Note—On Tuesday Donald Trump is scheduled to perform the
annual Turkey Pardon in a brief White House ceremony. He has not had a public event on his schedule
in 16 days, made just four official appearances since November 3, and only spoken
publicly three times. With exception of golf outing like the one he did on
Saturday when he ditched a virtual G7 economic summit event, buzzing a MAGA
rally on the mall with his motorcade, a visit to Arlington National Cemetery on
Veterans Day, he has not left the White House.
Presumably he has decided that the tradition is popular enough with his
base to be worth the effort to tear himself away from Tweeting and plotting to
subvert democracy to make the effort. It
may also offer an opportunity to ad lib some remarks that will scandalize most
of the nation—perhaps riffs on pardons for his cronies or himself. If he does his base will adore him even more. But as I discovered five years ago
Republicans had a different view of turkey pardons when Barack Obama did
it. Our divide was deep and festering
even then as is plain from this blast from the Blog past.
It’s mid-afternoon and I am
still working on the blog post I had
planned for this morning. Look for it tomorrow. But on a break
from working on it I found a post on Facebook
that intrigued me. But it was from PoliticusUSA,
a liberal web site I have learned not to trust. It often skews news items, misrepresents the contents in headlines,
exaggerates, and passes on from sources even less
reliable. Having been embarrassingly burned a couple of times
I have learned no matter how much their stuff might appeal to my natural political leanings, positions, and prejudices not to pass it on or share on social media. My conservative friends—and I still have a
few—might do well to review their own sources of information confirming their preconceptions. But then if they did so sites from The
Drudge Report and Breitbart not to mention Fox
News might go out of business. Those have been proved to have their pants
on fire repeatedly by neutral fact
checkers.
But in the case of the post that
grabbed my attention, I decided to investigate if there was even a morsel of
truth in the Politicus meme.
And lo and behold this
time there was. The story checked
out. And it was too good, and revealing
not to pass on from the original source material—Public Policy Polling (PPP)
PPP is a North Carolina based polling organization ranked for its reliability, accuracy, and methodology
as one of the best in the business. The
company only works for Democratic or
Liberal campaigns which value it for
telling them the truth about public opinion, not just parroting back to them what they want to hear. Separate from the polls that they conduct
for campaigns, the company of conducts “temperature measurement” polls which
reveal the depth of ideological commitment of some
voters—and often reveals remarkable gullibility. Questions in these polls sometimes seem whimsical or ridiculous—but some voters take them with absolute seriousness.
They have polled questions like the approval rating of God, whether Republican
voters believe President Obama would
be eligible to enter heaven in the
event of the Rapture, and whether hipsters should be subjected to a special tax for being annoying. Although
these polls are sensational enough to attract media attention and thus boost the PPP brand, they are conducted as
straight forwardly as any campaign
polling. Unlike the notorious push polls favored by Republican operatives, the
questions are not framed in inflammatory
or prejudicial language intended to push the pollee to the desired
response. They are put forward matter-of-factly an in neutral language. They use Interactive Voice Response (IVR),
an automated questionnaire used by
other polling firms including SurveyUSA
and Rasmussen Reports. Sample
sizes are large enough to be meaningful
and guard against anomalies.
In other words PPP polls tend to
reflect what people are really thinking.
Which can sometimes be frightening. It’s a Bizzaro
world out there folks.
The poll question that grabbed my attention asked “Do you approve or disapprove of President Obama’s executive action to pardon two turkeys rather than the customary one turkey at Thanksgiving?”
You might recall that last year to white gobblers named Macaroni and Cheese were saved in a holiday
tradition dating back to John F.
Kennedy spontaneously spared the turkey donated to the White House annually by the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board on Nov.
18, 1963, just four days before his assassination. Other presidents informally followed suit,
making for a nice heartwarming annual story.
Ronald Reagan was the first
to call it what the press already
was—a pardon, but it was George Herbert
Walker Bush who first drew up and issued a formal pardon. The birds are generally donated to a local petting zoo. The First
Families, if they are so inclined, dine on a traditional non-celebrity turkey feast.
You would think such a charming
little tradition would be non-controversial. You would, of course, be wrong. Nothing Barack Obama does is
non-controversial in these hyper
partisan times. If Fox News were to
suddenly report that Obama respires
oxygen a significant portion of their viewership would be dead of asphyxiation by morning.
Let PPP itself report the outcome of
their question.
The examples of the GOP’s reflexive
opposition to President Obama’s agenda are many but this may be the best one
yet: by a 27 point margin Republicans say they disapprove of the President's
executive order last year pardoning two Thanksgiving turkeys (Macaroni and
Cheese) instead of the customary one. Only 11% of Republicans support the
President’s executive order last year to 38% who are opposed- that’s a pretty
clear sign that if you put Obama's name on something GOP voters are going to
oppose it pretty much no matter what. Overall there’s 35/22 support for the
pardon of Macaroni and Cheese thanks to 59/11 support from Democrats and 28/21
from independents.
So there you have it. Are you surprised?
PPP’s complete report on this round
of polling also included questions on which Presidential Candidate would be the most likely to say something inappropriate at the
table and ruin Thanksgiving Dinner (Donald
Trump in a run-away),
Thanksgiving menu choices (cranberry sauce
or not turns into a generational
divide) and Christmas issues—Americans
are united in thinking the Starbucks coffee cup issue is ridiculous
and in opposing too early playing of Christmas music. Perhaps there is some dim hope for unity
after all. Check out PPP’s report a here.
*Just the sort of inflammatory headline to avoid like the plague. This has been a Public Service Example.
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