Paul Krugman (firewall) makes an extraordinary claim (emphasis mine).
Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.
The chattering classes might be talking about the Pew Research Center polling results privately but they’ll probably wait a few more election cycles before internalizing the numbers. After all, what can you do with numbers like this?
Consider, for example, the question of whether the government should provide fewer services in order to cut spending, or provide more services even if this requires higher spending. According to the American National Election Studies, in 1994, the year the Republicans began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.
Goodness gracious. What about this?
At the same time, the survey records further declines in traditional social attitudes. The poll finds greater public acceptance of homosexuality and less desire for women to play traditional roles in society.
Are you kidding me? And, most importantly:
The falloff in strong support for an active U.S. role in global affairs is consistent with other Pew surveys over the past two years showing a decline in support for internationalism among the public. In “America’s Place in the World,” conducted in the fall of 2005, 42% said they believed the U.S. should “mind its own business” internationally – the highest percentage expressing that sentiment since the mid-1990s, after the Cold War, and the mid-1970s, following the Vietnam War.
That survey found that the growth in isolationist sentiment was largely concentrated among Democrats. However, the values survey shows that both Democrats and Republicans are less likely to completely agree that the U.S. should take an active role on the world stage than they did four years ago. Similarly, the percentage of conservatives – regardless of party – who
strongly favor an active U.S. stance in world affairs has fallen from 53% to 39% since 2003; this is comparable to the decline in strong support among self-described liberals (11 points).
Fred Hiatt isn’t going to like that one.
The chattering classes consider it their duty to promote a rose-colored view of American meddling in the world, and Bush-boy is making their job hard work.
The American people are waking up…but the media, even if they are privately chattering about it, will not report on it. Their job is to put us back to sleep.
It’s nice to be in the majority again, with everybody agreeing with what I’ve been saying all along.
that the media will attempt to convince us to pay attention to Katie Couric’s clothes, and ignore the substance of what is being said.
That’s what these bozos will try and do – get us to ignore the substance by attending to the style.
this is what i dont understand
wouldnt a more engaged, educated, informed, awake public be better for their bottom line?
arent those the people media needs to make money?
No. It’s cheaper and easier to field third-rate “journalists” and to produce bread-and-circuses programming than it is to hire top talent and do the hard work of producing quality programs. Imagine how much work they’d have to do if the majority of the public was as prone to critically scrutinizing news programs as folks in Left Blogistan are. It’s much better for the media to be able to churn out morons-fucking-with-cameras — er, “reality” shows — than anything at a post-high school level.
It was probably inevitable. The problem with the Norquistian goal of drowning government in the bathtub is that, sooner or later, you deprive enough people of things they had previously taken for granted that they begin to question whether small government is such a hot idea. The people who were unconcerned with the non-response to Katrina still have elderly relatives struggling to pay for prescription drugs, children in deteriorating schools, declining economic prospects, or friends and relatives coming back from Iraq in plastic bags.
My mother was always fond of repeating the assertion of one of her geography professors that people don’t really care much about government if they’re doing well, but when they aren’t doing well, no form of government is good enough. Well, folks aren’t doing so well these days, and the number of people with a bone to pick with the status quo is growing steadily.
I can’t research this right now since I’m at work, but I seem to recollect a string of studies over the last several years which have indicated, time and again, that when Americans are given a choice of scenarios, with the possible solutions left open ended and subjective, that Americans will most times chose what would be labeled a “liberal” solution or policy, not the “conservative” one.
But when a scenario is presented and the choices are essentially presented and labeled as overtly “liberal” or “conservative” choices, people seem to go with the “conservative” choice. Why the paradox?
The answer, of course, is pretty obvious to any of us who might have been paying attention to the musings of the mainstream media over the last decade or so. This goes right to the core of how the Right, with the cooperation of a compliant corporate media, has pounded the fallacy of the superiority of the conservative ideology. People have been conditioned to believe that the conservative view is, by default, the most correct and righteous viewpoint. Anything that could be construed as “liberal” is, at its core, evil and un-American.
A lot of the poll information seems to be a reflection of a couple of things. First is the increasingly liberal social views of many younger voters. This can only bode well from the respect of tolerance and gender equality. The down side is the seeming lack of interest in anything political that a large portion of the younger crowd seems to exhibit. So translating this seeming increase in the progressive viewpoint into something actionable in the real world may end up being somewhat problematic.
Secondly, this poll shows the impact of the increasing disparity in the labor and financial fortunes of middle class Americans. People are increasingly coming to grips with the down side of the Republican’s “ownership society”. This ownership pitch instinctively appealed to American’s innate sense of self determination, but the reality of it has sunk in and they are seeing it for what it is……….You’re on your own, baby, the government is no longer here to help you if you suffer unexpected hardship
I have never believed that our country is as conservative as the media has painted it to be. I think our mainstream pundits and news organizations bear primary responsibility for the lies that have been foisted on our country in this regard. They have fed a consistent line of shit to the American people, courtesy of their corporate masters. If there was any way to issue a blanket indictment in the court of human shame, the evidence would be overwhelming against them. They have grossly mismanaged the truth, knowingly published lies and mislead our country. Their incompetence, malfeasance and arrogance have led to unimaginable heartache in this country, not to mention unnecessary death and destruction.
Media consolidation has accomplished a couple of things. It has made a lot of our politicians friends very rich. And it has also resulted in the deception of the American people into believing lies which only result in the further enrichment of the politician’s cronies.
The state of our media today illustrates quite alarmingly why the blogosphere has to play such a pivotal role in reestablishing some basis in fact for the information given to the American people. We are at a crisis point in many areas in this country. The flow of truthful information in order to facilitate correct decision making by the American people is vital to existence of a free and informed country. If the corporate media won’t do it, then they should get the hell out of the way. We don’t have any more use for their bullshit misinformation and stenography they have delivered to this country for the last ten years.
Thank you BooMan! It is nice to know I have been right all along. The right wing politicians do NOT represent the public’s left wing views.
But we all knew this.
Might I suggest we all, Democratic politician’s included, yank that Overton Window another few notches over to the left? Even for those Kossacks that are “all about winning,” it is obvious this is the way to go.
You can read Krugman’s entire column now at Common Dreams.