ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

We here at confirmthem were recently discussing a Washington Post poll that allegedly shows public support for maintaining --- rather than changing --- the Senate's filibuster rules with regard to judicial nominations. I pointed out that, even if the poll is accurate, still Americans overwhelmingly support up-or-down votes on nominees. But, upon careful examination, it's obvious that the Washington Post poll is actually very far from being accurate. The poll question was highly slanted and biased.

Here's what Power Line had to say about it.

"Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush's judicial nominees?" That is an absurd question, to which I would probably answer "No," too. The way the question is framed, it makes it sound like a one-way street, as though the Republicans wanted to change the rules to benefit only Republican nominees. If they asked a question like, "Do you think that if a majority of Senators support confirmation of a particular nominee, that nominee should be confirmed?" the percentages would probably reverse.

And Rush Limbaugh picked up on the same thing:

And how about this question the Post framed about the judges. "Would you support or oppose changing Senate rules to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush's judicial nominees?" Bogus question, here is the question, "Do you support or oppose the Democratic Party's unprecedented effort to filibuster judicial nominees?"

If you ask that question in a Washington Post poll, they would have to suppress the results of the poll because they wouldn't get the answers they want. And so, the right question is -- because who is taking the action on this -- the Democrats are taking the action. The Democrats are filibustering. The Democrats are the ones that are causing the circumstance. They started it. So an accurate poll question would be, "Do you support or oppose the Democratic Party's unprecedented effort to filibuster judicial nominees, which has never been done before?" Do you support that? My guess is that you will get numbers so strongly opposed to it that you would have the Washington Post and ABC suppressing their poll. It would have never made the news.

Rush is right. The Washington Post poll is also criticized here, here, and here.
The Republican National Committee has poll results that show considerable public support for ending these filibusters.

UPDATE: Here's a news article discussing the bogusness of the poll.