Preface: President Bush has recently acknowledged that at his direction and with his approval the National Security Agency has been monitoring the communications of American citizens for some time within the United States without first obtaining a court warrant. Critics of this activity have pointed out that this violates federal law and the prohibitions against such in the United States Constitution.
I am going to read you a list of statements on this subject. I'd like you to rate your opinion on each issue as either strongly agree, agree, neutral/don't know, disagree, and strongly disagree.
1. This is an abuse of power by the president. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
2. When one person's civil rights are violated in this fashion, everyone else's are, too. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
3. It seems like more and more we're all losing any expectation of privacy. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
4. The president should be impeached for this serious violation of the law. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
5. If we're going to remain safe we need to give up some of our rights. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
There are all kinds of questions along these lines. The order can (and should be) rotated to eliminate question fatigue bias.
If this comes to pass, release the top line results to the media and the blogosphere. Keep the crosstabs out of it - you don't need to spend the money to help show dubya's administration how to spin their way out of this.
Make sure the opinion research firm you choose has really good interviewers. Don't go cheap. And find out their typical refusal rate for a national poll.
You'll need to decide on a sample of "adults nationwide", "registered voters nationwide", or "likely voters nationwide" - or however the firm you ultimately choose labels these.
Preface: President Bush has recently acknowledged that at his direction and with his approval the National Security Agency has been monitoring the communications of American citizens for some time within the United States without obtaining a court warrant. Critics have pointed out that this violates the Constitution as well as specific federal laws--including the statute establishing the secret FISA court, which has only rejected 4 warrant applications since 1979. Bush's defenders have cited the need for speed. But the FISA process was designed for speed, and allows for immediate wiretapping, provided a warrant is applied for within 72 hours.
I am going to read you a list of contrasting statements on this subject. I'd like you to rate which alternative comes closest to your viewpoint, say and how strongly you agree. So you'll say: strongly agree with first alternative, agree with first alternative, neutral/don't know, agree with second alternative, strongly agree with second alternative.
1. Which comes closest to your viewpoint: (A) The President can't break the law. If the President does it, then that makes it legal. Or (B) We're a nation of laws, not of men. If the President breaks the law, he has committed a crime. (A, strongly; A; neutral/don't know; B; B, strongly)
2. Which comes closest to your viewpoint: (A) We're involved in a war on terror, and we need to do whatever we can to win--even if it breaks our own laws. Or: (B) We're involved in a war of ideas. In the end, our enemies can only win if we betray our own ideals. (A, strongly; A; neutral/don't know; B; B, strongly)
3. Which comes closest to your viewpoint: (A) When one person's civil rights are violated in this fashion, everyone else's are, too. Or: (B) If we're going to remain safe we need to give up some of our rights. (A, strongly; A; neutral/don't know; B; B, strongly)
Now I am going to read you a list of statements on this subject. I'd like you to rate your opinion on each issue as either strongly agree, agree, neutral/don't know, disagree, and strongly disagree.
4. This is an abuse of power by the president. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
5. If the President thought it was the right thing to do, he should have said so openly. The fact that he did it in secret shows that he knew it was wrong. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
6. The president should be impeached for this serious violation of the law. (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)
I also think we should ask for partisan ID. And we should release cross-tabs on that.
As for holing back the other cross-tabs, I don't know that I agree. I'm pretty sure the President and his allies will be doing ten times the amount of polling on this that we are. I doubt we would give them much they don't already have. The American people, however, need to know as much as they can.
But I'm open to persuasion. (Although, this is more like Pride & Prejudice.)
