Time for the Push

By Contributor Archive

Filed Under Race for White House 2008 on Nov 16 

Now that Obama and Edwards have taken the lead on the Hillary-bashing front, it’s time for the GOPers to find a new target…but where to look? Oh, how about each other? Yay! It’s finally push-poll time.

Everyone has been wondering which Republican is going to start with the anti-Mormon attacks, and with Romney’s lead climbing in Iowa and New Hampshire, the answer is finally here…it’s an unnamed mystery Republican.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports on what IA and NH voters are hearing in apparent push polls:

“Statements were on baptizing the dead, the Book of Mormon being on the level of the Bible, and one about equating it to a cult,” said the Iowan, deeming them “common criticisms of Mormonism.”

Of course, legitimate research polls can test positive and negative statements about the candidates, but a push poll goes over the line, making outlandish statements that are clearly for the purpose of slander, not research. It’s hard to say without actually hearing the phone call, but this certainly sounds more like a “push” than a “poll.” CBS has a good explanation of the difference between the two.

There is some speculation that McCain’s campaign could be the source of the calls, because the poll also reportedly tests positives on him. This is pretty hard to believe, since McCain, himself the victim of infamous push polls in 2000, has based so much of his career on chastising this kind of politics.

In an effort to make it clear that it isn’t them, McCain’s campaign has called for a full investigation into who’s behind the attacks.

AP further investigates, seeing if the poll can be tied a consultant who works for Giuliani, a theory the consultant strongly denies.

So who is it? Sadly, we’ll probably never know. The only thing that’s clear is we’re headed into the campaign’s dirty season.

Comments

  • JK

    Looks like everyone is staying away from this topic. However, Like Fabs, I have an opinion.

    While the Mormon church does have 12 million members world-wide, nearly 6 million of them live in the US, and roughly 70 percent (say 4 million) can vote. Looking at the margin of victory for the 2004 election, Bush/Cheney only won the popular vote by a little over 3 million votes. Insulting and offending 4 million Mormon voters may not have changed the outcome of the election, but it is easy to see how another 2000 type scenario would have changed perceptions. Bush would have been elected twice without ever winning the popular vote.

    Mormon voters consistently and strongly vote republican, and while they probably would not vote for the other party, they may just stay home on election day. And that could have a real effect on elections.

    Take Iowa for example. Bush / Cheney won the state by about 10,000 votes. There are about 22,000 Mormons in Iowa. I don’t have proof but I’d say there was a strong possibility that at least 10,000 republican votes were cast by Mormons in Iowa. That could have turned Iowa blue.

    I know, it would have taken more than Iowa to swing the electoral votes toward the democrats, but can the GOP really risk losing 4 million votes?

    Need another example? What would have happened if Mormon voters had withheld their votes in the 2000 election. Florida, which only went red by 537 votes, could have been blue by over 50,000 votes. There are approximately 127,000 Mormons in Florida.

    Keep looking, I am sure there are many more examples of how important the Mormon vote (or lack thereof) can be, and I can’t see the wisdom in any candidate potentially throwing away that many votes over religion.

  • Fabs

    Man, these “common criticism of Mormonism” have been around the block so many times they’re getting worn out. How is it any different than some ignorant person or group from any other religious sect (let’s call it sect A) who does not truly represent the views and opinions of sect A, goes and starts religion bashing on sect B? There’s proverbial “dirt” to throw at anybody who is different, especially if there happens to be misinterpretations involved. Does a 12 million world-wide population with continuously high growth rates realistically qualify as a cult??? Was Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, or other break-off Christian religions (Baptists, Methodists, etc.) and so on viewed the same way back in the first few hundred years of their “coming out”? Some of them were, I don’t know enough about the others to really say though. It seems religious intolerance will just continue to perpetuate itself doesn’t it.

    So I guess my conclusion after my blabbering is that it just doesn’t really matter if a few people feel it’s their obligation to try to hinder the efforts of others based on their own selfish desires since it’s so commonplace anyway. What does it really accomplish? It will only make a difference to those people who REALLY believe that if they don’t forward on lame junk emails that they really will have 20 years bad luck, since they obviously can’t think for themselves anyway.