linsenbardt.net

Dr. Macarthur alerted me to this blurb at The Washington Monthly, a liberal-leaning blog, that highlights another blog posting at Time Magazine regarding the most recent Republican debate.

Essentially, they took 30 Republican “base” voters from St. Petersburg, FL and gave them a dial device to record their reactions in “real-time” to what was said during the debate. For example, if Romney was speaking and you agreed, you’d turn your dial up toward “100,” and if you disagreed you’d turn it down toward “0.” In this way, you can generally gauge the reactions for anything said by a given candidate. Now, keep in mind, these are a sample of people and may not (or may?) represent the general feelings of Republican “base” voters around the country. Honestly, I hope these aren’t the general feelings of the “base”…

Many of the reactions were to be expected (i.e. no one liked Ron Paul’s Iraq stance, most liked Romney…), but there were a few responses that surprised even me… From the article:

“In the next segment–the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee’s college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants–I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, ‘After all, these are children of God,’ the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s).”

And secondly:

“When John McCain started talking about torture–specifically, about waterboarding–the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. ‘I don’t have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,’ said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.”

Now, I can’t say I was only slightly surprised by the reaction to McCain’s stance against torture by the “base,” but I was a flabbergasted by their response to Huckabee.

I guess I think it really says something when the majority of your base of voters say they are God-fearing, church-going people…and yet they don’t agree that the children of illegal immigrants are not “God’s children” and that torture is perfectly fine. That, or anything to help impoverished people. Seriously. I mean, I would have thought that an ordained minister would have a pretty good shot at the nomination, if you just look at “base” voters, but…I guess not?

Just sounds a bit hypocritical…perhaps I’m mistaken…

Note: I read the Time blog posting first, then wrote this up…then read through the comments below the Time posting…you may wanna flip through those, as they call the source of the data into question and the blogger in general. I dunno who’s right, of course, but it’s still rather frightening…