If it's unpatriotic and supposedly treasonous for conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to want Barack Obama's policies to fail in the middle of a serious recession, is it similarly so for Democrats who wished President Bush wouldn't succeed while the nation was at war?
In August 2006, a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll asked the following of 900 registered voters:
Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?
Here are the stunning results (h/t Patterico via NB reader Thomas Stewart):
Yes, that says 51 percent of Democrats and 34 percent of Independents didn't want President Bush to succeed...even though our nation was at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I'm sure media outlets will be reporting this revelation real soon, and expressing their apologies to Mr. Limbaugh.
*****Update: Former Clinton pollster Craig Charney wrote about this deplorable poll on September 24, 2006 (h/t Betsy Newmark via Sister Toldjah via Garden State Pundit via Gateway Pundit) --
A recent Fox News poll gets at the disturbing truth: A majority of Democrats say they want to see the president fail. [...]
In other words, the rage extends way beyond the lip-pierced Deaniacs, aging hippies and other fringes of the Democratic Party. Lots of otherwise sensible people—suburban moms, hospital orderlies, schoolteachers, big-hatted church ladies—detest George W. Bush.
When these Democrats say they want Bush to fail, might this mean that they simply reject what they see as his far-right religious and corporate agenda? If so, it’s hard to see why independents—hardly right-wing zealots—hope he succeeds by 63 percent to 34 percent. Sadly, much of the Democratic Party wants to see this president crash and burn. [...]
Yet if Bush does fail—for instance, if Iraq spirals into civil war or the economy slides into recession—then America is in trouble. Making progress on these key issues, like others facing the country, will require bipartisan solutions, not political finger-pointing.
Fascinating.
