Boehner accidentally promoting poll that shows voters favor tax increases over certain spending cuts

[octoberlib]

John Boehner is promoting a new Marist-McClatchy poll which supposedly shows that Americans love cutting government spending. Boehner claims the poll shows that “Americans want spending cuts,” and quotes a Marist official asserting it demonstrates that Americans “are not in a mood to increase taxes.”
Which is funny, because the poll actually shows that majorities of voters would rather increase taxes than cut spending on education, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and infrastructure. In other words, it demonstrates a central fact about public opinion that may help determine how the sequester “blame game” will play: Americans say they love cutting government but suddenly balk in a big way when you start talking about cutting specific programs.
The poll’s toplines do at first glance appear favorable to Republicans. It finds that voters prefer reducing the deficit by mostly cutting spending in general rather than by mostly increasing taxes by 53-37. It finds that a plurality of Americans think spending cuts won’t impact them — and that as many think the cuts will help the economy or have no impact on it as think the cuts will hurt it.

Americans prefer spending cuts to tax hikes in only three areas: energy, jobless benefits, and…defense! In all these other areas, majorities explicitly prefer raising taxes to cutting spending — and this is the case even though the poll question doesn’t tell respondents whose taxes would get raised, i.e., rich people and corporations who currently enjoy tax loopholes that would be closed. At the same time, one key place where the public would rather see spending cuts is defense, the area of cuts in the sequester that most Republicans see as its worst feature.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/11/gop-triumphalism-about-the-sequester-is-premature/

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. But we know ...

he has little to be concerned about ...

Boehner claims the poll shows that “Americans want spending cuts,” and quotes a Marist official asserting it demonstrates that Americans “are not in a mood to increase taxes.”
Which is funny, because the poll actually shows that majorities of voters would rather increase taxes than cut spending on education, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and infrastructure.

Because those he is talking to won't read the survey for themselves ... and won't believe anyone that points out that the poll didn't say what he said it said.

[Bigmack]

2. The Repubs...

... and the astro-turfers who troll various blogs are doing what you describe more and more.

They will claim that snopes says it's true. They will claim that a poll/study/survey says one thing when it actually says another.

They count on their sheep to not read it... hell, maybe a good number of the sheep can't read it.

I've discovered in the last few months that there are lots of people who can't read a graph or chart!

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. True ...

But then, in order to want to read a chart or graph or poll, one would have to, first, give a damn about facts. The gop pretend base (i.e., the working class /religious/single interest folks versus their reall base, the very wealthy folks that purchase the elections) have proven time and again that facts don't matter to them.

[freshwest]

4. The billionaire media won't look at the graph, but Boehner statement will get plenty of coverage.