Tag Archives: polls

Jen Rubin Is in Love Again

During the 2012 election, Jennifer Rubin’s “Right Turn” bloggy-column thing at WaPo essentially functioned as a gauzy ad campaign for Mitt.  How Jen loved Mitt, despite the fact that she is Jewish and he is Mormon, despite the fact that they are married to others.  Every day, Jen rose and faithfully posted her school-girlish love letters to Mittens.  So sweet, so sad.  So charming, so creepy.

Right till the end, she refused to believe those annoying, Obama-biased polls, and was devastated when the Kenyan Muslim who hates Israel (the country our Jen loves most) won.

But 100 days into O’s second term, with spring upon us, Jen has recovered and found herself a new man.  Her bloggy-column thing today is a love letter to Chris Christie worthy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Sorry, Mittens.

A Two-Party System Based on Intelligence?

From “Dinosaurs and Denial,” Charles M. Blow, NYT:

“According to a June Gallup report, most Republicans (58) percent) believed that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.  Most Democrats and independents did not agree.

“This anti-intellectualism is antediluvian.  No Wonder a 2009 Pew Research Center report found that only 6 percent of scientists identified as Republican and 9 percent identified as conservative.

“Furthermore, a 2005 study found that just 11 percent of college professors identified as Republican and 15 percent identified as conservative.  Some argue that this simply represents a liberal bias in academia.  But just as strong a case could be made that people who absorb facts easily don’t suffer fools gladly.”

Evidence? We Don’t Need No Stinking Evidence.

From “Grand Old Planet,” Paul Krugman, NYT:

“What was [Sen. Marco] Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence.

“The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.

“But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory — yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to behold.

“What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science writer Chris Mooney published ‘The Republican Brain,’ which was not, as you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed, modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions — like on election night — encounter any hint that what they believe might not be true.

“And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.”  Emphasis added.

After the election, Charles Krauthammer said the GOP’s problem was a lack of “delicacy” in their communications.  But it’s really an abundance of delusion in their thinking.

 

Sleazy Dick Morris Blames Sandy, Christie

Dick Morris predicted a Romney landslide.  He admits his turnout model was wrong (he thought 2008 was an aberration), but it was Sandy and Christie that “made all the difference.”  Bullpucky, as Rachel would say.

From “Why I Was Wrong,” which I got in a mass email from him:

The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to “normal” levels.  Didn’t happen.  These high levels of minority and young voter participation are here to stay.

I derided the media polls for their assumption of what did, in fact happen: That blacks, Latinos, and young people would show up in the same numbers as they had in 2008.  I was wrong.  They did.

But the more proximate cause of my error was that I did not take full account of the impact of hurricane Sandy and of Governor Chris Christie’s bipartisan march through New Jersey arm in arm with President Obama. Not to mention Christe’s [sic] fawning promotion of Obama’s presidential leadership.

It made all the difference.

Sandy, in retrospect, stopped Romney’s post-debate momentum. [Not true.  Nate Silver showed that Mitt‘s momentum ended in mid–October, long before Sandy.]  She was, indeed, the October Surprise.  She also stopped the swelling concern over the murders in Benghazi and let Obama get away with his cover-up in which he pretended that a terrorist attack was, in fact, just a spontaneous demonstration gone awry.

This is not your father’s United States and the Republican tilt toward white middle aged and older voters is ghettoizing the party so that even bad economic times are not enough to sway the election.  [Be afraid, white people, be very afraid.  And yes, he really did apply the word “ghettoizing” to white people.]

Emphasis added.