More than half of Democrats believed that it was at least "somewhat likely" that Bush was "complicit" in the 9/11 attacks

Ben Smith at Politico has been writing a lot about the "birther" issue. This last week he added the point below. I remember this (and I seem to remember other polls), but I hadn't seen anyone talk about it and surely none of the media have raised it when they have pushed Republicans on the issue. If I had been a Republican being pushed on the "birther" issue, I would have said that I was no more responsible for it than leading Democrats were on the Bush was complicit in 9/11 issue, indeed even less so because I had spoken out on the "birther" issue. Indeed, the Obama administration even had "truthers," such as Van Jones working in it, but there was never really any outrage in the MSM about that.

More than half of Democrats believed Bush knew

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 2006 poll 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.

I'm still not sure this represents actual belief, as opposed to a kind of trash talk about a president you hate. (Bush wasn't mentioned in that survey question, but had been earlier in the poll.) . . .