NBC touted a spin out of its latest poll: “The GOP's Planned Parenthood Problem.” Carrie Dann and Andrew Rafferty oozed “After months of controversy in the wake of a series of sting videos about its operations, Planned Parenthood is -- as popular as ever.”
What? “Yep, you read that right: In fact, Planned Parenthood is the most popular entity in our brand new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, registering a positive rating of 47 percent compared to a negative rating of 31 percent. That's virtually unchanged from the last time our pollsters asked about the group in July, even though a majority (65 percent) of Americans now say that they have heard about the videos, which pictured Planned Parenthood employees discussing the use of tissue from aborted fetuses.”
For its part, NBC has shown exactly 13 seconds of footage from the Center for Medical Progress sting videos, so “heard about” the videos probably is the correct term. This is where the GOP’s “Planned Parenthood problem” kicks in, with liberal media bias. The Republican Party is perpetually in crisis, and it's all sunny days and free-flowing tissue "donations" at Planned Parenthood.
There weren't that many "entities" on NBC's list, just the two political parties and the "Black Lives Matter" movement (32 percent positive, 29 percent negative). In this sample, the Democratic Party was plus-6 (41 percent positive, 35 percent negative), and the Republican Party was minus-16 (29-45). Dann and Rafferty continued:
If you were wondering why folks like John Boehner - for one - dismissed conservatives' push to shut down the government over Planned Parenthood funding, these poll numbers are instructive, too. Not only do six in 10 Americans oppose eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood, even those who SUPPORT defunding the group are not on board with a shutdown.
Predictably, when the NBC/WSJ team asked its respondents who they picked for president in 2012, it was 44 percent Obama and 32 percent Romney (the actual margin of victory was 51 to 47.)
When they asked this sample if "more restrictive laws on abortion" were a step in the right direction or wrong direction, 36 percent picked "right" and 45 percent picked "wrong." When they tried the same measurement for "The more active involvement of religious groups in politics," they found 24 percent said "right direction" and 54 percent said "wrong direction."
Another reason for this triumphal "yep, they're popular" report is the euphemistic language the NBC-WSJ pollsters used. These were the poll questions:
Q30. Would you favor or oppose totally eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventative health services? (And then to do they favor or oppose “strongly” or “somewhat”).
With this wording, 44 percent picked “strongly oppose,” and 17 percent picked “somewhat oppose.” Twenty-two percent picked “strongly favor” and 13 percent said “somewhat favor.”
The pollsters would probably claim that federal funding doesn't back abortion, so they just went with the positive-sounding services (no contraceptives, no STD testing, just "preventative health.") This antiseptic description might also explain why Planned Parenthood is polling well.
They repeated that same lame formula in the defunding question:
Q30A. Would you favor or oppose shutting down the federal government to block federal funding for Planned Parenthood for family planning and preventative health services, or is this an issue you don’t have an opinion on at this time?
And then the level of ignorance on the Planned Parenthood videos was measured with this question:
Q31. Have you seen, read, or heard the news coverage about secretly-taped videos that show employees of Planned Parenthood talking about the use of fetal tissues and organs in scientific research from pregnancies that have been terminated at their facilities?
There’s no mention of tissue-sales laws or law-breaking, no mention of sales or profit, and babies are simply “pregnancies that have been terminated.” There's no mention of how only substantially developed babies have tissues and organs to exploit. How do NBC News and The Wall Street Journal see this as an objective question instead of a blatant use of abortion-lobby boilerplate?
