Impeachment Poll

Msnbc is conducting a poll right now. The question asked is simply stated and it would be pretty hard to claim that the question itself was scewing the results. The poll asks,

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

Pretty straight forward. Answers can be one of

1) yes
2) qualified no
3) no way!
4) don't know.

With 44,000+ votes cast, it is not looking good for Bush: 88% say impeach. It certainly looks like there is selection effect here and once the link showed up on eschaton, well, the yes vote probably pulled away on the back stretch. But you'd think the Bushies would be coming in hard and fast to counter the lobsided histogram. [Update: the voting numbers are up to 70,000+. Ratios are unchanged. 22/12/05]

More interesting than the overwhelming "yes" vote is that the votes for 3) no way! are far outpacing (almost 2-1) the votes for a qualified no. The qualified no admits that Bush has made some missteps but has done nothing impeachable.

Low turn out by Bush supporters might be understood by the thinking that they would not even dignify such a scurrilous, traitorous poll with their tender attentions. Of course, if they are Bush supporters chances are fairly high that they also watch Fox and have been warned off MSNBC ever since Bill O'Reilly, richly enough, labeled the network as some sort of communist agitprop center.

Frankly, if Bush supporters are supporters at this point, there is simply nothing that the man could do or be shown to have done that would cause them any consternation at all. Or, as cernig said,

Let's face it - if the news broke that Bush ate infants these people would immediately post recipes for BBQ Baby-ribs and swear they had been eating it for years!

The mental gymnastics the right (actually, I don't like calling Bush supporters right wing at all anymore. That seems like it's giving true right wingers a bad name) has enagaged in everytime some new ill, some extant violation of the public trust has been exposed, is not only amazing, but really rather alarming from a psychological perspective.

The invested delusion that Bush is good and right, or that he has America's best interests at heart, has become so severe in these people (Kristol, WSJ editorial page, Malkin, etc), it truly does appear that they are utterly divorced from reality. Hell, they'd probably call for MSNBC to be shut down for conducting such a poll. Sedition! they would cry. Traitors! Ahh, I can hear it now and haven't heard it since, well, since they called the NY Times traitors a few days ago.

I think the delusional games Bush supporters play now stem from what Kunstler has called the psychology of previous investment. That is, our willingness to face facts diminishes in proportion to the investment made in a certain belief, way of life, what have you. And at this point, Bush supporters are so heavily banked on a loser, they just won't -- can't -- face it.

Like any desperate gambler who is in hawk to the house and needs to play "one more hand," Bush supporters just cannot come to grips with the fact that backing Bush has put them way, way down in the hole. They are psychologically unprepared to just walk away and finally admit that Bush is exactly what he appears to be.