The new CNN poll provides very strong evidence for the idea that abandoning the Planned Parenthood rider was very smart on John Boehner’s part:
Pursuant to the budget deal reached Friday night, the Senate will vote on a standalone Planned Parenthood defunding bill this week. It will fail. The GOP thinks it can use this to it’s political advantage against vulnerable Senators next year, but this result strongly suggests that won’t be the case.
H/T: David Weigel
The argument that people have been trying to make that this whole thing really was about the budge and cutting spending is ridiculous. The funding to Planned Parenthood was somewhere around 1/100th of 1 percent of the federal budget.
That would be the equivalent to a husband and wife arguing over something that costs $10 over the course of a year (assuming a total family yearly income of $100,000). Would you and your wife fight this vociferously over something that costs $10 over the course of a year, even if you were in financial trouble and trying to redo your budget?
No. No one would (unless you were absolutely insane), because it literally insignificant. Which means this isn’t about money, it’s about ideology. And on the ideological front, the Republicans lose this argument nowadays.
Doug,
Before I write another scathing comment about your intelligence, motivations or integrity, it occurred to me that perhaps you are simply missing some of the details. This could lead a perfectly fair and rational person to believe things that are ridiculous by placing them in a misleading context.
Once again, the CNN/Opinion Research poll is being used as if it is representative of American voters across the country. As you might (should) know, this is a poll of 824 southern adults, not registered or likely voters. The sampling has 384 self-described republicans, all of which live in the suburbs, not the city or a rural area.
I will concede that the wording on the first page of the poll would lead an average, uniformed reader to believe this was a random survey of 824 Americans, leading most to think the demographic was widely dispersed. Perhaps in a rush to bring interesting articles to the OTB audience you missed that this is a narrowly focused demographic, at least that is what I hope.
You do realize this is all the same poll, right?
Mantis,
Thank you for pointing out my error. On closer examination, I’m finding I was wrong thinking that CNN/ORC limited their sampling to the south.
It now appears that they only limited the republican responses to the south. This is taken from the crosstabs that read:
“BASED ON 385 REPUBLICANS — SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5 PERCENTAGE PTS.”
Moving through the tabs provides the information that no urban or rural republicans were surveyed, only suburban.
This is stranger still. Although the sampling of republicans is limited to southern suburban residents, the independent and democrat data shows dispersion throughout the country. Why do you suppose that is? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to contrast southern white conservative viewpoints to urban liberal views in the Northeast, Midwest and West, unless you were looking for the potentially most racist picture.
This will take a little more looking into.
It now appears that they only limited the republican responses to the south. This is taken from the crosstabs that read:
“BASED ON 385 REPUBLICANS — SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5 PERCENTAGE PTS.”Moving through the tabs provides the information that no urban or rural republicans were surveyed, only suburban.
Where are you getting this info? I can’t find anything like that on the official poll results.
Although the sampling of republicans is limited to southern suburban residents, the independent and democrat data shows dispersion throughout the country. Why do you suppose that is?
I think you’re mistaken.
Mantis,
You’re linking to the information released Monday. That only contains questions 1 -18A, then skips to question 33. The information I referenced starts at question 42.
