AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Late summer is right.
We had the coolest July in years, but August is making up for it with a vengeance.

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Monday, August 10, 2009

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9 (see trends).

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Democrats Strongly Approve while 70% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 22% Strongly Approve and 40% Strongly Disapprove. See other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.

When it comes to health care, 51% fear the federal government more than private insurance companies. Forty-one percent (41%) hold the opposite view. In the health care debate, 41% view the town hall protesters favorably while 35% have an unfavorable view.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll

Obama's approval-disapproval average without factoring in Rasmussen: 54.6-38.4

With factoring in Rasmussen: 52.8 - 42.7

Does the word 'outlier' mean anything to you? It is clear that Rasmussen consistently polls Obama lower than any other polling firm - which is why you bunch consistently quote it.

Cycloptichorn

Rasmussen consistently polls likely voters, not the public at large. And THAT is why Rasumussen's numbers are often different from media polls and THAT is why Rasumussen is almost always more accurate than media polls. Those who don't vote are far more likely to approve of the nanny state than those who do.

Death Panels Without the Panels
(by Robert Wright, Atlantic Online, August 10, 2009)

What more is there to say about Sarah Palin’s now-famous claim that President Obama’s health-care plan features “death panels” that will give patients the thumbs up or thumbs down? Just that, if this were Obama’s plan, it would have more in common with our current system than you might think.

In Palin’s fantasy, the death-panel “bureaucrats” were going to pick winners and losers based on a judgment about their “level of productivity in society.” Well, if you view income as a gauge of a person’s productivity in society"and God knows there are Republicans who do"then the quality of health care is already correlated with “productivity in society.” Obama’s plan, by making health care more affordable to lower income people, would make that less true.

This is just another way of making a point already made by Peter Singer in response to less delusional concerns about the possibility of rationing under Obama’s plan: we already ration health care; we just let the market do the rationing.

Any government health care plan will bring some new form of “rationing,” since no government can afford to guarantee everyone all possible medical treatment. But let’s be clear: the people who are trying to sabotage reform by telling mind-boggling lies about its hidden rationing agenda seem, in fact, pretty content with rationing; they seem happy with a system in which the least “productive” members of society get bad health care, including, occasionally, health care so bad that it leads to death.

And if these opponents of health-care reform are going to conjure up images of fascism to caricature the pro-reform side, it seems fair to conjure up a comparably hyperbolic symbol of their side of the argument"social Darwinism. As Herbert Spencer put the social Darwinist credo, “The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many ‘in shallows and in miseries,’ are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.” But I guess a picture of Herbert Spencer on a placard doesn't pack quite as much punch as a picture of Hitler.

Krugman Disses Rasmussen Poll - But Forgets to Fact-Check
Thursday, August 06, 2009

In a blog posting yesterday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman raises questions about a recent Rasmussen Reports poll of Massachusetts voters. The poll shows that Bay State voters are less than enthusiastic about the state’s experiment in health care reform.

Krugman states that “last year polling seemed to show very strong support for the Massachusetts plan.” He then asks, "So has support plunged since then? Or is the wording of the Rasmussen poll calculated to give a negative result?"

Krugman must have an interesting definition of “very strong support.” The poll he cited found that just 14% want to continue the state's health care reform program, 12% want to repeal it, and 70% want to keep it but change it.

In fairness, the survey did find support for the goals of the program and some individual aspects of it. However, the survey by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation broadly confirms the key results of the Rasmussen poll.

For example, Rasmussen Reports found that 21% believe the state’s health care reform made health care more affordable while 27% said it's now less affordable and 44% say there has been no change.

The Harvard study found that 20% believed the Health Insurance Law had helped the cost of health care in Massachusetts while 39% said it had hurt and 30% said it was not having much impact. That assessment is actually more negative than the finding in the Rasmussen Reports survey. By the way, the Harvard study also found that 33% believed their own cost of care had gone up while just six percent (6%) said it had gone down.

Rasmussen Reports asked if the program was a success. Twenty-six percent (26%) say yes, 37% say no, and 37% are not sure.

Harvard did not ask that question. However, they did find that just 14% said they had been helped by the bill while 18% said they had been hurt by it. Additionally, 14% said the legislation helped the state budget, and 39% said it hurt. Again, if anything, the Rasmussen Reports numbers seem a bit more upbeat than the survey cited by Krugman.

The Harvard survey also delved into some topics not explored by Rasmussen Reports. By a 45% to 33% margin, the Harvard survey found that people believed the plan helped the uninsured. By a 44% to 31% margin, they thought it helped the poor. But they were evenly divided as to whether or not it helped the middle class. Most (56%) said the state reform plan hurt small businesses while only 13% believed those businesses were helped.

Since the Harvard study - but before the Rasmussen Reports survey, Massachusetts began to experience severe financial difficulties related in part to the health care law.

Rather than recognizing the common ground between the Harvard and Rasmussen Reports polls, Krugman simply aired his assertion and then added, “I will say that Rasmussen is coming in for a lot of criticism for what looks like slanted polling.” For this, he cited an article quoting three Democratic pollsters who raised questions about the relevance of the Rasmussen Reports Presidential Approval Index.

Again, Krugman should have looked a little closer. The article he cited concluded this way, "And for the record, Rasmussen's final polls [before the November election] had Obama ahead 52%-46%, which was nearly identical to Obama's final margin of 53%-46%, and made him one of the most accurate pollsters out there. So don't count him out."

Krugman, named in January by Forbes.com as the most influential liberal in the U.S. media, was the winner last year of the Nobel Prize for Economics and is a regular columnist for the New York Times. Earlier this year, however, when Rasmussen Reports polled on several representative Krugman quotes, the columnist's views were generally at odds with those of most Americans.

For example, Krugman asserted that you should “write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.” But the survey found that 53% said it’s always better to cut taxes while just 24% shared Krugman’s view.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2009/krugman_disses_rasmussen_poll_but_forgets_to_fact_check

Put your statistics where your mouth is Cyclop. If you want to shell out for the substantial amount to subscribe to Rasmussen, you can get the actual questions and demographics. If there was a problem with them, somebody who does subscribe would have pointed that out by now.

Rasmussen makes a living producing results that will hold up to close scrutiny. So it generally agrees more closely with Quinnipac and Pew and others who also make a living producing results that will hold up to close scrutiny. The media polls are conducted by a media firmly in the Obama camp and/or are often commissioned by those firmly in an ideological camp. Rasumussen has no ideological ax to grind.