Thank you, Kathy, Yellow Dog, and Tom, for soldiering on in my absence. Then I come back to the likes of this and I don't know why I don't just quit this and take up stamp collecting:
Americans See Views of GOP Candidates Closer to Their Own
Americans perceive Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul as closest to themselves ideologically, and Michele Bachmann and Barack Obama as furthest away.
A USA Today/Gallup poll asked Americans to rate their own ideology -- and the ideology of the eight major presidential candidates -- on a 5-point scale with 1 being very liberal and 5 being very conservative. Americans' mean score on this scale is 3.3, meaning the average American is slightly to the right of center ideologically.... Of the better known candidates, Romney's and Paul's 3.5 scores are closest to the average American's ideology....
Yeah, Obama's a big extremist while Ron Paul, who thinks Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional, to take one of a nearly limitless number of examples, is right in the mainstream.
And I don't know what to say about this:
Ten percent of Americans think Michele Bachmann is liberal. Michele Bachmann! I know these are approximately the percentages for belief in a flat earth, but still, it's troubling. When was the last time a national election was decided by a margin smaller than 10%?
Americans: we're not ready for democracy.
