Poll: Public More Sympathetic to Town Hall Protesters than Turned off By Them

However, neither side is anything like a majority, so most of the people saying 'I hate them, make them go away' are diehard liberals who of course would say that, and most of the people saying 'They seem sympathetic and make me want to vote their way" are likely already in the bag against ObamaCare.

But there is a lot more support of the protesters than opposition.

Further, independents are much more on the protester's side -- but always keep in mind that currently there are more right-leaning independents than left-leaning independents. (Why? Because the GOP became unpopular, many right-leaning people quit the party and became right-leaning independents; and because the Democratic Party became popular, many left-leaning independents, who were always liberal anyway, "made it official' and joined the Democrats as far as affiliation. This is, by the way, why pollsters allow voters to self-identify as far as party affiliation -- it's flexible.)

Still -- if the Democrats were counting on some groundswell of public animus at the protesters, sorry, boys. At best, for Democrats I mean, the protesters are minor positive for the ObamaCare opposition.

And it's possible they're quite a bit more positive for the cause than that.

n a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say the sometimes heated protests at sessions held by members of Congress have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views; 21% say they are less sympathetic.

Independents by 2-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now.

The findings are bad news for President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, who have scrambled to respond to town halls marked by aggressive questions and noisy demonstrations by those opposed to plans to overhaul the health care system.

Incidentally, I really don't think people got what I was saying yesterday and read all the nuance out of it to reduce it to "we have to be nicer," which I never said at all.

I do worry that some angry lunkheads will camera-hog and take the spotlight off of more persuasive, better-informed questioners. But I'm a fan of the jeering and hooting of evasive answers and lies.

Angry blowhards filled with hate and with shaky grasp of the facts shouldn't be on television.

They should start blogs, like I did.

More: Hollowpoint points out that the public doesn't mind raucousness -- but they reject shout-downs.

Which is my position. Hoot and jeer and boo until they answer the question, but do let them answer the question

The thing is, I'm offering a useless prescription, because that is precisely what the protesters are doing. It's just the Democrats and the media (BIRM) insisting they're engaging in shout-downs.

Just saying -- keep it this way and don't get caught up in the full shout-down.

There's some tolerance for noisy disputes at town hall meetings. By 51%-41%, those surveyed say individuals making "angry attacks" on a health care bill reflected "democracy in action" rather than "abuse of democracy." However, by 59%-33% they say "shouting down supporters" of a health care bill was an abuse of democracy.

Of course, the media continues to ask about "shout-downs" that happen only in the imaginations of Democratic War Room message-makers.

posted by Ace at 06:40 PM

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