Conservative pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin spend their March 4 Newsmax column framing any criticism of America as anti-American.
They summarize a poll they conducted for “our client United in Purpose for their ‘You’ve Been Lied to!’ campaign” — but they don’t describe the organization any further. As it turns out, United in Purpose is a data-mining organization with the goal of increasing turnout of evangelical Christian voters, but is best known for inadvertently making public information on millions of voters through failure to secure it. Its leader, Bill Dallas, spent time in prison for embezzlement. The United in Purpose website is curiously barren, having only a home page and contact page.
The McLaughlins wrote: “In our most recent national survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted between February 6 and 10, when we asked, ‘Do you agree or disagree that America is the source of most of the world’s ills: political, economic and environmental?’ 46 percent of all voters agreed and only 46 percent disagreed. It was a shocking result.” They asserted that this was an “anti-American message.”
The McLaughlins then declared that “Agreement that America is the source of most of the world’s ills is clearly a political message tied to party and ideology,” with of course Democrats and liberals most like to hold that belief.
The pair demonstrated their bias further in another poll question asking who was to blame for “rising anti-Americanism,” by including the choices of “media elites” and “Hollywood entertainment elites” — derogatory right-wing terms for things they don’t like. They would never describe, say, Fox News as “elites.” They conclude with more biased posturing:
It is a political message that is driven by ideology and political beliefs and it is growing among younger voters. It’s clearly a message for the left to drive younger voters to their philosophy.
The vast majority of voters feel that anti-Americanism is on the rise, and they mostly blame partisan politicians and media entertainment elites for the rise of anti-Americanism. So while we agree Anti-Americanism is on the rise, as Americans, we can see it is clearly from germinating from the left within.
As if the McLaughlins aren’t themselves trying to push an ideological message masquerading as purportedly neutral polling.