Matthew Yglesias gets it right on polls and American chauvinism

I may not see eye-to-eye with Yglesias about much, but he hit it dead on in this post: "Am I the only one who thinks running polls on what American Catholics think the next Pope should say about various sex-and-gender issues is a bit weird? The idea that that could be relevant seems to misunderstand the nature and purpose of the Church hierarchy in so many different ways to be a bit hard to comprehend. The whole point of the set-up is that public opinion doesn't matter in this way. And even if the Cardinals are going to worry about what their flock thinks, why should they care in particular about what Americans think. There are a whole lot of Catholics out there in the wide world."

(Matthew Yglesias: Polling Run Amok)