Last month we highlighted the pointless nature of one-sided generic polls for elections that don't actually take place for more than 30 months. But this week, Gallup (headline trolling?) put out a new one that generated a lot of Politico/Drudge-fueled buzz. Why? because Obama only leads his “nameless” Republican opponent by a couple points. And that's news.

But is that really so shocking to give voters a choice between a well-known politician whom they may or may not like, and pit him against a nameless (i.e. flawless?) candidate? Wouldn't it be more revealing if polling firms like Gallup inserted the names of actual Republicans and then asked who'd they prefer if running against Obama?

That's what Fox News recently did. It inserted the names of real Republicans (flaws and all) and asked voters who'd they prefer. Look what happened when Fox News put in the names “Mitt Romney,” and “Sarah Palin,” and “Newt Gingrich” and asked voters to pick between Obama and them.

As I noted last month, according to the Fox News survey, Obama would waltz to re-election against Romney, sail to a second term against Palin, and probably wouldn't even have to campaign against Gingrich.

UPDATED: The truly odd part of the Gallup survey is that the pollsters specifically asked Republican respondents who''d they like to see as the GOP nominee. (i..e Romney, Palin, McCain, etc.) So Gallup has a cheat sheet handy. If it's really interested in taking a snapshot of the electorate, Gallup should use that list to ask voters who they'd prefer against Obama using the names of real Republicans.

UPDATED: I honestly don't know the answer to this and haven't been able to find it yet, but I'd sure be interested to find out if Gallup was polling George. W. Bush's re-election bid 30-plus months out via generic, nameless match-ups. Or Bill Clinton's. Or if this a new polling strategy has been adopted specifically for Obama. It kind of feels that way.