may not be among them.
When the administration came to office in the depths of the financial
crisis, many of its leading figures concluded that the moment was
analogous to the Great Depression. They read books about the New Deal
and sought to learn from F.D.R.
But, in the 1930s, people genuinely looked to government to ease their
fears and restore their confidence. Today, Americans are more likely to
fear government than be reassured by it.
According to a Gallup survey, 64 percent of Americans polled said they
believed that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only
26 percent believed that big business is the biggest threat. As a
result, the public has reacted to Obama’s activism with fear and
anxiety. The Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 elections.
My first reaction to all this was to laugh at the idea of using a
pejorative term like “big government” in a poll. This of course is the
commonly used buzzword of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the talk radio
right. Like a bell being sounded with Pavlov’s dogs, who would not salivate?
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/public-opinion-polls-and-the-left/
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