| Under the guise of "RPM Surveys," the Republican Party of Minnesota is making phone calls around Minnesota asking some rather loaded "survey" questions:
--In an economic downturn, should government raise taxes or lower taxes?
--Do you support domestic drilling for oil?
--Do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life?
--Do you identify with the Democrat Party or the Republican Party?
Gosh, I wonder who RPM Surveys is. It's not till the end of the call that the caller identifies the source of the survey as the Republican Party of Minnesota, and offers ways for the listener to find the party online. The caller my wife and I got sounded downright glum at our answers to his questions -- I can't imagine why.
There are two threads to suss out here. One is the call itself: don't believe anything you hear on the phone unless there are several questions asking you to identify yourself demographically. Without those questions, it's not a valid survey, and is likely to be done for purposes other than science-based polling. ALWAYS ask upfront who's paying for the call, and think about the content of the questions skeptically -- in the case of this call, there likely would have been follow-on questions if our answers matched up against the RPM's volunteer-finding success tracks.
The other thread is the utter boringness of it all. Look, I'm a Democrat, and I'm not likely to vote for a Republican any time soon. But is this what's really important about politics? Running sneaky "survey" calls, sending boring press releases attacking everyone else, and letting your committed volunteers turn all their neighbors off to the political process with their rabid commitment to their party and candidates?
I'm not saying commitment is a bad thing. But there are lots of people on both sides of the aisle who don't just disagree with the other side, but talk about the issues in such a way that you know they can't believe anyone would ever feel differently about the issues than they themselves do.
Is that right? Is a neighbor's or a coworker's or a friend's worth to us determined by their level of agreement with our politics? Can we not be committed to our positions and our politics and still remember that relating to people is more important than dragging them kicking and screaming over to our side of the field? |
