"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
It would have been interesting if the Gallup poll would have asked Kerry's
supporters whether Bush really had a secret plan to introduce the draft,
or
whether Bush lost those explosives, or whether Bush had a secret plan to
get
rid of Social Security, or whether Bush was behind a secret conspiracy to
create a flu vaccine shortage.

Absolutely, it would have been interesting. Some of your examples are
extreme, and I doubt significant numbers would have affirmed those examples.
But surely it would have turned up a similar lack of knowledge of the actual
facts.

The Gallup poll only addressed Republican myths. If it had asked about
Democratic myths it might perhaps have been considerably more balanced in
its result.

I guess that depends on what information you're interested. But none of
your alternative examples seem nearly as important as the question of
whether a sitting President lied about what he knew, in order to win
approval for a war that wound up miring us in a huge stinking pile of doo,
and then continued to lie about what he said straight through the election.

My main point was simply that the electorate in general believes what they
want to believe, regardless of what the actual truth is. This is true of
all people, regardless of party affiliation. My secondary, much less
important point (especially now that the election is over), might be that I
personally feel that lying to the public in order to justify a deadly war is
a much bigger transgression than has been witnessed in the Executive branch
since the Iran-Contra scandal.

Pete