You didn’t have to be a staffer for Media Matters to know what was happening. Here was bubble-think at its worst, the action of partisans seized by the urgency of their feedback loop. (As if to demonstrate that Democrats aren’t the only ones suffering from the malady.) 

From concept to bungling execution (and subsequent remorse — the blaming comes later), the study was an awkwardly conceived and extravagantly misguided effort by well-meaning (benefit of the doubt time) Republicans to expose the presumed left-wing hegemony in the classroom and faculty lounge.

It was a silly idea. No serious policymaker would even decide what to order for lunch based on the parameters of such a survey (online, opt-in), let alone devise a response strategy. And even if the gambit had produced the results the state GOP could warm up to, what happens after the AHA! moment?

Instead, Republican lawmakers got the worst of both worlds: Not only did a fraction less than 98 percent of students and nearly 91 percent of professors and teachers utterly ignore the poll, those who did respond painted a mural of peaceful coexistence.

Is this the real world, or did alert progressives game their responses? Who knows? On the other hand, Richard Conley, a political conservative and an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida ducked the survey, then oddly and eagerly outed himself to Fresh Take Florida’s Carissa Allen:

“I wouldn’t fill out that survey because it’s probably a career killer,” he said. “You don’t know where any of this information goes.”

Because Republicans live by the George W. Bush maxim — Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice … don’t get fooled again! — by statute, the bell for Round Two rings in about six months. Perhaps state Republicans have adopted the Florida Gators’ tradition-rich chomp of optimism: Wait’ll next year!

Listen, whether subtle or in-your-face, indoctrination on campus is alarming if it’s happening (and, as we’ll see, it probably is). Everyone invested in higher education (that would be all of us) should be concerned. And a survey, even one that reveals pretty much nothing, is fun to kick around between college football Saturdays.

But just as progressive punditry was doing its told-you-so dance, evidence of precisely what the survey was supposed to unveil muscled its way onto center stage.

All it took was introducing Ben Sasse, the Harvard-, Yale-, and St. John’s College-educated U.S. senator from Nebraska, as the one and only finalist to succeed outgoing president Kent Fuchs at the University of Florida. By naming Sasse, an outspoken originalist defender of the Constitution — “Texts and words have meaning,” he tweeted at Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.) in October 2022, “ … [and] when they need to be changed, they should be changed by elected legislators, not unelected judges” — the search committee did the GOP’s work for it.

Never mind what Sasse told audiences of stakeholders in Gainesville last week: “I’ve had political positions and policy positions that represent the views of Nebraskans. It’s a completely different job [to be] president of UF. The president of UF’s job is to celebrate all of what’s going on in this community, and to be a storyteller and resource-getter and salesman for it.”

Because of Sasse’s views on inventiveness by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding flashpoint topics (including same-sex marriage), students who previously declined to declare their degree of indoctrination anonymously flooded the hall where the president-apparent was taking questions to leave no doubt.

Organized by UF College Democrats, Young Democratic Socialists, and Graduate Assistants United — in other words, The Usual Suspects — students numbering in the hundreds arrived to chant, holler, disrupt, and generally exhibit a callow intolerance for ideas they don’t share.

You know, so they could demonstrate their diversity, inclusion, and equity bona fides. Here was stark, energetic, omnivorous indoctrination/intimidation on campus in all its self-righteous glory.

Put that in your survey and smoke it.