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This idea is so absurd that only people who have never had to do any data management or were ever involved in any survey can buy it.
Let's assume for a moment that Obama is 100% willing and able to manipulate it to his advantage: why would he manipulate it at the micro level? At the individual level? Which would involve thousands upon thousands of interviewers? Besides, manipulating a census in real time at the micro level would require a sort of quasi-omniscience that is impossible to achieve. If he wanted to manipulate it, it would be much easier to do so through misleading "assumptions" when managing the data, and in that case truthfully answering the census would make the task much harder.
In fact, the census is the best way of influencing policy and letting the government know about your situation.
As for why Beck et al are actually doing this, my guess is that this is a preemptive attempt to delegitimize it. The biggest political problem facing capital R republicans is demographic. With a significant increase in minorities and urban areas (as most expect) redistricting could be very damaging to their political aspirations.
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