Paul Ryan, Do Not Read This: Matt Cooper buries two ledes in his summary of a recent National Journal/YourCorporateNameHere poll: 1) “[V]oters showed slightly more confidence in Republicans in Congress to ‘make the right decisions about how to reduce the federal deficit.'” [E.A.] If you’ve been reading the MSM, you probably think Obama is winning this debate by portraying the GOPs as obstructionist; 2) A Ryan-like Medicare replacement–“Converting Medicare into a program that provides seniors with a fixed sum of money to purchase private insurance”–gets what to me seems like a shockingly high level of support, 42%. I would have figured 25%. I still think the Ryan Plan is a bad idea and a political loser, but I can’t cite this poll for the latter point. …
The wording on some of the questions seems likely to have biased the results. On (2), for example, voters might like the idea getting a “fixed sum of money” from anywhere, given the cash flow position of many Americans. And the question doesn’t say how much money. Those polled may assume it will be enough. …
P.S.: Meanwhile, here is Cooper’s actual, non-buried lede, which pulls a pro-Obama friend out of the crowd**:
As President Obama challenged congressional Republicans with his new deficit plan on Monday, voters are rejecting the idea of reducing the nation’s debt through spending cuts alone …
Hmm. Don’t poll respondents have a natural resistance to taking extreme positions, so if you ask them whether the deficit-cutting Supercommitte should rely “entirely on spending cuts without any tax increases” [E.A.]–as one of four choices in a menu with a couple of more shaded options– they’ll tend to pick another answer (though 28% still picked all-cuts)? If you asked it as a simple yes/no question, without the multiple-choice menu, I bet you’d get a higher number. And if you asked whether the committee should “find $1.2 trillion in spending cuts before considering tax increases,” I bet you’d get a much higher number. …
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**–I guess National Journal is no more immune than any other Web outfit when it comes to telling readers what they want to hear. It’s just that NJ readers want high-minded, respectable moderate platitudes.