Andrew Sullivan, and the Economist blogger he quotes both have a point, to a degree: It’s not enough to ask whether you think President Obama is doing right by Israel, it’s also key to ask what the respondent thinks is "right."
Per the Quinnipiac poll, we don’t know why people the people who say they are unhappy with the Obama administration’s Israel policies are unhappy.
The poll is suggestive — most Americans believe in strong support for Israel — but not conclusive. That posture does not necessarily contradict Obama toughening his settlements posture, for instance. There’s a recent Rasmussen poll that Sullivan and the Economist cite showing that a substantive plurality of Americans — 49 percent to 22 percent — favor a settlement freeze.
Still, I don’t think the Quinnipiac questions are without relevance: If nothing else, they’re am important metric of how well Obama has explained his policies.
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