Drive-By Media Stunned by the Polls

RUSH: Let’s listen to the Drive-By Media now agonize over post-speech polls. First off is Bill Schneider. He took a snap poll out there. Americans who watched the speech liked it, so Bill tries to distort it by splitting “very positive” and “somewhat positive,” which was on the screen, but left out by Schneider. So if you added up the “somewhat positive” and “very positive” groups in their poll, you had a total of 78% who reacted positively. When you add “very positive” and “somewhat positive” together on whether we can still win in Iraq, you get 82%! Knowing that, here’s how Schneider reported it.
SCHNEIDER: The numbers tell us that the response to the speech — among those who watched it, remember — was fairly positive, but not as strong as it has been in the past: 41% of Americans said they had a “very positive” response to the president’s speech, and were those who watched the speech confident that the United States would be able to achieve its goals in Iraq? Still a lot of skepticism: only 15% said they were very confident; 46% said they were not confident that the United States could achieve its goals.
RUSH: Right. But, see, he leaves out the data. We always, when we have polling data and you’ve got four or five different categories — really positive, somewhat positive, don’t know, not positive, totally negative, don’t know — you add them up, and this is how people get a general sentiment, and he’s leaving out half the information in the poll! They were stunned by this result. They were stunned by their post-poll. They were expecting more of the same kind of thing that has resulted in what they say are presidential approval numbers in the low thirties. Moving on now, here’s more of Bill Schneider. He had to admit — he had to admit — that he had more Democrats than usual in his pool because they wanted to see Nancy Pelosi.
SCHNEIDER: Normally the audience for a president’s speech is very partisan. People of his own party watch; the other party doesn’t bother. This audience was about equally divided between Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Why, with an unpopular Republican president did a lot of Democrats watch? Simple! Nancy Pelosi. They wanted to see the new Democratic Congress, see the new speaker of the House, and I think that brought a larger-than-usual Democratic audience to a Republican president’s speech.

RUSH: Well, I mean that makes it even more interesting then, doesn’t it? You had a larger percentage of Democrats watching a Republican speech, and they still got all this positive feedback after the speech! I guarantee you the Drive-Bys are not happy, and they’re scratching themselves. — their heads! — and trying to figure out how this happened. So they gotta say, “Well, it’s Pelosi! They tuned in to see Miss America, and unstated but probably thought, “Nao wonder they liked the speech: Bush was nice to her.” Here’s Bill Plante, CBS. Listen to this.
PLANTE: A CBS News online poll after the speech found that eight in ten who watched were supportive, and the president even made some progress in urging a troop surge. That number went up. But again, a reminder, that’s only among those who watched, and overall sentiment continues to be majority against the war.
RUSH: Yeah, so why didn’t you go out and find what people who didn’t watch the speech thought of the speech? What is the point of telling us, “Remember, now! Remember!” He’s trying to qualify it, as though the people that watched the speech are such a minority of the whole population that we really can’t give any credence to our own stupid poll. If that’s the case, why report it? So we get, “Remember, now! This is only among people who watched the speech, CBS viewers.” Well, I would hope it’s only people who watched the speech! (laughing) If you’re out polling people who didn’t, it would be don’t poll malpractice. Moving on. This is Martha Raddatz, the info babe at CBS.
RADDAZ: There were some real sad echoes of things he said so many times in the past. When he got to the global war on terror, when he got to Iraq, and — and you heard him concentrate on that global war on terrorism, those were the sad echoes. He brought up Al-Qaeda again. He brought up Osama bin Laden. He brought up Zarqawi in Iraq, who died many, many months ago. That’s what he concentrated on. He avoided, uh, to a great degree the sectarian violence which is really the major problem in Iraq, and once again, told Americans if we didn’t succeed in Iraq, that the terrorists could come to the United States — and he said that so many times in the past.
RUSH: And you’re bored by it. See? It’s so boring, so boring, being reminded of the possibilities in the real world is just so boring. So, yeah, Zarqawi is dead because we killed him, but he wrote a whole lot of things that indicated their strategy. I wonder if she would be so dismissive of writings that were uncovered having been written by Hitler. At any rate, they were just disgusted. They, I’m telling you, wanted Bush to plummet! They were hoping he’d fall off the podium. They were hoping he’d break down in tears, beg forgiveness, announce the troops are coming home, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee…” This just in. There’s an ABC News alert, alert, alert! “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a nonbinding,” ahem: meaning gutless, “measure saying President Bush’s plan to increase troops in Iraq is,” quote, “‘not in the national interests of the United States,'” unquote. You know what it means? (Raspberry). It’s nonbinding. They didn’t touch funding; they didn’t put any action behind their words, and this is typical of a bunch of blow hard politicians who have no accountability. They’re not commander-in-chief, but every damn one of them thinks they should be!