What we Asked Conservatives about the War in Afghanistan
Last week, we released results of a poll that we conducted asking conservatives (including self-identified members of the Tea Party) their views about the Afghanistan war and the level of American commitment that they thought was appropriate and necessary. The results weren’t pretty if you are in favor of continuing (or escalating) the conflict. A full two-thirds of conservatives support a reduction in troop levels in Afghanistan. At the same time, well-known and respected conservative Grover Norquist publicly questioned the strategy and asked basic questions about what we’re doing over there.
Here’s what Norquist said last week:
“Can we have a conversation about what we’re doing, and how long we’re going to be there, and what the point is, and how much it’s supposed to cost, and what the plans are?”
Of course, that doesn’t work for those who do favor a continuation of the status quo. But rather than engage in a substantive discussion of the pros and cons of the American campaign in Afghanistan, they decided to attack Norquist and imply that our polling was bogus. Writing on Commentary’s blog, Max Boot wrote:
“Nor am I convinced by a poll sponsored by the liberal New America Foundation, with which Norquist has affiliated himself, claiming that most conservatives favor drawing down our troop numbers now. I suspect this is typical of the partisan “polls” that Washington operatives like Norquist put together to make their cause du jour appear more popular than it actually is. In reality, Republicans in Congress are solidly behind the war effort; I rather doubt they do so in the face of adamant opposition from their conservative constituents. In any case, I have not seen much sign of conservative opposition to the Afghan war effort — which is why Norquist is working with the New America Foundation, not, say, the Heritage Foundation.”
Notwithstanding that the poll was not sponsored by the New America Foundation, Boot’s supposition that we concocted some sort of non-scientific poll in order to score points is absurd. In fact, if he had actually read our own blog last week when we released the poll, he could have seen for himself that we asked non-biased questions aimed at getting to the core of what conservatives really think about the war, because we linked to a PDF of the survey questions. We stand by it as a true reflection that even the most conservative Americans are wondering what we’re doing in Afghanistan and whether the current policy is in America’s interest. We’d be interested to see polling from Boot or others to suggest otherwise.
Read the survey questions here.
