General Discussion

PeaceWave, I’m not saying that this isn’t an interesting development and I’m glad you made this post. I just have a few thoughts.
This is aimed at MSN and other news sources assumptions about the meaning of poll results. There is no argument for their headline and conclusion for the poll results. Nowhere did Gallup mention making cuts to Social Security and Medicare, only making significant changes to them. Their conclusion is in no way logically implied by Republican responses to their poll.

Should we reduce debt by “Making significant changes to the Social Security and Medicare programs to reduce their cost.”

You can argue that this necessarily means cuts in Social Security and Medicare, but this isn’t how a large number of people will understand it. Many will think that they can get the same benefits while saving the Federal government money through Republican Magic. Maybe they believe it will be by taking all the dead or undocumented off the rolls?Maybe, a few less people believe in Republican Magic than in the first two weeeks of September?

Earlier Gallup asked if voters would favor “Cutting spending for programs other than defense, Social Security and Medicare.” 72% of R said yes. Only 13% favored defense spending alone. Gallup could have asked if the respondents if they favored “cuts” in Social Security and Medicare rather than “significant changes”. They also could have done so when asking about Medicaid and food assistance (see in link below), but they didn’t. This would have given us a clearer idea of where the voters’ opinions lie. There are many who have been sold the idea that it’s Democratic Party ideas an inefficiencies that cause our deficits and are pretty sure that significant changes from the R party can reduce debt while maintaining the benefits they rely on. This failure of understanding is easy to see if you see the republican response to tax revenues. Increase taxes on rich-36% in favor. Increase revenue by making major changes to tax code-48%. I’m guessing the Republican respondents are not more in favor of increasing taxes on themselves over upper-income Americans, but here we are.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/696416/americans-favor-spending-cuts-taxes-cut-deficit.aspx