Pollster.com

What a stupidly phrased question. Obama didn't "halt the deployment of an anti-missile shield", he changed the whole deployment strategy. Are these guys supposed to be professionals pollsters?

This is nothing more than a Republican fishing expedition designed to bait the notion this administration is weak on national security. Transparent,..laughable

If you spend 5 minutes reading the newspapers, you recognize this is a stupid question: "Will the President's decision to halt deployment of the anti-missile shield in Europe help or hurt our relationship with European countries?"

Because many of our NATO allies were very much against a land-based missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, they are happy that we are going to a ship-based missile program, while Poland and the Czech Republic possibly saw missiles in their countries as our further commitment to their defense, they may have a different view.
Thus Rasmussen was too stupid or dishonest to pose a relevant question to a slightly complex matter.

This poll highlights the difficulty of condensing fairly detailed issues into single sentence questions. A far more accurate question would have been: "Do you agree or disagree with the president's decision to replace a land-based anti-long-range-missile shield in Europe with a naval-based anti-short-to-medium-range-missile shield in Europe?"

I don't blame Rasmussen, personally: the reality is that it's just plain difficult to phrase the question in a way that sufficiently accounts for the complexity of the issue. Either way, I don't think public understanding of the issue is sufficiently deep that the poll result is particularly meaningful, no matter which way you phrase it.

An alternative question, "Do you favor the US government saving hundreds of millions of dollars by choosing to replace a land-based missile defense shield (of dubious functionality) in Europe with a maritime defense shield?" would have yielded much different results, methinks.

I blame Ras.

I would agree that asking if we should replace a land based missile defense shield (of dubious functionality) with a maritime shield would yield different results. But if you are somehow suggesting your alternate phrasing would be more fair I have to disagree.

As far as I know shooting missiles out of the air is hard to accomplish 100% of the time. But if there is one headed my way and you have any chance of shooting it down, however slim, please take the shot.

I wonder what kind of response we would get to a question about support for a govt health care plan (of dubious functionality). Would that question be just as fair?

I agree that the poll as written poses more problems than the correct answer needs. The correct answer, of course, is absolutely not. No land based missle defense in Europe PERIOD! Need I remind you that the cold war is over and mutual cooperation between interested parties is the call of the day. We are, after the 8 years of governing by lies, innuendo and half truths that played to the worst fears immaginable, over reacting to everthing. May cooler heads prevail this time around. As to big Mike's comment re "of dubious functionality" of course is not "fair" nor is it true. "BIG" Mike: what is a big man like you so worried about?

@Bigmike: Obviously The Moderator's question would skew the poll, but I think he/she was making a point about the issue of missile defence, as opposed to a point about polling methodology.

We can fix all this stuff by forcing one term limits and forcing single item bills. One term limits will do away with campaign contributions, getting rid of the lobby.

One term limits would also reduce the legislation process to complete chaos, with no single member being familiar enough with complex House or Senate rules. This would favor imbeciles who get elected on sound-bytes. In other words, I can see where tea-baggers would adore it.

@ Cyril Washbrook

You read my mind.

think some are missing the point.. i am getting tired of paying to police the entire world... trillions for iraq, ?? for afganistan.. let europe pay for awhile..

on the subject of term limits.. even one term is overkill.. our elected "leaders" are not writing bills or reading them; just voting on them along party lines.. they are just another waste of taxpayer money..