washington, dc

The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Islamophobia Isolated

In the welter of confusion and misinformation that has characterized the “ground zero mosque” brouhaha, it’s kind of important to isolate the extent to which Americans actually seem to hate Muslims.
That’s what Ron Brownstein’s done in his latest column, and it’s pretty clear there’s a partisan and ideological split at play here:

In a national Time magazine poll released last week, just under half of all Americans agreed that Islam is more likely than other faiths to promote violence against nonbelievers. But that number rose to 70 percent among Republicans and nearly three-fourths among conservatives. Fully 55 percent of all Americans said they believed that most U.S. Muslims are patriotic; but only 42 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of conservatives agreed. Perhaps most strikingly, 43 percent of conservatives and a 48 percent plurality of Republicans said Muslims should not be allowed to run for president. Only about one-fourth of Democrats and independents agreed.

Muslims should not be allowed to run for president?
Then again, this is the same Time poll in which a plurality of Republicans said Barack Obama is a Muslim. So I guess in their view you can’t have the First Amendment interfering with the God-given constitutional right to conservative rule.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.