Fox News poll: Most think Sestak/Romanoff offers are legal, but want an investigation anyway

A new Fox News poll asks 900 registered voters about the (now cooling, it seems) saga of White House job offers to Senate candidates Andrew Romanoff of Colorado and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania. Only 12 percent of voters think such offers are illegal, yet 54 percent -- including more than a third of Democrats -- want them to be investigated. Why? Because 40 percent of voters think the offers were at least "unethical" ... even though 65 percent think it's a "common practice."

This beautifully captures the journey Republicans undergo every time they take a whack at this story. Discussing it on "Fox News Sunday" three weeks ago, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.) first suggested, full stop, that the White House had committed a crime.

It's clearly a crime. Anyone can go online and read [the statute] 18 USC 600 and see that this — that what the White House is now saying happened falls under the statute.

After host Chris Wallace pointed out that a close reading of the law suggests that it was not a crime, Issa pivoted.

Right. Well, what's amazing is that this administration wants to talk about not doing business as usual, and then this is clearly business as usual. Ed Rendell is saying this happens all the time. Sure, it happens all the time, things like this. But it's usually carefully crafted so it doesn't fall under this kind of quid pro quo. And by the way, this is not what President Obama said as far back as North Carolina that things would be different.

From "illegal" to "disappointing" in 60 seconds!

The relevant questions: