Polls as a tool of political control
I’m pleased to notice that Editor & Publisher is picking up on the increased support for impeachment.
The text of the article inadvertantly raises another question that some may find troubling if they notice it at all — but it made me chuckle.
“When chief Washington Post pollster Richard Morin appeared for an online chat this week, a reader from Naperville, Ill., asked him why the Post hasn’t polled on impeachment. “This question makes me mad,” Morin replied. When a second participant made the same query, Morin fumed, “Getting madder.” A third query brought the response: “Madder still.”
…Frank Newport, the director of the Gallup Poll, told E&P recently that he would only run a poll on the subject if the idea really started to gain mainstream political traction, and not until then.”
Clearly, these pollsters want to maintain a pretense of non-partisanship, don’t want to conduct a poll on a question they have strong partisan feelings about and recognize that increased public debate of the matter would arrive at conclusions at odds with their own preference (not to impeach). In other words, they want to fail to conduct polls on this important matter, for as long as they think they can get away with it, in an effort to deny the legitimacy of the very question of impeachment. In suppressing debate, the pollsters are acting guilty themselves because they’re covering for a criminal — and they know it.
If you think about it further, though, that raises the question of just how hypocritical “legitimate” pollsters are when they denounce push polls. It would seem that what’s really going on in that case is that practicioners of a “hard sell” approach are just being curtailed by those who don’t want them to endanger the more widespread “soft-sell” approach that allows them to, from above, artificially shape the boundaries of what constitutes legitimate debate. One can almost imagine the indignation of their inner voices when confronted with push polls: “Don’t endanger our business of telling people what to think!”
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