AMERICANS REACT TO CIA REPORT – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  The American people, who are generally wiser than the politicians and pundits, have reacted with restraint and common sense to the Democratic Senate report on the CIA.  From the Washington Post: 

A new poll from the Pew Research Center is the first to gauge reactions to last week's big CIA report on "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- what agency critics call torture.

And the reaction is pretty muted.

The poll shows people say, by 51-29 percent, than the CIA's methods were justified and 56-28 percent that the information gleaned helped prevent terror attacks.

The word "torture," it should be noted, isn't mentioned in the poll, but it has been associated with much of the coverage of the issue. And the numbers align nicely with polls on the use of torture, which shows that relatively few Americans are concerned about it -- especially when you bring the prospect of combating terrorism into the mix.

That lack of real concern about what the CIA was doing is also reflected in the amount of interest in the story. While newspapers and broadcast news across the country devoted a huge amount of coverage to the Senate intelligence committee report last week, just 23 percent of Americans say they are following the story "very closely," while 50 percent are following it "not too closely" or "not at all." That ranks it behind the Ferguson/Eric Garner protests and stories about the U.S. economy.

And it's not just that people who aren't concerned about torture aren't tuning in. Those who have followed the story the most, in fact, approve of the program 59-34 percent.

Even Democrats are pretty split on the justification for the program. While 37 percent say it was justified, 46 percent say it wasn't. Liberal Democrats disapprove 65-25 percent, but moderate and conservative Democrats approve 48-32 percent.

COMMENT:  That last point is fascinating.  We're hearing more and more about serious splits in the Democratic Party.  Liberal Democrats, remember, are a small part of the American electorate, maybe 20 percent or so.  But they have an outsized voice in Mr. Obama's party.

December 16, 2014