From Ezra Klein:
"A couple of days ago, Ross Douthat and I spoke to a class that E.J. Dionne teaches. At some point, I was riffing about how it's a pretty odd political system in which a solid 45 percent of the people believe in death panels and yet public opinion on health-care reform is closely split. Douthat replied that he'd seen research showing that most of the people who say they hold extreme opinions do not, if questioned more deeply, hold those opinions. It's more of a group identification thing. I'm choosing to believe he's right, because I don't really know what to do with a polity in which 52 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election from John McCain."
TW: I agree with Douthat, kinda. If pressed do people really believe this stuff, most probably not, but what group exactly are they identifying with?
From Andrew Sullivan:
"A new poll finds that 51 percent of Americans think canceling the rest of the stimulus would create more jobs. Derek Thompson is slack-jawed:
The idea that canceling the stimulus would create more jobs implies that passing the stimulus has actually killed more jobs than it's created, which is bonkers. Let's say you don't want to consider infrastructure spending or green technology spending or a single job that might have been created in the private sector. If nothing else, the tens of billions we've sent to state budgets have, without question, saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, like teachers, that are supported by state taxes. It's just a very basic fact.
They're watching Fox. Facts don't matter."
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