Bruce Bartlett on "why I am not a Republican":
I can only conclude from this new poll of 2003 self-identified Republicans nationwide that between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid.
Ezra Klein:
DailyKos.com contracted the pollster Research 2000 to pull together a random survey of self-identified Republicans and test the prevalence of some of the stranger ideas floating around.
The answer, sadly, is that these ideas are very prevalent.
Kevin Drum:
Since Bruce Bartlett has gone to the trouble of making a nice chart out of the latest Kos/Research 2000 poll, it would be churlish of me not to steal it. So here it is. Source data here. Cliff Notes version: Republicans are nuts.
Ben Smith:
A new poll from Research 2000, sponsored by DailyKos more or less with the goal of making Republicans look extreme, does a pretty good job of that.
Actually, the poll just asked questions of self-identified Republicans. The answers made Republicans look extreme.
Matt Sussman:
What's the old saying? Stereotypes exist because they're true?
One has to wonder if Republicans really believe that Obama stole the election, was born in Kenya, and that all non-Christians are going to hell. Naw, it couldn't be.
Sam Stein:
A new poll of more than 2,000 self-identified Republican voters illustrates the incredible paranoia enveloping the party and the intense pressure drawing lawmakers further and further away from political moderation.
Added.
In other news:
David Corn:
As I was tweeting during the Obama-GOP Q&A, Micah Sifry, a co-founder of TechPresident.com, a cross-partisan group blog covering the intersection of politics, governance and technology, sent me a direct message on Twitter: "you write the language for an online petition for institutionalizing #questiontime and we'll push it out." I'm a journalist, not an activist, but I thought starting a crusade for better political debate could be worthwhile. The next day, I sent Sifry a draft.
Jonathan Cohn:
In the days immediately after the special Massachusetts election, which gave Senate Republicans the ability to block votes on legislation, the prospects for reform looked so bleak that one reliable source emailed me a one-word message: "Dead."
But within 24 hours, that same source had emailed me another one-word message: "Alive."
And that’s a pretty good description of where things stand today, at least based on what I've gleaned from conversations with insiders over the last week.
