Jonah Goldberg's syndicated column (appearing in today's LA Times opinion section) is titled "Just How Crazy Are the Democrats?"
MOST FAIR-MINDED readers will no doubt take me at my word when I say that a majority of Democrats in this country are out of their gourds.
But, on the off chance that a few cynics won't take my word for it, I offer you data. Rasmussen Reports, the public opinion outfit, recently asked voters whether President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The findings? Well, here's how the research firm put it: "Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know and 26% are not sure."
The Rasmusssen Report (which he does not cite) was drawn from a 'survey of 800 likely voters', so it should be clear at the outset that these are people who self-identify as Democrats, not officeholders. What he fails to mention is that 12.5% of self-identified Republicans and 22% of respondents overall also indicated they believed Bush knew about 9/11 in advance.
Goldberg discusses whether the poll is accurate or not, and encourages liberals to "offer the same benefit of the doubt when it comes to data that are more convenient for them" referring to "polls showing that Fox News viewers, or Republicans generally, are more likely to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11." He then closes with this:
The poll is partly wrong or misleading, but it's also partly right and accurate. So maybe it's not 1 in 3 Democrats suffering from paranoid delusions. Maybe it's only 1 in 5 , or 1 in 10. In other words, the problem isn't as profound as the poll makes it sound. But that doesn't mean the Democratic Party doesn't have a serious problem.
To me it seems Goldberg is looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope.
Democrats don't have a serious problem. The President has a serious problem. His problem is so many people don't believe him. 12% of his own party believe he knew about 9/11 in advance - over 20% of the general respondents!
The problem in this poll isn't that Democrats doubt Bush. The problem highlighted here is so many others doubt him too.