Gallup Poll: Americans Say Obama, Pro-Abortion Democrats Too Liberal

Gallup Poll: Americans Say Obama, Pro-Abortion Democrats Too Liberal

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 14, 2010

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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- For only the second time in any previous Gallup survey, almost half of Americans sat Democrats, led by President Barack Obama and his pro-abortion allies in Congress, are too liberal. Voters are less likely to say Republicans, who tend to be pro-life, are too conservative.

In the past two years, Americans have become increasingly likely to describe the Democratic Party's views as "too liberal," with 49 percent saying so now.

That compares with 46 percent who said that in 2009 and 39 percent who said that in 2008, when Obama won the presidential election.

Looked at another way, Americans said the views of the pro-abortion Democratic Party were just right by 50 percent in 2008, by 42 percent in 2009 and by just 38 percent of Americans now.

Conversely, 41 percent of American say the views of Republicans are too conservative compared with 40 percent who say they are just right.

The last time such a high percentage of Americans thought Democrats were too liberal was in 1994, when half said so. That's when pro-life Republican leaders were given control of Congress from pro-abortion Democrats for the first time in decades.

Why are the numbers important now? With Democrats who favor abortion having an ironclad grip on both the House and Senate, that polling data would find their abortion advocacy -- coming mainly in the health care bill it passed containing massive abortion funding -- too much for Americans to take means a potential landslide for pro-life candidates this November.

Ed Morrissey, a conservative writer at Hot Air, breaks down the results further in a commentary piece.

"Republicans plan to attack Democratic leadership in Congress in the midterms by painting them as so liberal as to be out of the mainstream of American body politic. That won't be difficult to sell," he said, given the polling results.

"This is very bad news indeed for Democrats and a two-edged problem for the midterms. First, it speaks to voter enthusiasm for Democratic candidates. They won't get the kind of turnout in 2010 that they did in 2008 when half of all Americans consider them the extreme," he said. "Independents are the biggest problem; in 2008, when Democrats extended their control of Congress and took the White House, independents were narrowly split 43/40 in thinking that the Democratic Party ideological position was “about right.” Now they have a 19-point deficit among independents, 33/52."

"Second, Obama and Democratic leadership have already hinted that they want to argue in the midterms that Republicans are the real extremists. That argument would have worked, according to Gallup’s data, until Democrats started pushing ObamaCare through Congress," Morrissey added.

For the pro-life movement, the liberal views are seen in the way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid and their Democratic allies have promoted abortion.

They shepherded the pro-abortion health care bill through Congress and to President Barack Obama, who signed it into law and will force Americans to pay for abortions unless the measure is overturned by the courts. Already, several states have either signed bills to opt out of some abortion funding into law or have passed them through the state legislature.

Congressional Democrats also allowed taxpayer financing of abortions in the nation's capital -- making it so abortions are paid for with federal funds in the District of Columbia for the first time in more than a decade.

Democrats in the House also denied pro-life Rep. Chris Smith a vote on an amendment to restore a consistent application of Kemp-Kasten for all organizations the federal government funds, including the UNFPA. That would have stopped the Obama administration from allowing taxpayer funding of the UNFPA, which has been found to be complicit in the forced abortion one-child policies in China.

Smith also wanted to offer an amendment to limit international family planning funds to those organizations that certify that they will not perform abortions or lobby for the legalization of abortion.

That would have the effect of reversing President Barack Obama's decision to overturn the Mexico City Policy and force taxpayers to fund groups that promote and perform abortions overseas.

Democrats prevented a vote on that amendment, too.