75% of Americans agree with Gary Johnson, not Barack Obama or Mitt Romney on defense cuts

The key is apparently that people favor more defense spending until they find out how much we are already spending:

Americans typically want more spending on defense but favor cutting back when they are told how much actually is spent on defense compared to other budget items, according to opinion data released Thursday.

Three-quarters of Americans said they supported cutting defense to reduce the federal budget deficit, according to the survey, published by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland.

That majority is bipartisan: About 67 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats supported cutting the defense budget, the survey data show.

This also tells Libertarian supporters of Presidential candidate Gary Johnson something critically important.

It is not good enough to talk about cutting defense, you must first explain how high defense spending actually is.

Then you begin to win people over.

Comments

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