Simply oblivious

This is fascinating.

The GOP has now unleashed its own PPP--a statistical creature called Harper Polling, "with the goal," reports Politico, "of putting the party on parity with Democrats in the field of IVR polling — a term that stands for interactive voice response polling, commonly known as 'robo-polling'"--and idiomatically known as a relative piece of shit.

Anyway, assuming you're interested in such results, Harper is out with its first collection, part of which asks about the GOP 2016 presidential primary (no hissing, please). And the winner--by a plurality of roughly 100 percent--is ... senator and theo-geologist Marco Rubio.

Do you still care? Put any stock in Harper and IVR polling? OK then, if so, let's proceed.

"[T]he TEA party ... is the foundation of Rubio’s support," writes Harper's founder, Brock McCleary. "Approaching half of all TEA supporters (43%) are voting for him"--that stat from a GOP sampled universe in which 58 percent "support the goals of the TEA party movement" (and 80 percent watch Fox News).

So, let's reframe this. If Harper is correct--anywhere close to correct--then the GOP as a national party is already dead, given that the Tea Party is essentially dead and that the GOP is essentially the Tea Party. Yet this seems not to trouble Mr. McCleary, whose only observation is that "If I’m one of the other guys [say, Chris Christie or Condi Rice or Rand Paul or Allen West], it can’t stay that way. Somebody has to eat away at that [Tea Party] base for Rubio." The future GOP standard-bearer should not, you will observe, jettison the Tea Party; he or she should, rather, seek simply to balance the insanity.

This poll--again, if anywhere close to correct--is the GOP's obituary.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

Palin and Bachman in 2016 to kill Hillary's chances for election.

snark, snark

[Turgidson]

Since the GOP thinks the only thing stopping their superawesome ideas is not appearing to be inclusive enough, you have to think Susana Martinez is a prohibitive favorite. Woman AND Latino. She can't lose! The knuckledraggers would veto, of course.

The way things are going, the absolutely ludicrous platform Mittens just ran on will seem like the good ol' days of the dearly-missed reasonable GOP. (after all, that's how McCain's campaign and platform look now, by comparison)

[Kungfup]

There's a big flaw in Harper already: In the TP's interpretation (to use the term loosely) of the Constitution, Rubio does not satisfy the criterion of Natural Born Citizen. So he's out.