James Joyner has a link to a poll that appears to show that the Democratic strategy, as espoused by John "Unindicted Co-Conspirator" Murtha and embraced by Nancy Pelosi, is likely to backfire – badly – on them. I deleted a number of comments today that went well over the limits of the comment policy because the artist formerly known as the Daou Report linked to one of my earlier posts about bad bets. The more hysterical commenters might want to calm down and actually read what this poll is saying.
Public Opinion Strategies* has released a survey [PDF file here] of likely voters’ attitudes toward the Iraq War that finds that most voters think the country is going in the wrong direction (67%) and President Bush is doing a poor job (60%), and that Iraq will never be a stable democracy (60%). No real surprises there, right?
Here are some pretty interesting numbers, though, given those and other indications** that the survey isn’t biased toward President Bush:
- 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.”
- 57% “support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.
- 50% want our troops should stay and “do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country” while only 17% favor immediate withdrawal
- 56% believe “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”
- 53% believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”
I am not, as longtime readers know, a big fan of trying to govern via polling, nor am I a huge believer in any single poll being used as a benchmark. Still, these numbers indicate that there is a problem with the execrable strategy of a man who barely avoided being rightfully jailed – if he hadn't been rather transparently holding out for more money later, he would have gone down in Abscam. This is who the Democrats are listening to for strategy? My wife told me I needed to run this picture, so I think this is the right place for it:
