Sunday, June 24, 2012

New Poll: Virginians Conservative but Prefer Obama

Yet another poll spells less than good news for Mitt Romney who is barraging Virginia with less than honest campaign ads.  Indeed, the more I hear the deliberate untruths, the more I cannot stand Mr. Romney.  If he will flagrantly lie to get elected, it's a pretty safe bet that he'd lie once in office.  Do we really want a reprise of the Chimperator Bush/Emperor Palpatine Cheney regime?  Frankly, I don't think the country could survive it.  Especially when it's likely that the USA's debt would explode under a Romney regime. Here's why via Andrew Sullivan who noted that the GOP cannot deal with reality:


More evidence of the Republican refusal to deal with reality, once something conservatives prided themselves on:
YouGov asked: "Which of the following would you support as ways to reduce the nation's budget deficit?" They altered the rules of polling slightly, however, to deny respondents a "don't know" answer. Respondents had to answer something, either yes or no ...
The Dems favored big cuts in defense and tax hikes for the wealthy as ways to cut the deficit. But they didn't want to touch Medicare or Medicaid much - which means much higher taxes for the wealthy and much bigger defense cuts. But at least they chose. Republicans couldn't:
Many fewer Republicans supported tax increases on the wealthy (27.1%) and cuts in military spending (15.5%). Yet when denied the "don't know" exit, Republicans were scarcely more accepting of cuts to Medicare or Social Security than Democrats, only 13.5% and 15% approving, respectively. A majority of Republicans, 53.3%, answered "none of the above"—no changes to taxes, defense, or entitlements.
And people wonder why our debt exploded under Reagan and George W Bush. And why it will explode once again if Romney becomes president. A party this irrational - a party hysterical about debt whose members do not actually want to cut spending or raise any taxes, a party a majority of whose members have somehow persuaded themselves that there were indeed WMDs in Iraq in 2003  - should not be a mainstream party in a Western democracy.

Virginians seem to understand both Romney's dishonest and the fact that the GOP's rhetoric doesn't match the numbers.  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:

More Virginia voters prefer President Barack Obama than Republican candidate Mitt Romney, but many consider themselves more conservative on economic issues than the president, according to a statewide poll by Old Dominion University and The Virginian-Pilot.

When asked whom they would vote for on Nov. 6, 49 percent of those surveyed said Obama, 42 percent chose Romney, 5 percent said they wouldn't vote for either and 3 percent were undecided or wouldn't say.  Obama's 7-percentage-point advantage is significant, said Jesse Richman, an assistant professor of political science at ODU who analyzed the poll results.

When asked about social issues, such as abortion rights, contraception and same-sex marriage, voters considered themselves more in the middle, between the two candidates.  More than a third of those polled said they're social liberals, 44 percent said they're conservatives and close to one in five said they're moderates. About three-quarters of them consider Romney conservative and Obama liberal on these issues.

Emily Cole, a 23-year-old college student who participated in the survey, said that although she's more conservative than Obama on economic policies, she still plans to vote for him.  Obama's supportive stance on abortion rights, same-sex marriage and other "civil rights" matters, Cole said, are more important than monetary policy.  "Definitely for my generation, that's a big concern," the Virginia Beach resident said. "We're not willing to compromise on that."


 

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