Interestingly, the other major party never seems to fail to notice. Right now there are endless videos on YouTube of Romney’s flip-flopping, and Republicans reacted similarly to Kerry’s waffling in 2004. But for some reason, supporters of the candidate in question either don’t notice or don’t care.
The quality (in American politics, at least) that either 1: a politician’s stance on any given topic is highly mutable, or 2: a politician’s stance could perfectly reasonably disagree with that of some of his supporters, given that the politician one supports is at best a best-effort compromise rather than (in most cases) a perfect representation of one’s beliefs, is it not so widely-known as to eliminate or alleviate that effect?
I don’t see how either or both options you’ve presented change the point in any way; if politicians claim to agree on X until you agree to vote for them, then turn out to revert to their personal preference once you’ve already voted for them, then while you may know they’re mutable or a best-effort-compromise, you’ve still agreed with a politician and voted for them on the basis of X, which they now no longer hold.
That they are known to have mutable stances or be prone to hidden agendas only makes this tactic more visible, but also more popular, and by selection effects makes the more dangerous instances of this even more subtle and, well, dangerous.
I would argue that the chief difference between picking a politician to support and choosing answers based on one’s personal views of morality is that the former is self-evidently mutable. If a survey-taker was informed beforehand that the survey-giver might or might not change his responses, it is highly doubtful the study in question would have these results.
Claim to agree with them on issue X, then once they’ve committed to supporting you, change your position on issue X.
Come to think of it, politicians already do this.
Interestingly, the other major party never seems to fail to notice. Right now there are endless videos on YouTube of Romney’s flip-flopping, and Republicans reacted similarly to Kerry’s waffling in 2004. But for some reason, supporters of the candidate in question either don’t notice or don’t care.
The quality (in American politics, at least) that either 1: a politician’s stance on any given topic is highly mutable, or 2: a politician’s stance could perfectly reasonably disagree with that of some of his supporters, given that the politician one supports is at best a best-effort compromise rather than (in most cases) a perfect representation of one’s beliefs, is it not so widely-known as to eliminate or alleviate that effect?
I don’t see how either or both options you’ve presented change the point in any way; if politicians claim to agree on X until you agree to vote for them, then turn out to revert to their personal preference once you’ve already voted for them, then while you may know they’re mutable or a best-effort-compromise, you’ve still agreed with a politician and voted for them on the basis of X, which they now no longer hold.
That they are known to have mutable stances or be prone to hidden agendas only makes this tactic more visible, but also more popular, and by selection effects makes the more dangerous instances of this even more subtle and, well, dangerous.
I would argue that the chief difference between picking a politician to support and choosing answers based on one’s personal views of morality is that the former is self-evidently mutable. If a survey-taker was informed beforehand that the survey-giver might or might not change his responses, it is highly doubtful the study in question would have these results.