It finally happened. A new poll shows a majority that want Obamacare repealed. Sort of. And the
Weekly Standard rejoices, with the headline "60 percent of voters want Obamacare to be repealed." Maybe they shouldn't rush to uncork that champagne. Because the pollsters here are McLaughlin & Associates.
These guys. There's a track record here, reflected most recently in the internal polling they did for for Eric Cantor, showing him leading by 34 points just before he lost by 11. That's a 45 point error.
But so what if they got Cantor, Gabriel Gomez, Bob Dold, Mitt Romney, Richard Mourdock, George Allen and countless others wrong. They've got to get it right sometime, surely. Well, yeah, when you ask a question like this to get 60 percent approval:
"Would you support or oppose repealing and replacing Obamacare with a conservative alternative that would save $1 trillion, reduce premiums, enhance access to doctors, and increase the number of people with private insurance by 6 million, but would cover 6 million fewer people overall because fewer people would be on Medicaid?"
And everybody gets a pony, too! And did you catch that Medicaid proposal? No? Well that's because it's confusing—we're gaining coverage for 6 million but losing coverage for 6 million? Then it's a wash! Who cares?!?! Let's look at how real polling asks the question. Here's how
the gold standard, Kaiser Health Tracking Poll asks the question.
Which would you rather see your representative in Congress do when it comes to the health care law? Work to improve the law? Work to repeal the law and replace it with something else?
That's from their July poll, when they found pretty much the opposite of what McLaughlin found—60 percent want to keep and improve the law. Or, put another way, 60 percent are opposed to repeal.
This ridiculous McLaughlin poll is an effort to pump up something called the "2017 Project's Alternative." That would be their alternative to Obamacare once they have a Republican president, presumably, since they're calling themselves the 2017 Project. That's at least smart of them—the 2014 Republican House—can't agree on anything much less what to do about healthcare reform. But since they're building their project on something as flimsy as McLaughlin's polling, well, good luck to them. And to President Romney.
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