Republicans Love Bombing, But Only When a Republican Does It

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A few days ago I noted that Republican views of the economy changed dramatically when Donald Trump was elected, but Democratic views stayed pretty stable. Apparently Republicans view the economy through a partisan lens but Democrats don’t.

Are there other examples of this? Yes indeed. Jeff Stein points to polling data about air strikes against Syria:

Democrats are about as supportive of the strikes as they were under Obama, with 38 percent backing them in 2013 and 37 percent agreeing with them now, according to the Washington Post. Now 86 percent of Republican voters back the strikes, compared with the just 22 percent who did so in 2013.

This is a pretty stunning difference. Democratic views stayed solidly negative regardless of who was president. But Republican approval rates skyrocketed from 22 percent to 86 percent when Trump became president. This despite the fact that Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons was more extensive in 2013 than it was this year.

To be honest, I figured the data on economic views was a fluke. Now I wonder. It’s difficult to make these comparisons over time because you rarely have identical circumstances to compare. Trump’s Syrian bombing is unusually similar to the situation in 2013. Still, there are bound to be others. I wonder if this is a fairly consistent result? What other examples do we have of presidents of the opposite party doing extremely similar things and getting different responses from partisans?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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