Andrew Kohut of Pew Research is the father of one of my close high school friends. He ran Gallup back then, but he’s been with Pew for a couple of decades now. He has a big article in the Washington Post about the radicalization of the Republican Party. He has some interesting statistics, but what I noticed is that his polling found that what I’ve been saying is accurate.
According to our polling, three factors stand out in the emergence of the GOP’s staunch conservative bloc: ideological resistance to President Obama’s policies, discomfort with the changing face of America and the influence of conservative media.
I don’t think it takes a genius to figure these things out, but it’s nice when someone actually does some study to verify hypotheses.
According to our polling, three factors stand out in the emergence of the GOP’s staunch conservative bloc: ideological resistance to President Obama’s policies, discomfort with the changing face of America and the influence of conservative media.
And what if those policies are originally GOP/Conservative/Right-wing policies, like ObamaCare?
Doesn’t matter. I pointed out to one that the Heritage Foundation came up with the idea and Romney implemented it in Massachusetts. His reply? “Northeast Republicans are really Democrats.”
They only notice and therefore, must resist change when it’s promoted by Democrats, liberals, youths, Hollywood, and/or foreigners. Otherwise, their perception of their world is that nothing has changed.
GOP/Conservative/Right-wing policies, like ObamaCare
You can tell how much the Republicans support something like ObamaCare, because they didn’t make the slightest effort to adopt it when they controlled all three branches of government.
But nevermind; they said they supported something like ObamaCare when there was the possibility of a different health care reform package taking, so we should just take them at their word. Not their word today, of course, and not their word before that. Just their word during a few months in 1993.
All due respect to Mr. Kohut but the GOP’s “staunch conservative bloc” emerged under Clinton, took no prisoners during the FL recount fight; was backed-up by the Bush v. Gore majority; and ran roughshod over the Constitution, democratic processes, the Rule of Law and simple rationality (by infesting our government bureaucracies with anti-science Christianists).
Mr. Kohut is another professional who’s embarassingly late to recognizing the radical threat the GOP has become to our country.
Should be:
“and ran roughshod over the Constitution, democratic processes, the Rule of Law and simple rationality (by infesting our government bureaucracies with anti-science Christianists) under the Shrub.
I would say the bloc was always there, but came to the fore/empowered by grandpa Reagan– the perfect front man for their bigoted/elitist agenda. one of the odd things about Reagan being he started his political career as a democrat.
Bush 1 was not supposed to lose in 1992- the GOP really didn’t see that coming (their usual arrogance). so of course they became even more frantic/nutty and moved farther to the right.
Bush I wasn’t supposed to win in 1988 until Democrats chose “what were we thinking” Dukakis. That one opened the door to the historical revision of the 1980s — Reagan was turned into the most popular and awesome President ever instead of the doddering old fool most people managed to see by 1986.
Understood, but I’m more interested in what happened to the Democratic party in the 1990’s– the fact the party moved significantly to the right (under Clinton, Emanuel, McAuliffe, etc.) in order to beat the GOP at their own game.
This in turn “forced” the GOP themselves to move farther right “hey, you’re not going to out-conservative the real conservatives!” which is why they are in massive trouble now; they have no appeal to voters other than white men.
And Democratic partisan voters have yet to figure it. (Technically at the national level, the DLC took over the part in 1998.) If I knew then what I know now, I would have voted for GHWB in 1992 and increased the odds that we wouldn’t have seen “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and the passage of NAFTA and capital gains tax reduction (the two items on his “to do list”), and not elected a neo-liberal in 1996 that destroy critical components of the New Deal economic legislation.
Good points.
However, I can more or less guarantee NAFTA would have passed under Bush, the same as it did under Clinton/Gore (both lobbied hard for passage) since the same people in congress and the same business interest lobbyists were pushing for it.
The same applies to the pathetic/disastrous repeal of Glass-Steagall Act which also happened during the second Clinton administration, which had more than enough bipartisan support.
Economic policy is one of many where this just isn’t any difference between the “two” political parties. if there is a difference, it’s miniscule and doesn’t make any difference in the end.
My personal observation is that the “changing face of America” is the force driving the “ideological resistance” with “conservative media” coming in third.
Interesting that when you do a poll people are pretty willing to say that “the changing face of America” bothers them a lot, but they are not willing to say they are racist or that they are bothered by having a black man in the White House (or an Hispanic woman on the SCOTUS, etc.)
Goes to show language matters
Yes, it’s always so much better to be politely vague about one’s racism and woman-hating. Bleargh.
Yes. Sort of like: “I surely have no problem with …. I have known many fine upstanding…. and have had many relationship with… that I am proud of. It is just that principles matter. Without them we are nothing as a culture and so that is what I value.
I’m really nice to the janitor at work, and he’s a Mexican or something.
Good fella, Tony. Never makes trouble, calls me “Mr.” So how can I be a racist?