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Survey says: Obama supporters don't want Constitution used in Supreme Court. |
09/10/08
32% of likely voters say the Supreme Court is doing a great job, while 20% say the justices are doing poorly.
During the Republican Convention, John McCain stated that ''We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench.''
60% of Americans, according to Rasmussen, agree and say that the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the Constitution. 30% disagree and say that rulings should be based on the judges' sense of fairness and justice.
The question asked was this: Should the Supreme Court make decisions based on what's written in the Constitution and legal precedents, or should it be guided mostly by a sense of fairness and justice?
Broken down politically, Rasmussen found that 82% of McCain supporters want the justices to rule on what is in the Constitution, while only 29% — less than one third — of Obama supporters agree. Conversely, 11% of McCain supporters say that the Supremes should rule based on a sense of fairness, whereas almost half (49%) of Obama supporters think that the Supremes should just rule based on their own sense of fairness.
This of course is rather astonishing. With strident calls about how Republicans have allegedly ''destroyed the Constitution'' being made by usually left-leaning people, who presumably would vote for Obama, it is surprising that less than a third of said Obama supporters seem to care about using the Constitution in the first place.
Possible explanations have been offered. The most prevalent is that societies such as the Federalist Society have successfully turned ''supporting the Constitution'' into a catch phrase for conservative policies. If this is true, it will be a problem for left-leaning politicians in the future, if not already.
In any case, lots of people seem to be confused on the role of the Supreme Court and the concept of applying the law and judicial review.
And perhaps, there just might be some ads in the near future about Obama supporters not wanting the Constitution.
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