| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty November 21, 2013 Shocker: 58 Percent Say They Trust Republicans More on Handling Health Care A new poll arrived in my e-mail box this morning, indicating how quickly the conventional wisdom about the issue of health care has been turned upside down: - "Loyalty prevails among partisans, but among independents, 42 percent trust the Democratic Party more when it comes to handling healthcare compared with 58 percent who trust the Republican Party more."
- Forty one percent of registered voters approve of the law compared with 53 percent who disapprove.
- Since September, Democrats have shifted 11 points away from let the law take effect as is, Independents have moved 10 points away from let the law take effect as is, and Republicans are 10 points more likely to support repealing law.
- One in five registered voters have or know someone who has received an insurance cancellation notice.
- Sixty-five percent are more likely to agree with a statement that cancellation notices show President Obama has broken his promise that Americans can keep their current insurance, while 35 percent say the notices will improve policies by requiring them to meet minimum standards.
(Notice this pollster doesn't allow the option of "don't know." Interesting what happens when you push people off the fence.) - Twelve percent of voters say these notices are the single most important issue in their 2014 vote, 57 percent say it's one of the most important.
This figure is pretty stunning: - Among Democrats, 22 percent say Obama deserves "a lot" of the blame for insurance cancellations, 45 percent say "some," and 33 percent say "none." Among Republicans it splits 80 percent "a lot", 18 percent "some", and 3 percent "none" -- yes, it comes to 101 percent, so I presume some figure is rounded up. Among independents, 59 percent say Obama deserves "a lot" of the blame, 30 percent say "some," and only 11 percent say "none."
Obama gets the most blame for the cancellations, then congressional Democrats, then insurance companies, and congressional Republicans get the least blame: 
The Three Incessant, Perpetual National Conversations about JFK Hey, any big anniversaries coming up this week? Conversations about President John F. Kennedy tend to go in one of three directions. 1) JFK as a victim of right-wing hatred: John J. Miller and Daniel Pipes dismantle this bit of historical revisionism. 2) The largely successful, deliberate effort to ignore the unsavory parts of Kennedy's legacy as president: Don't get me wrong, the assassination of any president is an outrage and tragedy. But the sudden, horrific way that Kennedy was taken from the nation by an assassin's bullet seems to eradicate some people's ability to see him as he truly was, which is a murky mix of strengths and flaws. The NR editors: By almost any measure, John F. Kennedy was a middling president at best, and an occasionally disastrous one. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile crisis, setting the nation on the wrong course in Vietnam, his nepotism, the spying on political rivals — all must weigh heavily in our judgment of his presidency. And while Kennedy the president was a middle-of-the-range performer at best, Kennedy the man has been relentlessly diminished by the eventual revealing of the facts of his day-to-day life. A quick reminder about those facts of his day-to-day life: When Mimi Alford was summoned to swim on her fourth day as a White House intern in 1962, no one told the chaste, uncomprehending teenager that the purpose of the invitation was to serve her up in a borrowed bathing suit for inspection by President John F. Kennedy. That evening, Alford—who had never had a boyfriend—was surprised when White House aide David Powers plied her with drinks, and stunned when JFK offered her a private tour of the residence. Moments later, she says, the president pushed her down onto his wife's bed, pulled off her underwear, and unceremoniously deflowered her. Alford says she spent the next 18 months as JFK's sexual plaything, spirited into and out of bedrooms in Washington and elsewhere by Powers. She then waited half a century before telling her story in an explosive new memoir called Once Upon a Secret. 3) Dragging those old, dusty conspiracy theories out of that chest in the attic one more time: Will Saletan, writing in Slate, notes that a lot of polling blurs the line between those who believe in conspiracy theories and those who say they think some element of the truth has been hidden from the public: In 1963, shortly after JFK's death, the National Opinion Research Center asked Americans what they had felt or suspected on hearing the news. Fewer than 30 percent said they felt strongly that a communist, segregationist, or other extremist had killed the president. But 62 percent said they thought other people had helped the shooter. Last year, in a UVA/Hart Research survey, 75 percent of the public affirmed that "there are still too many questions surrounding Kennedy's assassination to say that Lee Harvey Oswald acted by himself." That's not exactly a conspiracy theory. It's a refusal to close the case. A similar pattern shows up in reactions to the 1993 siege at Waco, Texas. In April 1995, a CNN/Time survey asked, "Do you think government agents deliberately set the fire in which the Branch Davidians died, or do you think this was an accident?" Sixty-six percent said it was an accident. Only 14 percent said it was deliberate. But three months later, when the same pollsters asked whether "federal law enforcement officials are covering up anything about the role of government officials at Waco," a plurality—49 to 39 percent—said yes. The July 1995 survey also asked about the suicide of Vince Foster, a former aide to Bill Clinton who was thought to have known secrets about the president. Only 20 percent of respondents said Foster had been murdered. But 45 percent said the government was "covering up" something about his death. Again, these vague suspicions that something is being hidden—we can't say what—sound more like doubt than belief. There's an element of show-off hipster-ism in the pose of the conspiracy theorist or the outspoken skeptic; the tone is always, "Oh, you believe the official story? I guess you're not as discerning or knowledgeable as me. I hope you're happy with your naïve little sheeple illusions." The actions of most conspiracy theorists suggest that they themselves don't really believe what they say. It was a point made about 9/11 Truthers -- if you really genuinely believed that a shadowy cabal within the federal government had plotted to kill thousands of Americans and then covered it up, you would not be writing about it on the Internet and making YouTube videos. You would be going to the hinterlands, forming a militia, and preparing to overthrow the government and retake the country from the irredeemably evil and ruthless people running this place. I do wonder if the number or percentage of Americans who believe in conspiracy theories is growing, though. For many generations of Americans, organized religion was the previous primary source of reassurance, guidance, instruction, and wisdom -- a set of beliefs and philosophies to turn to through life's difficulties. As we become a less religious nation, perhaps some among us are turning to conspiracy theories as a coping mechanism. At one time or another, all of us are left to grapple with theodicy, coming to terms with why bad things happen to good people. Sometimes we see it on a small, personal scale. Almost everyone has experienced some tragedy, some loss, some disappointment, perhaps some part of life turning out much different, and worse, than we expect. Perhaps it's a reflection of the "special little snowflake" mentality taking root in our culture, an attitude especially ascribed to Generation Y, but by no means limited to people of that age. Some of us spent our teen and college years preparing for a bright future of limitless possibility, and then life didn't quite live up to those glowing expectations. And sometimes we see this on the grandest scale. We live in a world where random events -- hurricanes, tsunamis -- can kill many with little warning, and the actions of an individual like Lee Harvey Oswald or a small group like the 19 9/11 hijackers can commit crimes that shock and horrify millions of people. Cursing fate, luck, or God seems insufficient. Much more reassuring to think someone out there did this to us, to put a face on our misfortune, to feel that if we could somehow pull back the curtain, and expose the evildoers who caused our troubles, that somehow that pain and trouble will be undone and we will be made whole again. Conservatives Gather in Boston; Injuries Kept to a Minimum My goodness, what a wonderful, surreal evening. Would you believe me if I had told you there are quite a few conservatives in the greater Boston area -- with some folks coming in from as far away as California and Montreal? The setting was almost dreamlike -- a tasting room in this old brewery, with all kinds of photos and artifacts from its illustrious history on the walls, overlooking the brewing room, with easily a dozen top-quality beers on tap and good food and hors' d'oeuvres. What's more, I think everyone had a good time. In the fifth year of the Obama presidency, almost everyone was positively giddy about how much trouble he's in -- but with a lingering dread of what the country will have to endure until he moves on to retirement. This will sound like a joke, but it isn't: Shortly before we arrived, we got word that Mark Steyn was in a fairly serious traffic accident. He was able to make it to Boston, and as he put it, "it was a mild concussion and serious embolism, but they decided not to take me to a hospital, as my insurance was canceled a few days ago." He said the paramedics were concerned that he had had a stroke, because they believed he was "talking funny," and his friends assured them, "no, that's how he sounds all the time." No, really, he's fine, folks, and we're all glad to see him up and about. I've noticed at National Review gatherings like this one or the cruise, you often find a lot of conservatives and Republicans who live in some of the bluest parts of the country. Gatherings like these are like a combination of a support group, a secret society, and an endangered-species preserve -- you're among friends you haven't met yet, and many of last night's guests were kind enough to say that even though we hadn't met in person, they felt like they knew me and the other NR contributors from reading us, day after day, week after week, year after year. I am a very lucky man to have readers like this, and I want to thank all of you out there for having me be a part of your mornings. I also said that because of the many fine beers available, my thoughts in today's newsletter would wander, and at some point I would suddenly end sentences without ADDENDUM: The cover of Time magazine for the coming week: 
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