Conservative activist circles are abuzz with a new conspiracy theory: Polls showing President Obama with a growing lead over Mitt Romney are deliberately being skewed by the Liberal Mainstream Media so Republicans will be disheartened and stay home on Election Day.
This is denial and self-delusion but not of the harmless kind. It’s a false narrative that encourages the Republican Party to take the wrong lessons from this election, no matter the outcome.
So begins
this Washington Post column by the Pulitzer Prize winner. For people here, who have paid attention to both this issue and the nature of polling, most of what Robinson offers in the column will be familiar.
It is a column worth reading, and perhaps passing on to your wingnut friends and relatives who might be buying into the cooking the books theory, who are accepting the l"logic" of "unskewed" polls.
Let me off just two more snips. What might Romney himself believe?
So why is Romney acting like a man who’s behind rather than comfortably ahead? Because he’s smart enough to know that the conspiracy theory is nuts.
Here I might add that as the robotic candidate he is, Romney is able to maintain his fixed smile.
And then there is Robinson's concluding paragraph:
If a polling sample shows Democrats outnumbering Republicans by, say, 32 percent to 24 percent (with most of the rest calling themselves independents), GOP partisans shouldn’t worry about a conspiracy. They should worry that this is a snapshot of how Americans feel about the two major parties.
how Americans feel about the two major parties - yep, on issue after issue, the feeling being reinforced by the Ryan budget, by Todd Akin on women, and by Romney himself on the 47%.
It's a good column.
Savor it.
Pass it on.