A recent national poll of self-identified Republicans uncovered some startling results and some not too surprising ones as well. I doubt anyone is shocked that GOP members are heavily pro-life, pro death penalty, homophobic, Christian, creationist, and a little uncomfortable about the topic of sex.
A couple of results are a bit mind boggling. For example, 68% don’t favor making it easier to join labor unions. Curious given the plight of American workers over the last decade. Given this poll was a random population sampling, it’s pretty unlikely they managed to disproportionately poll Wall St. bankers and oil tycoons. And most bizarre, 23% believe their state should secede from the union. Bring on the revolution!
But the truly frightening results are the number of people who professed to believe outright falsehoods. We’re not talking ideological differences here. We’re talking about things with no factual basis whatsoever.
- 39% believe Obama should be impeached
- 36% believe he was not born in the USA
- 63% believe he is a socialist
- 24% believe Obama wants the terrorists to win
- 31% believe Obama is a racist who hates white people
- 21% believe ACORN stole the 2008 election
It’s one thing to have a different opinion or a different philosophy for the role of government, economic policy, or public morals. But it’s a different thing to just be wrong. In fairness, this is not a majority of the GOP, but it is a significant enough chunk to be a cause for concern. It’s big enough that the party now must cater to these members. The irony would seem to be that the GOP is now somewhat hamstrung by a third or so of their people whose votes they require to get back in office. Yet they are the ones who created this constituency by perpetuating these lies for the last year. Further, the existence of these pervasive views does little to bolster the credibility of the party’s platform with independents or Democrats
I’m curious, are there comparable liberal memes? Are there any widely held but demonstrably false notions held by the other side, or is this a GOP only phenomenon? I couldn’t think of any as I wrote this, but if you can think of some, leave ’em in the comments.