A couple weeks ago Rasmussin polled a thousand people and asked them to score 10 issues in terms of importance.
Not surprisingly, the highest ranking issue was the Economy, with 84% of Americans ranking it as “very important.”
The issues receiving the least number of very important votes, at 38 and 37 percent respectively, were Abortion and
the War in Iraq, two issues that have been at the center of our culture wars
over the last decade.
There was a cluster of 5 issues that hovered around 60% - Taxes, National Security, Social Security, and Education among them. What these issues have in common, other than their similar ranking in importance, is that most people see these 4 items as government centric. Now, Republicans may argue whether this should be the work of the government, but it is true that, the way things are today a lot of our Government’s efforts are targeted towards issues of taxation education, national security and social security. This has implications for the 5th item in that cluster, Health Care, which hit at exactly 60%
There is a kind of logic to all this.
At the top of the hierarchy is the economy. At the bottom are tiresome culture battles.
In the middle are a variety of things that government regulates. And this description accounts for 8 of the 10 of the most important issues.
The two other issues, lying outside of the clusters, are Immigration and
Government Ethics and Corruption.
Immigration occupies a ranking below government centric issues and above the culture wars with 50% of Americans considering it a very important issue. This makes sense. The battle lines with immigration seem to be drawn between those who approach it with a kind of emotionalism, and those who are more pragmatic, seeing immigration more as
pieces of larger economic and national security policies.
But perhaps the most telling placement is that of Government Ethics and Corruption. Government Ethics and Corruption ranks 2nd, with 72% of respondents considering it a very important issue.
It falls between the Economy and the government centric issues. What this says to me is that while people are concerned with the work government does, they are more concerned about the demons of Washington that get in the way of good policy-making. They worry that politicians are unable
to resist the temptation to put things that are self serving before the interests of their constituents.
I’m Gina Cooper, the Political Outsider. You can check out my work at MiddleCoastLLC.com, and my personal thoughts as a high school teacher turned political strategist at ginacooper.com.
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