The Russia Question: New Poll Sheds Light on How Voters View Russian Interference

This is how a republic (and a party) dies.

To be clear, sanity still seems to be clinging to the Republican party, but only by the fingertips, as the rot of alt-right Trumpism continues to advance and infest.

Yes. If you’re a part of the alt-right, I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings. I called you an infestation. We can go with “infection,” if you prefer. Either way, the alt-right isn’t saving the Republican party. They’re destroying it.

A new poll out on Tuesday shows that there are actually those within the party who are absolutely fine with a hostile foreign power interfering in a United States election, if the results are what they want.

That’s not only un-American and unpatriotic, it’s on a level of dumb so vast, I don’t think there’s a clear way to measure it.

A Yahoo Finance/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday finds that 11 percent of Republican or GOP-leaning Americans surveyed said it is “appropriate” for Russia to try to help Republicans, while 29 percent said it’s “not appropriate, but wouldn’t be a big deal.”

It is not appropriate. If they do it, it’s a big deal.

That’s only forty percent of Republicans with the absolute wrong idea about allowing Russians to meddle in our national affairs.

Let me give the acceptable percentage of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, or anybody else being “ok” with Russians meddling in any of our elections: ZERO.

Speaking of Democrats, only 14 percent feel it would be appropriate, or at least, not a big deal if Russians meddled on their behalf. A hefty 86 percent felt that not only would it be inappropriate, but it would be a big, bad deal.

Now, given that it is the Republicans in control and there seems to be a “Russia problem” in their ranks, Democrats could just be putting up a noble front. Would they be as outraged if Russian interference had favored their side?

We can’t really know.

What we do know is that there is evidence to suggest that they wanted Donald Trump to win. They promoted his campaign through Russian “bots,” across social media.

If all the information and all the events surrounding the 2016 election didn’t convince you, the Helsinki summit should have put any lingering doubts to rest.

At a press conference in Helsinki earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election.

“Yes, I did, because he was the one who wanted to normalize relations with Russia,” Putin said.

Well, I guess Putin would know, wouldn’t he?

The new fear is that they’re at it again, with some evidence being present to suggest they’re gearing up to create chaos before the November midterm election.

Facebook on Tuesday also revealed a new coordinated disinformation campaign on its platform ahead of the fall elections, saying it removed more than two dozen accounts across Facebook and Instagram involved in “inauthentic behavior.”

Russia is not our friend. If they’re meddling, it’s not for our good, and this isn’t a partisan issue. It’s an American issue.

There were 2,509 respondents to this particular survey. It was conducted between July 25 and July 27.