But more importantly, it’s not an either/or, with two prescribed choices being “trolls/confused” or “wants nothing less than the entire destruction of the entire human race, for all eternity”. It’s also likely that there are a lot of people who are just expressing their opposition in a hyperbolic way, to one degree or another.
In addition, even in trolling there’s no reason to assume the same percentage of Republican trolls as Democratic ones think it’s amusing to select the option that Obama is the antichrist. It would make sense if more Republicans than Democrats do.
Bottom line remains that you guys are eager to accept the most extreme interpretation about Republican respondents and are just as eager to wave away Democrats saying the same thing.
OK, so, 20%. That’s still four times as many people. It is, indeed, possible that one in five Republican respondents are trolling the interviewer.
However, there is absolutely a burning, furious hatred that a segment of the Republic base has demonstrated against Obama over the past 7 years (a hatred that you simply do not see among Democrats), and that has been expressed in any number of crazed beliefs about Obama (the birthers, and those who are convinced he’s actually a Muslim, wind up being among the tamer beliefs). Given all of what, why is it hard to believe that there truly is a group of Republicans who truly do believe that Obama is the Antichrist?
“Well we lost the last two games when we had our linebackers on the field and the cheerleaders on the sidelines, so this time we’ll try putting our cheerleaders on the front line and have our linebackers leading the cheers.”
Obviously there’s going to be more hatred against Obama coming from Republicans than from Democrats. (Unless you mean there’s more hatred against Obama from Republicans than against GWB from Democrats - I would beg to differ on that, if indeed that’s your claim.)
But that’s not really the point. I agree that there’s some amount of polarization in play at this time, but not nearly to the degree that a literal reading of the antichrist responses would suggest. As noted, the fact that relatively high percentages of his supporters say the same (besides the people who voted for him, there’s 8% of very liberal people and 9% of African Americans), combined with the fact that who the antichrist might be is in general is not much a part of political or social discourse these days, suggests that it’s far more likely that the term was not being understood in the literal theological sense.
To clarify: you don’t see much, if any, of that sort of burning hatred directed towards Obama by Democrats, which was the relevant point in that conversation.
Now that Walker is out, I’d say Cruz is the most offensive person in the race, and that’s saying something. I don’t want any of the republicans to win, but I could accept any of the others as men and somenfollow of good intentions and some level of competence. I would actually fear for my county if Cruz won, and would start a movement to take our country back.
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Cruz > Trump
Cruz > Carson
Cruz > Guys like Mike Huckabee
I mean, seriously, it’s a comparative thing. If Dwight Eisenhower was running, things would be different, but Eisenhower is Constitutionally ineligible to be President again and also is a bit dead.
Erhm no. TRUMP is vastly preferable to virtually any other Republican on the issues. And unlike Carson or Huckabee, Cruz is smart and ruthless enough to win an election and actually do stuff.
