Well, well, well, who would have thought? America is more of a conservative nation than one would guess. Yes, Barack Obama was elected president, but not because he ran on an ultra-liberal platform. Remember those tax cuts he promised 95% of Americans. What a joke that was!
Voters did not oppose conservatism; they were just angry and disgusted with Republicans for drifting away from conservative principles and acting like Democrats. In fact, more Americans are beginning to trust Republicans than Democrats.
A few months of an Obamanation, massive spending with no end in sight, was enough to bring them back to reality. Read the results of a Gallup poll in which 21% of Americans classified themselves as liberals, whereas 40% viewed themselves as conservatives, a 3% increase for conservatives from 2008. Notice the same increase of conservatives in 1994 after the introduction of Hillarycare and the push for gays in the military.
These results should concern the Obama Administration. Hope and change isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
5 comments:
Statistical nonsense. Shall we go through al the reason why?
First off, many people tend to self-identify themselves as something OTHER than liberal because the Bushies have turned "liberal" into a curse word. (Take a look at your blog title, if you don't believe that.) And many don't think of themselves as "liberal"; if someone asked me to identify myself, I'd say I was a moderate, just left of center. I'm sure you wouldn't agree.
Suggesting that more people identify themselves as conservative because of "the push for gays in the military" (in 1994? what'sthat got to do with 2009?) is curious, since about 70% of Americans now believe that gays should be allowed to serve in the military.
You're entitled to your opinion (and that's all it is) that voters didn't oppose conservatism in 2008, that they were simply disgusted with Republicans drifting away from conservative principles. But that doesn't make a lot of sense. No matter how you slice it, McCain was more conservative than Obama, so if voters were disgusted with conservatives not being conservative enough, why would they then vote for an even more liberal alternative?
No, I believe that the far more likely answer is that more and more voters became fed up with the social conservatism of the Republican Party. The fixation of the ultrarightwingnuts with gay marriage, gays in the military, banning choice, putting creches and Ten Commandment monuments in government facilities etc etc etc is whatturned off many voters. The Republican Party became an embarrassment; it ignored all the truly problematic issues that confronted our society, and concentrated instead on nonsense issues that appealed only to the Bible-thumping core of the Religious Right. And they found out, the hard way, what pandering to a very small constiuency will do for you: it will lose you elections.
But I encourgae you to continue to believe that the problem of the GOP is that they're not conservative enough; it's the surest way that the Republican Party will enter into the Ice Age that its own master campaign strategist, Mike Murphy, says it's about to enter, if they don't wise up.
Obama has been in office for five months. If you believe that day-to-day fluctuations in "popularity" are really going to have a large impact on electoral politics, you're sadly mistaken. The midterm elections are more than a year and a half away... THREE times as long as Obama has been in office so far!
Lastly, you can parse out stats all you want, but the one you never seem to address: Obama is still -- despite all the "negatives" you think you've highlighted -- immensely popular, across the board. How are you going to beat that?
Obama is popular, but his liberal policies are not.
As to McCain, he was liberal-lite. Why pick a wannebe when you can have the real thing?
No, you are not a moderate. You are a clone of Keith Olbermann, including the anger.
"As to McCain, he was liberal-lite. Why pick a wannebe when you can have the real thing?"
Thanks, you've made my point again. If Americans were so damn conservative, why would they want to pick the real (liberal) thing? Why wouldn't they opt for the conservative (at least in name) in the hope that he would be better in the long run, once he was installed in office?
Your logic, at least on that point, is nonexistent.
As for the Olbermann comparison, thanks again. He's a pretty intelligent guy -- more liberal than I am, for sure, but his worldview is a lot mroe accirate than yours.
As for the anger -- since this is the second time you've raised that issue -- the only thing that angers me is how badly ultra Religious Rightwingnuts have run our country off the track for the last eight years. And we're not going to give you another chance. You've alienated and annoyed the large center base of the American public so much that we've swung from our usual conservative bent and sided with the liberals. THAT'S what lost you the election, but you're too blind to see it! When voters like me tell you that they've always been a registered Republican, for over 30 years, and always voted for the Republican presidential nominee until 2004, if you're smart, you'd listen. But if you were smart, you wouldn't have allowed this country's leaders to ignore, circumvent, or violate what this country was built upon, for the last eight years.
"Attack of the Zombie Republicans"
by John Batchelor
" The Republican Party has become many bad things—intolerant, inert, fly-blown, incoherent, and delusional—but the worst is that the GOP is no longer young. The GOP, according to a Gallup poll, has lost, forgotten, ignored, just generally scared off the younger voters, non-white voters, and female voters in all demographics.
" What is a political party that is vastly white, middle-aged, male, Southern, pious, conservative, aggrieved, impotent, nostalgic, rude—and regarded negatively by more than half the respondents? Time magazine’s Republican political consultant Mike Murphy looks at the demographics and warns of a coming 'ice age' for the party. That is grossly optimistic. No longer in second place, the voter self-identification polls place the Republicans well behind the leading independents and the second-place Democrats. The GOP is the equivalent of a shrinking third party on its way to becoming a museum piece beside the Whigs, the Greenbacks, and the Prohibitionists. The GOP is like a zombie cartoon reading the daily headlines of the last four years and asking, 'Am I dead?' "
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-14/attack-of-the-zombie-republicans/?cid=hp:mostpopular2
the republican party is in shambles because they can't agree on anything. that doesnt make liberal spending and "change" correct.
and for the record, if bush turned "liberal" into a curse word, liberals turns "republican" into a curse word.
and for that matter... why are liberals so loud and annoying? i've never seen republican protesting day in and day out in front of the whitehouse. i dont see republicans everywhere i go with a thousand bumper stickers on their cars. i dont see republicans causing a fuss about things the same way democrats do. democrats get loud, in your face, and overall make the party look bad. diogenes tell your buddies to grow up.
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