Last updated on April 5th, 2013 at 10:45 pm
A new (and first) Morning Joe/Marist poll shows that Americans agree with the Democrats on the issues of gun safety legislation and jobs. But you wouldn’t know either by how the media reports on both issues, including Morning Joe himself. MSNBC broke down the poll:
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Turning to the economy and the deficit, the Morning Joe/Marist survey shows that Americans – by nearly a 2-to-1 margin – want President Barack Obama and Congress to make job creation their top priority (64 percent) instead of deficit reduction (33 percent).
(They have been focusing on job creation: See the American Jobs Act that was killed repeatedly in the House of Representatives.)
Morning Joe/Marist poll shows that a majority finds controlling gun violence is more important than protecting gun rights, think gun laws should be more strict, and support a ban on assault weapons.
Like a typical Republican, Joe Scarborough proceeded to ignore the results of his own show’s polling in order to concern troll the deficit, ignoring his own panelist who tried to explain that the poll reflects Americans’ concern with their employment status and thus their focus on creating growth:
There is no appetite for cutting spending. It’s a 2-1. After we have a meltdown, everybody is going to say, why weren’t we more responsible and why didn’t we do — you know, it’s the same thing with the housing bubble.
Somehow Joe keeps missing that the American people are already in a meltdown. They are already paying for the irresponsible choices of the too-big-to-fail deregulation cheers of his party. They’re a little busy right now trying to keep their heads above water. Then Scarborough dismissed his own poll results from the majority of Americans on the matter of gun safety legislation, focusing instead of the reaction of the Republicans:
But you look at like assault weapon ban at 60% is still a lot but you get inside the numbers and suddenly you see the support really going down for republicans. It’s mainly democrats driving that number. It’s why it looks like you look at these polls, still pretty consistent from Newtown but translating that to real legislation for things other than the background checks, I think, is a pretty far stretch, isn’t it?
We are told with deep concern that a small majority of Republicans don’t want gun safety legislation as new polls are starting to reflect that Republicans do not support it as much as they did post Newtown. This is supposed to matter, as if these people are relevant. There are fewer Americans who identify as Republican than there are who identify as Democrats (see the 2012 skewed poll debacle as an example of how the failure to admit this fact made fools of the polling industry, too many of whom bent over backwards to over-represent conservative Republicans).
More Americans identify as Independent right now than as Republicans. The Republican Party’s ratings are currently at a twenty year low.
We’re told a small majority of Republicans no longer support background checks. That’s fascinating, but a small majority of the extreme minority is of little overall concern to the country. Let them have their little assault weapon rallies and dress up with teabags on their heads screaming about a deficit they had no concern or awareness of as it was actually being created, while the adults get a few real things done.
The media can’t get over their obsession with Republicans and the Tea Party. For forty blissful years they’ve been catering to Republicans, framing every debate within the conservative context, and turning their noses up at appalling things like peaceful protests against the Iraq war, thinking that any war protest is Vietnam again. These people are lagging and we are all paying for it.
Here’s what is happening in the real world (just like they missed the real world during the election as they concerned trolled over polls skewed to represent older white southerners). In the real world, the employment crisis is the ISSUE. Not the deficit. The very concerned deficit trolls would have you believe that this future debt we are handing down is going to destroy our grandkids. How they can say this with a straight face, as their image beams out to starving, unemployed and underemployed Americans bearing the brunt of the trickle down fail, is beyond me.
These are not imaginary facts. These are not skewed polls. These are not the whimsical musings of a liberal. (A note to Jake Tapper, Dana Loesch and others who gleefully call me a liberal as if that discredits my thoughts and facts: Being honest and upfront about your position is not a bad thing; it’s called disclosure. Try it sometime – wear a Koch logo where the TV audience can see it.) The crisis is unemployment. Nonpartisan economists agree that focusing short term on the debt is a mistake right now, and they said this over and over again during the campaign to no avail. The media just keeps repeating the Republican concern for the debt (usually without mentioning who got us here, I might add).
Americans want gun control. They’re not going to get it, we’re told, because Republicans don’t want it. It’s true, the small majority of the extreme minority in the House could kill it for us all. We can’t do much about that, since Republicans choose to legislate like dictators and refuse to get anything real done for the country unless it’s a giveaway to corporations or trampling the rights of whichever minority they are targeting that day.
But the media doesn’t need to keep feeding into the notion that somehow Republicans in polls get to dictate to the country. This is a false notion, only meant to perpetuate the illusion that the modern day GOP is a national party of relevance. They are not.
Much ado was made over their rebranding efforts, which they quickly destroyed by letting Republicans speak in public on matters of gay marriage, rape, voter ID, Hispanic outreach, and undocumented workers.
Regardless of what Republicans want, the majority of Americans want jobs and gun safety control measures. You’d think the media would want to speak, at the very least, to both sides of the issues, let alone giving credence to real issues like the job crisis. You’d think they would do the math and realize that there are MORE Americans (especially in that coveted demo- see the latest ratings for Maddow v Fox) who want to hear about job legislation (being killed by the Republicans in the House) than deficit reduction right now.
If you only listened to the media, you’d have no idea what people in this country are going through. It’s reprehensible and irresponsible.
The deficit is so “serious”? How about family members being murdered by the acts of irresponsible gun owners, children being slaughtered, and hard working Americans going broke trying to pay their mortgages? Those issues are happening right now, not in the distant future. The job crisis is an emergency. Americans need decent paying jobs. The American worker needs to be treated as a coalition of importance, as more important than the lobbying of the Koch infused oil industry that owns both our media and our government.
Newsflash: Republicans are no longer a big tent party. People fled the party in droves during 2012, claiming to be ”Independents” out of shame and embarrassment. The Republicans in Congress represent the extreme minority. What is it going to take to capture the attention of the media? EMPLOYMENT is the issue when discussing the economy. A little balance would be a great thing, even if that balance is between a false construct and reality. It doesn’t seem to be too much to ask.
Image: BlackCommentator
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