This foolish, unnecessary, bellicose idea is running up against the “Lizardman’s Constant.”
President Donald Trump’s push to seize Greenland might be the least popular idea in American political history.
Is that hyperbole? If so, that’s only because reliable and fast public polling is a relatively recent development within our 250-year experiment in self-governance.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found a staggering 4 percent of Americans favor the idea of seizing Greenland with military force. Among Republicans, the idea is actually twice as popular: 8 percent say taking the island is a “good idea.”
Even if the Trump administration is using the threat of military force as a bluff, the idea of acquiring Greenland at all remains deeply unpopular. The same poll found that just 17 percent of Americans (and just 40 percent of Republicans) support the effort.
That poll does not appear to be an outlier. A Quinnipiac University survey released Wednesday found similarly striking results, with 86 percent of respondents opposing a military takeover of Greenland and just 9 percent favoring it.