Washington – Poll: Republicans See Obama As More Imminent Threat Than Putin, Assad

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    President Obama smiles after joking about a lack of a predicted Republican alternative to Obamacare, as he delivers remarks on the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington March 25, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstWashington – A third of Republicans believe US President Barack Obama poses an imminent threat to the United States, outranking concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

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    A Reuters/Ipsos online poll this month asked 2,809 Americans to rate how much of a threat a list of countries, organizations and individuals posed to the United States on a scale of 1 to 5, with one being no threat and 5 being an imminent threat.

    The poll showed 34 percent of Republicans ranked Obama as an imminent threat, ahead of Putin (25 percent), who has been accused of aggression in the Ukraine, and Assad (23 percent). Western governments have alleged that Assad used chlorine gas and barrel bombs on his own citizens.

    Given the level of polarization in American politics the results are not that surprising, said Barry Glassner, a sociologist and author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things.

    “There tends to be a lot of demonizing of the person who is in the office,” Glassner said, adding that “fear mongering” by the Republican and Democratic parties would be a mainstay of the US 2016 presidential campaign.

    “The TV media here, and American politics, very much trade on fears,” he said.

    The Ipsos survey, done between March 16 and March 24, included 1,083 Democrats and 1,059 Republicans.

    Twenty-seven percent of Republicans saw the Democratic Party as an imminent threat to the United States, and 22 percent of Democrats deemed Republicans to be an imminent threat.

    People who were polled were most concerned about threats related to potential terror attacks. Islamic State militants were rated an imminent threat by 58 percent of respondents, and al-Qaida by 43 percent. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un was viewed as a threat by 34 percent, and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by 27 percent.

    Cyber attacks were viewed as an imminent threat by 39 percent, and drug trafficking was seen as an imminent threat by a third of the respondents.

    Democrats were more concerned about climate change than Republicans, with 33 percent of Democrats rating global warming an imminent threat. Among Republicans, 27 percent said climate change was not a threat at all.

    The data was weighted to reflect the US population and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for all adults (3.4 points for Democrats and 3.4 points for Republicans).


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    45 Comments
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    Benny
    Benny
    8 years ago

    Wow!
    Obama is the threat to USA!?
    Unbelievable! And this the president of USA, shame!

    Secular
    Secular
    8 years ago

    …and Obama sees the Republicans and the Tea party as more dangerous than Iran and Isis.

    yonasonw
    Member
    yonasonw
    8 years ago

    As long as you’re reporting on Republican opinion, I thought you anti-Liberal Yiddin might have fun trying to explain away this (I’ll stick with Democratic Liberalism):

    “A Public Policy Polling (PPP) national survey conducted between February 20th and February 22nd [2015] of Republican voters, found that an astonishing 57 percent of Republicans want to dismantle the Constitution, and establish Christianity as the official national religion. Only 30 percent oppose making Christianity the national religion.

    “Although the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” GOP voters want to cast aside that provision and impose Christianity as the official American religion.

    “While a number of red states have passed statutes forbidding the implementation of Islam-based sharia law in their states, Republicans apparently have no misgivings about turning the United States into a Christian theocracy. The poll’s crosstabs reveal that support for making Christianity the official religion is strongest among Mike Huckabee (94 percent), Rick Perry (83 percent), and Ben Carson (78 percent) supporters.”

    Yossy111
    Yossy111
    8 years ago

    It must be pretty hard for Obama to uphold his oath of office to “defend this country from enemies, foreign and domestic”, since he is friends with our foreign enemies and himself is a domestic enemy of this country.

    ayinglefunadorf
    ayinglefunadorf
    8 years ago

    Putin is White, easy answer.

    ayinglefunadorf
    ayinglefunadorf
    8 years ago

    34% is not bad. It means that only 34% are racist against Blacks, Yiden etc. Its much better than in Europe where 80-90% were racist

    Solbp
    Solbp
    8 years ago

    I agree with this poll and he is the biggest danger to Israel too, at least I can see how Moshicah will be needed very soon, and we all can see how we can’t count on the USA unless you move to Iran.

    Realistic
    Realistic
    8 years ago

    Just to show how out of mind Republicans are today.

    puppydogs
    puppydogs
    8 years ago

    “Republicans See Obama As More Imminent Threat Than Putin, Assad”

    WOW, I am a democrat and feel the same way.

    yidele1
    yidele1
    8 years ago

    mind boggling americans should feel this way of their president and he should continue to run tthe show ,, stupid ,impeach him!

    Rafuel
    Rafuel
    8 years ago

    What’s so surprising? Putin and Assad, yimach shemam, may be hating America just as much or even more than Obama, but they are powerless to do anything about it beyond pure rhetoric, especially Assad. Even Putin knows that his dilapidated and most often drunk military force is no match for ours and if, G-d forbid, it ever came to an outright fight, his force would crumble in two days to two weeks. Obama, very unfortunately, has power and desire to do our country great harm and is doing it constantly. So, if anything, I am surprised that Obama didn’t outpoll all the other enemies of our country combined.