Pew Forecasts a Perfect Storm
[Guest post by DRJ]
The Pew Research Center has released a lengthy poll that covers public opinion on government (federal, state and local), Congress, the President, federal agencies, the Tea Party, and health care. The title and opening paragraphs set the tone:
The People and Their Government: DISTRUST, DISCONTENT, ANGER AND PARTISAN RANCOR
“By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days. A new Pew Research Center survey finds a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government – a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan based backlash, and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials. Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems – including more government control over the economy – than there was when Barack Obama first took office.”
Beginning on page 6, Pew elaborates on the four factors that make up this political Perfect Storm:
“The current survey and previous research have found that there is no single factor that drives general public distrust in government. Instead, there are several factors – and all are currently present. First, there is considerable evidence that distrust of government is strongly connected to how people feel about the overall state of the nation.1 Distrust of government soars when the public is unhappy with the way things are going in the country. ***”
“A second element is presidential politics. Trust in government is typically higher among members of the party that controls the White House than among members of the “out” party. However, Republicans’ views of government change more dramatically, depending on which party holds power, than do Democrats’. Republicans are more trusting of government when the GOP holds power than Democrats are when the Democrats are in charge. This pattern is particularly evident in the Obama era. The president’s policies – especially the year-long effort to overhaul the health care system – have served as a lightning rod for Republicans. Currently, just 13% of Republicans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, nearly equaling a low point reached in June 1994 during the Clinton administration (11%).”
“A third factor is that a particular subgroup of independents, who are financially pressed, chronically distrustful of government and who typically lean to the Republican Party, appears to be especially angry today. Pew political typology surveys in the past have labeled these individuals as “disaffecteds.” This group may explain, in part, why at least as many Republican leaning independents (37%) as conservative Republicans (32%) say they are angry with the government. And identical percentages of Republican-leaning independents and conservative Republicans (53% each) say they agree with the Tea Party movement.”
“Finally, record discontent with Congress – and dim views of elected officials generally – have poisoned the well for trust in the federal government. Undoubtedly, this has contributed to growing discontent with government even among groups who are generally more positive about it, such as Democrats. Today, many fewer Democrats say they trust
government than did so during the later Clinton years. And just 40% of Democrats have a favorable impression of the Democratic Congress – the lowest positive rating for Congress ever among members of the majority party.”
At some point, will disillusionment with government turn into disillusionment with America? Page 68 notes that opposition to secession has declined slightly, especially among independents who favor the GOP. What surprised me is “there are no significant differences in the percentages that favor allowing secession by geographic region.”
NOTE: Page 66 of the report addresses Tea Party demographics.
— DRJ
I can only offer an anecdotal example of why I distrust the government.
Recently a story made it on to Drudge about a pet shop owner who was fined a £1000 and forced to wear an ankle bracelet for selling a 14 year old boy a goldfish. I commented at a blog site that the reason for this prosecution was the fact that the UK government could extract money from this woman. I went on to say that the reason that there are dangerous areas where the police won’t go is because poor people live there and the government finds it impossible to extract money from the moneyless criminals the prey on the locals so the police do not bother to patrol there thus making it a dangerous area.
I went over the top and suggested that a poor child could be murdered by a poor criminal and the government would not be bothered as there was no money to be extracted. Even I thought this was going overboard. And then two days later…
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/admitted-child-molester-deported-before-trial
An illegal alien with no money was deported to Mexico after admitting to raping a poor, seven year old girl.
snookered (1f2034) — 4/18/2010 @ 7:31 pmProgressives will write all of that discontent off as being the result of “false consciousness”.
All those disillusioned people have been brainwashed by the capitalists, donchaknow? And once the Progressives finish implementing their program, the disillusioned will come around and realize that the Progressives were right all along.
So the disillusioned can be ignored. What they think doesn’t matter. That’s what the Progressives will say.
Steven Den Beste (99cfa1) — 4/18/2010 @ 7:32 pmI find it disturbing that PEW seems to have played the PC card to a tee.
SiliconDoc (c27150) — 4/18/2010 @ 8:51 pmI didn’t see anything that claimed the rampant and exposed monetary theft and disgusting corruption of our federal government and massive in our face public lies of the democrats currently in power have the citizens who formerly may have existed in a kind of hazy pro USA brainwashing, waking up.
Further, I expect such an analysis to include WITHOUT A DOUBT > the massive exposure to never before available information on government corruption the internet has provided to the average citizen. How could they possbily leave that out as a major point ?
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Note how they happily spew out phrases like “chronically distrustful of government”. Oh, so it’s a chronic, paranoid, illness, is it ? An “extreme condition” ?
So, we have these jerky polling institutes that seem more like an arm of the government, spewing out their propaganda, and hopefully, the powers that be can make note of “the problem” and realign their attack on coralling the various noted portions of the public back into a coddled, friendly, worshipful obesiance.
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I mean WHERE is the statement that the government is standing there with it’s drawers around it’s ankles, it’s sphincter cracked wide open rubbing it on everyone’s head and in their faces, and singing about the lovely scent of the pureness of spring they have provided in the air ?
I like SiliconDoc. He says things well, I think.
JD (8763bd) — 4/18/2010 @ 8:59 pmThere is a simple charm to a small government.
Politics will always be corrupt and wallow in its corruption. It’s the nature of the beast, the compromise.
With a small government the range of the corruption, hence its cost, is sharply constrained. It’s less likely we’ll be personally affected by the corruption.
Perhaps other people are waking up to this simple truth?
{^_^}
JD (9ac83d) — 4/18/2010 @ 10:04 pm“Perfect Storms” are notorious for generating monster waves that wash away all before them.
In 1994, the sitting Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, lost his seat to a newcomer; the first time in the history of the Republic that a sitting Speaker had been defeated for re-election.
AD - RtR/OS! (4249dd) — 4/19/2010 @ 12:35 amI love our government. I love the way they hide in dark corners to enact legislation they haven’t even read. I love the way they send out IRS thugs door to door to ensure compliance with their secret laws. I particularly love the way they compromise their “principals” when selling their votes. I am willing to fight and die for this wonderful form of government. So there.
Howard Veit (d0000b) — 4/19/2010 @ 2:38 amThe storm has been kept at bay by the media extreme that have kept us focused on the wrong issues; blaming the other party instead of the Federal Government as a whole. As the media crumbles, or as it is seen for what it is, the clouds of discontent will grow.
Corwin (ea9428) — 4/19/2010 @ 6:26 amI’m surprised it has taken this long.
Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury. – Frances Quarles
Pew’s poll is the latest in a series of reports which document the public’s disapproval with government. Regrettably, this is not new information, Americans don’t trust their government to follow the Constitution, protect the nation’s borders, or preserve economic vitality, but most of all Americans don’t trust either government or the news media to tell them the truth.
ropelight (b6d5f5) — 4/19/2010 @ 6:28 amOn Saturday Rasmussen released the latest results of his Tracking Poll: Obama drops to minus 17 in the Presidential Approval Index. That’s an astonishing nine point drop in only a three day period.
ropelight (b6d5f5) — 4/19/2010 @ 8:06 amMight happen…isn’t that the end game for the last 40 years of the left’s class warfare?
Patricia (fa8e06) — 4/19/2010 @ 7:48 pm