Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey links to a CBS poll showing that 57 percent of Americans believe that American politics is not responsible for Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson. In other words, most Americans are clued into reality, despite the best efforts of the news media.
Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country’s heated political rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to a CBS News poll.
In the wake of the shooting, much focus has been put on the harsh tone of politics in Washington and around the country, particularly after a contentious midterm election. Rhetoric and imagery from both Republicans and Democrats have included gun-related metaphors, but the majority of the country isn’t connecting the shooting to politics.
Morrissey concludes:
It seems that the public has been able to separate the spin from the actual facts, which show that Loughner was a loon acting out of insanity and a personal grudge against Giffords, one completely of his own making...
Getting back to the poll, it seems as though the media spin of the first 48 hours failed to even convince the predisposed. Only 42% of Democrats in the survey believed that the shootings were a political act, and independents broke out at about the same ratio as the overall sample, 56/33. That is very good news for America, and bad news for those in the media and in Congress who hoped to leverage the shooting to pass gun-control and speech-control legislation and bully grassroots conservatives into silence.
NB publisher Brent Bozell recognized the same malicious motives in his statement on the media's reaction to the shooting.
Are you surprised that Americans have predominately rejected the media's spin on this issue?
