Be Wary When the Polls are on Your Side

[Geee]

American Thinker:

Throughout the excessively drawn-out and heated debate over President Obama's healthcare reform plan, Republican leaders relied on two broad strategies to undermine the President's key domestic initiative. First, they attacked the plan on its merits: pointing to its unsustainable cost and overbearing scope, and highlighting the underhanded (if not outright corrupt) process by which the bill was pushed through Congress. Second, they routinely cited polls showing public opposition to the plan. As the battle over Paul Ryan's highly bold and highly controversial budget unfolds, it is this second strategy that is coming back to haunt Republican lawmakers.

During the fight over healthcare, some conservative consultants and pundits expressed misgivings about focusing so much on public opinion polls to attack ObamaCare. Their reasoning was that polls are transient and erratic; the public might hate a proposal today but love it tomorrow. By constantly pointing to daily polling numbers in making the case against ObamaCare, Republicans were effectively gambling on the prospect that the law would remain unpopular in perpetuity. Gambling on the long-term unpopularity of entitlement programs -- no matter how misguided and costly they may be -- is almost never shrewd. Once enacted, entitlements are difficult to rescind or even reform because voters like "free" goods and services (see Social Security and Medicare).

While ObamaCare remains unpopular, Republicans now find themselves in a strategic quandary over the Ryan budget. Polls show that Ryan's plan, like ObamaCare, is unpopular with the majority of the American people. Herein lies the folly of over-relying on fickle polling to buttress an argument.