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Originally Posted by politicophile
.......The general opinion on my uber-liberal college campus is that Bush and his specifically hired Generals are the only ones who oppose a swift withdrawal from Iraq. It is reassuring, I think, that a slim majority of Americans still understand the importance of our continuing mission in Iraq, in spite of the laundry list of errors, blunders, and distortions made by the Bush administration in relation to the war.
So: while it is clearly not the case that public opinion should be used to determine wartime strategic decisions, does the committment of ordinary Americans to finishing our mission in Iraq change your perspective on either the troop surge or the decision to not withdraw?
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Here is a republican pollster who agrees with the points that roachboy made earlier about the poll featured in the OP:
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/hor...ollster_sa.php
.....Some liberal bloggers have already started to debunk the poll -- don't miss Steve Benen's skillful skewering of the survey right here.
But guess what: I've just asked another Republican pollster who says he originally supported the war -- let me repeat that, a Republican pollster who says he supported the war. -- to analyze the poll. His take? He basically says the poll's a crock. The pollster, David Johnson, the CEO of the GOP firm <a href="http://www.strategicvision.biz/index.html">Strategic Vision</a>, tells me that some of the key questions were leading and designed to elicit the answers they got. "This poll is not the quality we've come to expect from national polling firms," Johnson tells me.........
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politicophile, I'll make this short & sweet....you might not have been around here for my Feb. 2 post on Duncan Hunter, linked here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...er#post2189949
...or for my in depth "coverage" of the secretive CNP. a melding of politically motivated and aggressive, wealthy conservatives and religious fundamentalists, newly relevant because of these two items:
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/p...25-hunter.html
Hunter on campaign swing through Florida
SIGNONSANDIEGO NEWS SERVICES
3:25 a.m. February 3, 2007
SAN DIEGO – Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, is scheduled to meet with Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., the general chairman of the Republican National Committee, Saturday in Orlando as he continues a four-day swing through Florida in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Hunter is also scheduled to attend a cookout in the Panhandle town of Lamont, near Tallahassee.
“We've invited him because we think he would be a remarkable presidential candidate and we want to introduce him to those people who can make a difference and get behind him,” former Florida state Rep. Randy Johnson, one of the cookout's hosts, told City News Service.
To Johnson, Hunter is not “someone everyone's talking about, but he's one of those guys that when people get to know and understand his role and how remarkable an asset he's been to the president of the United States with respect to giving him good advice, sometimes advice he might not like to hear,” they'll support.
“History has proven Duncan Hunter right on a myriad of issues,” said Johnson, a former Navy pilot who described himself as a “big fan” of Hunter.
Hunter began his trip to Florida Thursday by giving a speech in Jacksonville Thursday and attending receptions with area business leaders and veterans. <h3>Hunter spoke to a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy in Amelia Island yesterday</h3>, again on the topic of <b>“Peace Through Strength,”</b> echoing a phrase and concept made popular by former President Ronald Reagan.
<b>Hunter has based his campaign on support for a strong military and the war in Iraq, including President Bush's call to add more than 21,000 troops;</b> opposition to illegal immigration and cracking down on nations, such as China, that are hurting American manufacturing with unfair trade policies......
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Quote:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=2&gl=us
THE FRAGILITY OF ISLAMOFASCISM
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 01 February 2007
[This is the text of a speech I am giving to the Council for National Policy at Amelia Island, Florida, Friday, February 2.]
It has been my good fortune to experience a great deal of the world and get to know people from close to 200 countries. There is a common humanity shared by most folks around the globe. The fact that there has never been a war between two genuine democracies clearly shows that most people prefer peace to war, and simply want a decent life for their families and children.
Yet as we all know, history is full of examples of people going berserk, falling victim to some frenzied hysteria. It can be a frenzy of paranoia, such as the lunacy we are currently experiencing over "global warming." It can be a frenzy of greed, like the dotcom bubble or the Tulip Craze.
The worst are frenzies of criminal insanity, like the Gulag Communism of the Soviet Union, the National Socialism of Hitler's Germany, or the barbaric imperialism of Tojo's Japan.
An entire people like the Germans or Japanese can go criminally, murderously nuts. Such mass criminality has to be ended by whatever means necessary. But once the frenzy is over, the people crazed by it can become normal human beings again.
<h3>Just such a mass criminal insanity has today taken over the minds of a substantial fraction of the world's Moslems.</h3> Today, we're going to talk about how to put an end to it.
Last Updated ( Friday, 02 February 2007 )
Register to read more...
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....I continue to be confident that being on the opposite side of folks who support the surge and Bushwar in Iraq, and in the GWOT is the right political path for me. I expect to see Duncan Hunter indicted on corruption charges related to Pentagon procurement, before I see him as a credible GOP presidential candidate. Remember all of the negative publicity that Howard Dean attracted....because he made "funny noises"? What do you suppose Mel Martinez looks like, and the republican national party, for that matter....with it's chairman....a US senator, associating with Hunter, fresh from his Rendezvous with "the Council" on Amelia Island......
....maybe this contributes to more understanding of why we are so different in our core beliefs:
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http://psychologytoday.com/articles/...222-000001.xml
The Ideological Animal
We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect.
........In 2005, she wrote a column called "The Making of a 9/11 Republican." Over the year that followed, she received thousands of e-mails from people who'd had similar experiences. There were so many of them that she decided to form a group. And so the 911 Neocons were born.
We tend to believe our political views have evolved by a process of rational thought, as we consider arguments, weigh evidence, and draw conclusions. But the truth is more complicated. Our political preferences are equally the result of factors we're not aware of—such as how educated we are, how scary the world seems at a given moment, and personality traits that are first apparent in early childhood. Among the most potent motivators, it turns out, is fear. How the United States should confront the threat of terrorism remains a subject of endless political debate. But Americans' response to threats of attack is now more clear-cut than ever. The fear of death alone is surprisingly effective in shaping our political decisions—more powerful, often, than thought itself..........
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/...-000001&page=2
........People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.
The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers—John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley—found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.
The study's authors also concluded that conservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." <h3>Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.
</h3>
Liberals, on the other hand, are "more likely to see gray areas and reconcile seemingly conflicting information," says Jost. As a result, liberals like John Kerry, who see many sides to every issue, are portrayed as flip-floppers. "Whatever the cause, Bush and Kerry exemplify the cognitive styles we see in the research," says Jack Glaser, one of the study's authors, "Bush in appearing more rigid in his thinking and intolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity, and Kerry in appearing more open to ambiguity and to considering alternative positions."
Jost's meta-analysis sparked furious controversy. The House Republican Study Committee complained that the study's authors had received federal funds. George Will satirized it in his Washington Post column, and The National Review called it the "Conservatives Are Crazy" study. Jost and his colleagues point to the study's rigorous methodology. The study used political orientation as a dependent variable, meaning that where subjects fall on the political scale is computed from their own answers about whether they're liberal or conservative. <b>Psychologists then compare factors such as fear of death and openness to new experiences, and seek statistically significant correlations. The findings are quintessentially empirical and difficult to dismiss as false.</b>
Yet critics retort that the research draws negative conclusions about conservatives while the researchers themselves are liberal. And it's true that over the decades, a disproportionate amount of the research has focused on figuring out what's behind conservative behavior. Right shift is likewise more studied than left shift, largely because most of that research has been since 9/11, and aimed at trying to explain the conservative conversions of people like Cinnamon Stillwell..........
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You can have your "surge", and your "war president".....but I'm not convinced that any of the Bush/Cheney "message of fear", is for any purpose higher than shifting more power away from the people and other government branches, to the executive.
I'm not "scared". I see no "war on terror" in Iraq.....only the concern that Bush has made Iran "the winner". When I was 5....in kindergarten and in 1st grade....we were taken to the basement of our school for "duck n' cover" drills. Those late 50's through early 60's, cold war tensions, were about the real possibility of nuclear missle exchange. `<b>With the exception of the week of the Oct. '62 Cuban missle crisis, when I was in the 5th grade, I don't remember feeling scared....and I sure don't feel that way now....except of Bush and Cheney......</b>
Last edited by host; 02-21-2007 at 11:28 PM..
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