Republican Congressional District Census

I just got a survey form in the mail from the Republican Party. Some of these questions are impressively leading. They're clearly asking questions so they can phrase the results the way they want for a sound bite, not so they can actually make policy decisions. And the questions are clearly worded to provoke anger and get the answer they want.

1) Do you generally identify yourself as:

• Conservative Republican
• Moderate Republican
• Liberal Republican
• Independent Voter who leans Republican
• Tea Party Member
• Libertarian
• Other________

 ["Stephen"]

3) If you plan on voting in the 2016 Presidential elections, do you plan on voting for:

• the Republican Nominee
• the Democrat Nominee
• Undecided

[Or, you know, the other dozen candidates...]

10) Do you believe the Republican Party should continue to embrace social issues or are these too divisive when it comes to winning elections?

• Embrace
• Too Divisive
• No Opinion

[I'd rather the Republican Party not embrace social issues because their positions are often ignorant, unchristian, and stupid. It has nothing to do with being too divisive.]

1) Do you think things in our country are continuing to go in the wrong direction, or do you feel things are going in the right direction?

• Wrong direction
• Right direction
• Unsure

[Things? There are many things! Some things are going right, some things are going wrong, and many, many things are going nowhere.]

3) Do you think our Republican leaders in Congress should be aggressive in forcing the Obama White House to work with them to create jobs, cut taxes and regulations, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive?

[Some of those things are contradictory...]

5) Do you favor a major overhaul of the current Federal Tax Code - currently thousands of pages long - that would replace today's burdensome tax system with one that is simpler and fairer?

[Well, yes. Of course, the Republican idea of doing that is typically "raise taxes on the poor so you can cut them on the rich." Obama's proposal to do literally exactly what this question asks, closing loopholes and simplifying deductions while remaining revenue neutral, was shot down immediately. Keep in mind, I don't like Obama; if anyone else was putting the lie to what these people claim to be their goals, I'd use them as an example instead.]

10) With revelations of "Fast and Furious", IRS abuses, the Benghazi cover-up, and other major scandals in recent years, do you feel Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have the right to hold government bureaucrats' feet to the fire and demand more transparency from the Obama administration?

[Do a bunch of manufactured, minor, or non-existent scandals justify demands for transparency? No. Demands for transparency shouldn't need to be justified. And I love how they're still referring to the Benghazi cover-up when their own repeated investigations concluded there was no cover-up.]

11) Do you believe more federal laws that impede individuals' Second Amendment rights are the proper response to recent gun violence in our nation?

[No, gun control isn't going to help much. But... did someone propose gun control laws while I wasn't looking? I'm really asking, here. Because after all the Republican talk of Obama coming to take all our guns six years ago, I haven't seen him make move one in that direction.]

12) Do you support Republican efforts to defer fully implementing ObamaCare and replacing it with something that will address the high cost of health care while maintaining the quality of care?

[The grammar here is weird. "...to defer implementing and replacing it..."? Anyway, I'd be open to the idea if the Republicans would make a specific proposal. I haven't heard anything with any details, except very rarely, and those details were nonsense upon examination. Probably because ObamaCare is the Republican plan. Was when Gingrich proposed it, was when Romney implemented it. They can't come up with better ideas because all of them have already been used.]

14) Do you favor Republican efforts in Congress to better strengthen our borders and fight President Obama's unconstitutional, unilateral decrees in writing new immigration policies?

[I don't think I could write a more leading question if I tried.]

1) Are Republicans in Congress right to fight back against the Obama Administration's efforts to severely cut America's military power?

[What efforts are these, then? Did I miss where we'd cut the number of carrier battle groups we maintain? Are we not still the core of the expanding NATO alliance? I'm pretty sure we've got a couple hundred thousand troops available now that weren't at the beginning of the Obama administration...]

3) Should America take military action if necessary to keep Iran and North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons?

[Little late on NK obtaining nuclear weapons. If the US should have taken action to prevent that, you should have told Bush.]

6) Should the US take a more muscular attitude toward Russia as it moves toward re-establishing itself as a military and economic superpower?

[What does it mean for a country to take a muscular attitude towards another country? Obviously, the bigger intent of the question is to imply that our present attitude is insufficiently muscular. Under any circumstances, utterly crippling their economy is as muscular as I care to get. What, do you want a nuclear war? Don't answer that.]