Rasmussen Closes the Hole

By Bill Maher

When we talk about the conservative bubble, we’re generally talking about the Fox-Rush-Drudge information bubble, and the people who reside in it. This is the information loop that allows any willing right-winger to live in a world where the opinions they already are the only ones that get recited back to them, and the opinions they will one day have get fed to them so they can later recite them and hear them being recited back again, and around and around we go, all without any having to hear any opposing viewpoints expressed beyond – possibly – those of tokens like Kirsten Powers and that old school Irish Dem who periodically loses it and tells Sean Hannity to go fuck himself. I think his name is Bob Beckel or something. And I’d like his job some day.

If you’re a conservative, wherever you turn, the bubble is there. If you want to get your news on TV, you have Fox. If you’re the type who frequents talk radio, there’s Rush, along with a dozen other Rush clones. If you want to get your news online, you get all the links you want to read assembled for you by Matt Drudge, complete with misleading headlines, bad pictures of Hillary Clinton and Michele Obama, and a smattering of racism. Anywhere a Republican wants to turn for news, there’s a friendly face. And by “friendly” I mean the “smiling veneer over the contemptible inner core.”

But there was always one hole in the bubble that continued to let in the air of reality: polling information. As in, surveys that measure what Americans actually believe, or who they plan on voting for, or what they think of ideas like privatizing Social Security, etc. Because wingnuts can go for months and not talk to anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a bigger threat to America than Al Qaeda with airborne AIDS, but that’s because they live in rural Tennessee, and inside the information bubble.

Polling information, on the other hand, when done correctly, comes from a representative sample of everyone. What’s more, polls are often widely reported, mostly because it’s an easy article to write. Even if you do your best to live only in the Fox-Rush-Drudge information world, you’re still going to get information about what people outside the bubble think through polling data. And it can be very disconcerting for Republicans, finding out that millions of other Americans exist in the “not real America” and think they’re completely batshit.

Thankfully, Republicans now seem to have solved this problem. Enter Scott Rasmussen. He’s a Republican and a pollster. And a few years ago, it seemed Scott ran his polling outfit the way everyone else did. But somewhere along the line – and I’m guessing here – Scott saw which way the media winds were blowing and realized there was a new way to distinguish yourself in the world of political news: by taking a side.

You see, polls, when done accurately, have a way of creating a narrative about what people actually want or think, or what may eventually happen. And this narrative is largely immune from the partisans on either side because, well, it just is. Because polls are the temperature of reality. If your candidate is down 8 points in a poll a few weeks out before the election, the story starts becoming about how you’re going to lose, and how everyone knows it, and how you might as well stay home on election day because it’s hopeless. Which is effective, or harmful, depending on which side you’re on. Because lots of people are looking for an excuse not to vote anyway and “My Candidate is down 9 points as of yesterday” is a pretty good one.

These narratives are particularly dangerous for Republicans. And that’s where Rasmussen polling comes in. By designing his to polls to lean Republican, he allows Republicans inside the bubble to continue breathing the air inside the bubble. Ex: When other polls show Obama pulling away from Romney, release a poll that says he isn’t:

Mission accomplished.

You see, now when people inside the bubble get confronted with what people think outside they bubble you can say, “No, according to a poll out today, they don’t think that!” Narrative averted! Thanks, Scott Rasmussen!

There’s only one problem with this, of course. And that’s that the bubble has now plugged its leak. Remaining contact with the outside world is even more limited. Republicans now not only have their own information loop, but their own polling company to deny what everyone outside the bubble thinks, too.

Stimu-late Than Never

by Bill Maher

Question: How come preventing chaos and civil war in Iraq was enough to say, “Bush’s surge worked,” but averting a complete financial meltdown and a second Great Depression isn’t enough to say, “Obama’s stimulus worked”? No, we haven’t achieved full employment, but neither was Iraq transformed to a model of peace and democracy. Have we been conditioned to think of economic success only in terms of immediate prosperity? Don’t you get any points for halting decline? Stopping a free fall? Turning the tide?

Conservatives say “Obama’s policies have failed” but the fact is we need a second stimulus, and Obama has served one up in the form of his jobs bill, which is being cock-blocked in Congress by Republicans. It’s as if the doctor has said to a dying patient, “You need two shots. The first will arrest your illness and save your life and the second will get you healthy and back on your feet.” And Republicans voted against the first injection to stave off death and now they’re refusing the second to stave off an Obama second term. Isn’t it clear Republicans are purposely delaying recovery so they can blame Obama for keeping us bedridden?

Republican Debate Review

Republicans sure have the right symbol with the elephant. Republican debates are nothing but elephants in the room.

The biggest of which must be: to someone out there who's hurting, they spend the whole two hours yammering away about earmarks and illegal immigrants and contraception and every other peripheral, wish-I-had-the-time-to-worry-about-it issue they can think of.

Then there is the elephant of how they all -- with the sometime exception of Ron Paul -- nod along to insane statements just because they don't want to ever look like they're to the left of anybody, on anything, especially the evilness of Barack Obama. So Wednesday night when Newt said the president of the United States had a history of practicing infanticide... yep, yep, yessir, that's what he does all right. Clubs infants like baby seals in his spare time. Ike played golf, Kennedy liked boating...

Ron Paul said foreign aid just helps our enemies. Which, I believe, would make Israel and Egypt our two biggest enemies. Yup, yup, hate foreign aid. A meaningless percentage of the budget, btw.

Newt said where government becomes the central provider of services, it's a move towards tyranny -- yeah, except in all the countries where it isn't, like all of Scandanavia and much of Europe. Today a barium enema paid for by medicare, tomorrow Poland.

And isn't a highlight of every debate when Mitt Romney takes umbrage at being accused of the best thing he ever did in his life -- Romneycare? Something he should be proud of? Last night he took out his dueling glove and declared that when he was governor, he made sure there was NO requirement from the church to provide morning after pills for rape victims. They will be punished with a baby, as Jesus would want. Mitt's attitude is always, "How dare you accuse me of helping people or being compassionate! Why, I'll have you know I'm every bit as much of a cold hearted bastard as any of these other pricks up here with me!"

"But Mitt, we have a picture of you giving money to a homeless person."

"I did NOT give a bum money! I was paying him to blow me!"

This Republican field over the last year has been such a comedy gold mine -- which I have compacted into a stand-up special I'm doing Thursday night, February 23, called #CrazyStupidPolitics -- it's free, and it's live-streamed on Yahoo! 10:30 Eastern (with a mindblowing announcement at the end). I apologize for the shameful plug, but I just want you to have a good laugh! Thank you Arianna, you're the best... and now back to our blog.

The biggest elephant in the room tonight for me was Satan. All day, TV news was talking about Satan because of Rick Santorum's dug-up (but, no doubt still accurate) comments about Satan from 2008. It just shows you how when someone is a nobody politically speaking -- as Santorum was in 2008 -- you can say any kind of crazy shit and it's not newsworthy. But when you are seeking the highest office in the land... in the world -- it really worries me that you believe in demons and a personified creature named Satan.

People get mad at me for using the phrase "this stupid country", which I sometimes do -- but, I'm sorry -- Satan? In 2012? This elephant is not only in the room at the debates, but everywhere on TV today where people were talking about this and not breaking down in the middle and screaming, Wait a minute -- We're modern people, surely we don't give any credence to this comic book character that was created in the bronze age!! It's barely worthy of a children's story, and people take it to the Oval Office -- Bush did -- and it affects their thinking and our lives. Why is Santorum so against contraception? Because there's a line in Genesis about not spilling your seed. A random brainfart from some desert dweller 3,000 years ago, before people knew about germs or atoms or round planets, and it gets written down and passed down and in 2012 people like Rick Santorum are still too R-word to see that, and that's why some woman in Akron, Ohio might not get birth control.

And as far as Rick's claim tonight that even though he holds these beliefs, he wouldn't legislate them? Bullshit -- he said states absolutely had the right to outlaw contraception. That's the same thing -- as an officer of the government, he should take the opposite position. Ron Paul would.

My favorite moment of the debate was the last question, when they all were asked to summarize themselves in one word: Ron Paul said "consistency," and you know what? I have no argument with that. It's true, and he's earned it.

The other ones however, I think I could find a more honest word. Mitt Romney said "resolute." I would have gone with "shapeshifter." Or perhaps "irresolute." Rick Santorum said "courage" , whereas I would have said "Bellevue." And Newt Gingrich said "cheerful." I was thinking "pus."

One other thing: in the overtime, I heard Ron Paul make the point to John King that his foreign policy was similar to Eisenhower's, how Ike avoided getting militarily involved in Vietnam or the Suez Canal and got out of Korea. Because he was a military man. Ron Paul served, also -- the other three not so much. I know it will never become law, because it would require a constitutional amendment, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing if you had to have served in the military if you wanted to be president. Kennedy also avoided war where many would not have. After him, though, we got into the era of non-servers and draft-dodgers, and used the military like a toy. Ex-soldiers understand it's not. And the president is Commander-in-Chief -- shouldn't you have served some time in an organization you're the head of?

I hope this was the last Republican debate. Well, I say that, but I'll need the material after I use up an hour of good jokes tomorrow night, so, fuck it, keep going.

Last bullshit call: In his closing statement, Rick Santorum said that in the race against the Evil One (no, not that Evil One, he was talking about Obama), the president would have the media in his pocket (yeah, except Fox News, lots of newspapers, all of radio... ), and way more money. Huh? Sheldon Adelson this week said he might give $100 million to Newt Gingrich! If he'd give that to Newt who has no chance, he might give more to Romney. And he's just one old cranky billionaire who hates Obama, there's a whole gaggle of them.

And Sheldon, if you want to blow money so bad, just walk into one of your hotels in Vegas and go to the Roulette table.