"Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan."
So wrote Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen in an op-ed published at the Washington Post Friday:
Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.
However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit.
Yet, in their view, this is not what the media have been presenting to the public: "Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data."
Indeed, as despite these poll numbers, news outlets across the fruited plain have regularly given readers, viewers, and listeners the impression that pending healthcare legislation is popular.
As Caddell and Schoen accurately noted, the public want healthcare reform, and support some of what is in the bills currently before Congress.
But taken as a whole, the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose what is presently on the table, and media have not only been deceiving themselves about this inconvenient truth, they've also been deceiving the citizenry.
