First Poll Since MoveOn.org Advert. Oops... Right Wing Talking Crap Again

The claims of right wingers are all so predictable. Apparently last week the MoveOn.Org ad did irrevocable damage to the anti-war caucus and it was "despicable" for Democrats to dare to question the integrity of General Petraeus by stating that he might be overselling his case that the surge is working.

Well, the first opinion poll has come out since the Petraeus report and, once again, the right wing noise machine was full of bullshit. Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job as usual taking them apart:

Rudy Giuliani, Sean Hannity and much of the chattering class insisted all week that it was "despicable" for Senators such as Hillary Clinton to suggest that The General's claims of Progress were not believable. Yet most Americans are similarly "despicable," as they appear to share that sentiment. A despicable 62% do not believe Gen. Petraeus' sunny claims about Progress.

Not only do the majority of Americans not believe Petraeus when he states that things are improving in Iraq, but more Americans want US troops to leave Iraq after they heard Petraeus than wanted to before he reported.

Since the percentage of Americans who believe we should either maintain or increase our current troops levels in Iraq was higher B.P. [Before Petraeus] (30%) than it is A.P.[After Petraeus] (27%). Conversely, the percentage of Americans who want a troop reduction or complete withdrawal increased after the Petraeus Week (from 65% to 68%).

So, unlike the claims being spouted all week by the usual right wing nutbags that the public believed Petraeus and that the Dems would be punished for the MoveOn.org advert, the total opposite has turned out to be true.

Most Americans do not believe Petraeus and the amount of people who want a troop reduction or a complete withdrawal has actually increased since Petraeus gave the nation his pep talk.

Glenn sums it all up beautifully:

In their world, the Republicans are always ascendent, Bush is always the Strong Leader, Democrats are always the sorry losers captive to their destructive Leftist extremists, and Americans are aching to support the War. They have been predicting endlessly that, any day now, all of this will be true again.

They actually thought that a newspaper ad was going to transform deeply entrenched views about the Republicans and the War because their friends Ed Gillispie and Tony Snow and Sean Hannity told them it would. The Rise of Petraeus the Good and the unmasking of the Evil MoveOn Left was going to change everything, back to its rightful place. It changed nothing, including the media itself, which will seize on some other event a few weeks from now to declare yet again the latest surging comeback for the President, the war and the right-wing faction which has followed him.

They never tire of being wrong because so much of their "opinion" is actually nothing more than wishful thinking on their part. The saddest thing in all of this is that there are some Democrats who take seriously these endless threats that the public will punish them for (Insert latest right wing talking point) unless they embrace the war and Bush as their saviour.

They appear not to have caught on that, in the right wing noise machine, Democratic collapse and Republican resurgence is always on the menu.

It is for this reason that many right wingers loathe opinion polls. They would far prefer if public opinion could be what they state it is. They constantly imagine that their own prejudices represent the views of "ordinary Americans" and the most astonishing thing about all of this is how often they are 100% wrong.

Click title for Glenn's article.