Over at Outside the Beltway, Doug Mataconis flags a 2006 poll (by way of **Ben Smith) showing widespread 9/11 "trutherism" among Democrats during the Bush administration:
I’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”
There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.
“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.
A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.” That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks.
Mataconis adds:
For all the emphasis on the apparent hold that birthers have on a significant portion of the GOP base, it’s worth noting that as recently as five years ago it was the Democratic Party that was the home of people who believed in bizarre, irrational, conspiracy theories.
Of course, there's one major distinction between Democratic "trutherism" and Republican "birtherism": At no point were Democrats demanding trutherism from Democratic congressional candidates, much less presidential candidates. Despite the widespread presence of truther beliefs among Democrats, friendly state lawmakers never passed truther-influenced legislation, and trutherism remained on the far fringe of liberal discourse.
By contrast (and this is an important contrast), birtherism is all but an established issue priority within the Republican coalition; GOP presidential candidates will be judged on their adherence to birther conspiracies, and the eventual nominee will have to placate birthers for success. In other words, even with the (formerly?) widespread presence of truther beliefs among Democrats, it's still hard to make a direct comparison between trutherism and birtherism.
