A combination of factors. Chief among them, I think, is the overwhelming media emphasis on the threat of terrorism and the Iraq war. There’s a public perception (not all that empirically justified, AFAICT) that Republicans are “tougher” on issues like crime and national defense. So when the country feels threatened, Republicans benefit.
It’s not that most Americans “would be” liberal, it’s that most Americans are liberal on a large number of important policy positions. It’s just that most of them don’t self-identify as “liberal”, because conservative rhetoric has strongly linked the term “liberal” with political themes like gay marriage, drug legalization, amnesty for illegal immigrants (even though the most visible amnesty proponent is actually the conservative Republican President), softness on crime, teen sex, and other socially controversial issues that many Americans are wary about.
Remember, Americans in general are very far from happy about how the conservatives are actually running the country. Two-thirds of Americans now consider that the US is headed in the wrong direction, they’re unhappy about the Iraq war and about the influence of big business, they’re losing consumer confidence, etc.
Republicans have not actually succeeded in getting most Americans to agree with the nuts and bolts of most of their fundamental policy positions. What they have successfully done is to market themselves on nebulous issues like “values” and “character” and “security”. If you don’t look carefully at what conservative leaders are actually doing but just listen to their rhetoric, it’s easy to get the idea that they’re “someone like us” who “shares our values” and “cares about protecting us”.
I think the facade is starting to slip now, and many Americans are starting to consciously connect their current political dissatisfaction to conservative failures and deceptions. But you can fool all of the people some of the time, and there’s no question that it was a pretty effective maneuver. (And, of course, it was assisted by the fact that many individual Republican politicians actually are honest responsible sensible public servants, which lent a false credibility to the crooks and liars.)
Now, I haven’t had my coffee this morning, so I apologize if I’m not following you exactly, but in your reference to “impassioned do-gooders,” the loss of perspective, and wanting a solution to whatever issue regardless of cost, are you trying to blame liberals for contriving Federal laws to keep Terri Schiavo alive?
If you are not saying that liberals are to blame for this, who are the impassioned do-gooders in the Schiavo case?
I frequently hear arguments like Starving Artist’s from my conservative friends.
One example: a guy was forbidden to take an ornamental, non-functioning bullet onto an airplane within a year or so after 9/11. I agreed with him that some measures against terrorism at that time were excessive (some of which have since been relaxed). He blamed this on anti-gun liberals, naming Clinton specifically.
To people like this, it doesn’t matter what affiliation the actual perpetrator of the anti-freedom act is – even if it was a conservative, ‘liberals’ are to blame.
Starving Artist, if a politician of Republican affiliation and/or a conservative record does something you consider a blow against freedom, acknowledge that sometimes "impassioned do-gooder " conservatives do bad things too.
When you blame conservatives’ misdeeds on liberalism, you make it hard to argue against the very topic of this thread.
Why don’t you have a bit of a lie down; then come back and put your thoughts and political philosophy into a coherent statement? You seem contradictory in every post, but it could just be that I don’t understand what your views are. I am genuinely interested in hearing what you think is best for the current political system, but I can’t make head nor tails of what you are saying.
Bolding mine.
Now *that’s * just crazy talk. Social services funding implemented by Clinton has been cut by Bush, so I hardly think that Clinton could *ever * be considered to be fiscally to the right of Bush.
But if you are saying that Clinton had a handle on the economy, and Bush pissed it away, then “Amen”, brother.
What the hell, I’ll pile in. I too get disgusted at the attitude, commonly expressed on this board, that anyone who would actually participate in major-party politics is too compromised to be trusted with the task. Part of it is the complaint that “Well, I might consider voting for a major-party candidate if I was convinced he was absolutely perfect, that he’d do absolutely everything according to my whim, but it’s too bad, they just never seem to nominate any”.
That doesn’t seem any different from the devotees of helpless third parties than from complete nonparticipants; only the intensity of the claimed moral purity varies. But it’s simple irresponsibility, and therefore *less * moral, not more.
Guys, if you mean what you say about wanting to improve the world, you do have to roll up your sleeves and get to work doing it. No amount of whining has ever helped a damned thing. The only way to make any significant changes, to make anything good happen, in the way we rule ourselves is to participate in it. In the US, only the major parties can get anything done, and the only candidates they (or anyone else) can put forward are humans with their own characteristic weaknesses as well as strengths. You have to do the best you can with the world as it is and with people as they are, or what good are you?
I disagree that the Democrats have been speaking out. I remember a vast amount of solidarity on 9/11. I remember seeing republicans and democrats alike bashing the Muslim world, advocating genocide implicitly if not explicitly quite often. I heard democrats with PhDs who are supposed to be the educated ones, talking about how “They all hate us”. It’s simply not true that democrats have been out speaking against the ‘fascism’. I seem to remember Democrats supporting the Patriot Act as well as the sequel.
Those are the people I am bitching about. Certainly there was a very large liberal minority screaming bloody murder from the beginning, I recognize that, but a lot of those liberals don’t have any respect for the Democratic party, and oftentimes wouldn’t even vote, because they have no faith in the system at all.
Thank you, I’ll prepare for 2009 in that case. For some reason I labored under the mistake that Mayoral terms were 5 years.
Plynck Well, I’d like to see people working together. What I’d like to see is the more libertarian minded republicans split off and work with the democrats who actually want to see social change. I don’t think we need the government to solve all of our problems. I feel like it’s not focusing on the things it should be focusing on and focusing too much on things that aren’t important. The focus on the drug war has divided communities, put many people in jail with violent offenders, and has made America into an abusive patriarch to many developing nations. I don’t need the government to micromanage my day to day, in fact, I am better off when they do not.
To me party affiliation is pretty arbitrary. I’d rather see a more a la carte based political system rather than a Prix Fixe Dinner. This is supposed to be the point of states rights, which have been eroded over time. I am tired of bills that make sense having pork added to them because of congressmen’s personal issues with one another. I am tired of seeing a country that says “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, when there is no possible way for the poor to actually know the law, not even the rich know the law, but they can afford a team of lawyers to know it for them. This has come about because of a battle between democrats and republicans, where they use the American legal system to vie for power. Basically as I see it they both represent half of a healthy agenda, and that bad things happen when one or the other is in power. I’d like to see a healthy balance. I feel that what I say SEEMS contradictory because most people cannot comprehend the political system outside of their halfway view.
I feel that if liberals actually wanted to help the poor, they’d be in poor communities helping people build a functioning community and helping them connect to other communities, rather than lobbying Washington all the time.
I am tired of seeing ballots with only one candidate in local elections, while everyone is so focused on the upper echelons that are far removed and remote. I feel like the two party system engenders a celebrity culture in politics, which is really awful for the country. People talk about it like it’s more important than sports, and it’s true it is, but they aren’t acting like they are talking. They aren’t out making sure they have a healthy city council, they are busy blaming whatever party it is they are not.
For instance, what does party affiliation have to do with a bill to build a new park? What does it have to do with mass transit? What does it have to do with police protection? Fiscal responsibility is important no matter who is in power, and it’s criminally inefficient to have a democratic administration for 8 years who spends time and effort building an effective system, only to have it torn down by a republican administration 8 years later, and vice versa. I am tired of seeing abortion decide issues like whether or not we go to war.
And something that sickens me every time I see it is when people from both sides talk about American soldier deaths as the reason the war is bad. These are SOLDIERS who chose to pick up a gun, their deaths are to be expected in war, but you rarely hear people talk about the Iraqi civilian deaths which are in the 100,000 range. You rarely hear them talk about how many people died in Iraq under sanctions in the 90s, which is FAR MORE than died during the war, yet you’ll hear Democrats talk about how sanctions are far more civilized than war.
Basically, I am sick of an all or nothing approach. I am sick of it being treated like a celebrity culture.
Thanks for the clarification. It does explain some of your earlier comments, and I’m sorry if I sounded a bit snarky when responding.
I agree with some of what you say, disagree with some, and have no opinion on some. Unfortunately, I am under the gun here at work so it might take awhile to respond. But I appreciate your taking the time to answer.
Okay, I’ve done a little investigation on the subject of this baby being snatched from its mother due to a twenty year old sexual offense by the baby’s father. I was beginning to think that the judge must have been a liberal after all, given that there was no hue and cry from people here who researched it and were able to determine that he was a conservative after all.
Turns out it was the child welfare authorities who snatched the child and the judge merely gave them temporary custody until a hearing could be held.
Therefore, I’m willing to retract my condemnation of the judge who apparently was only acting in accordance with the law the way it has apparently been set up to function.
However, we are still left with a heavy-handed, over-eager government agency pouncing on this woman, and as it turns out, trying to seize her baby before it was even 24 hours old. The hospital, to its credit, refused to turn the baby over so soon so they had to wait a little while longer before seizing this woman’s child.
What did they think? That this woman’s husband was going to swoop into the nursery and molest the child before they could spirit it away?
I could perhaps see their concern if the father had a history of molesting young boys. But what he was convicted of was raping three adult women during a one night spree twenty years ago. As vile and reprehensible as his actions were at the time, he has apparently paid his debt to society and he should be able to live a normal life from now on as long as he behaves himself.
Sorry, but to me this still smacks of the liberal way of doing things. I see no overly zealous law-and-order types at work here. What I see is a bunch of (here it comes again) impassioned do-gooders who believe in heavy-handed government intrusion in order to force their will upon the public…and determined to have their own way against this woman who had gone public prior to her baby’s birth in a futile attempt to keep from having her newborn wrenched from her arms as soon as it was born.
That’s because you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Is it liberals or conservatives who prosecute the drug war most passionately? Liberals or conservatives who are most eager to keep blue laws on the book? Liberals or conservatives who tried to prolong Terri Schiavo’s mechanical life?
Are you familiar with the No True Scotsman fallacy? You really need to learn about it.
Again, I ask you: was it liberal impassioned do-gooders who believe in heavy-handed government intrusion who passed a Federal law to try to keep Terri Schiavo alive?
I’m talking about decades-long liberal influence, practices and judicial rulings and the reasons why “liberal” has become a dirty word, and all you guys can come up with to try to say Pubbies are the same is Terri Schiavo?
And then, of course, to address it we have to get into a five-page hijack on whether or not the nurses who told of Michael Schiavo’s uncaring and/or downright hateful comments and behavior regarding his wife (“That bitch isn’t dead yet?”, refusal to allow flowers or padding to keep her palsied fingernails from digging into her palm, etc.) were lying or not.
But since we’re on the subject, why is it that the death of innocents is generally okay with libs (Schiavo, late-term unborn babies, Iraqi citizens under Hussein) but you guys will fight to the last man to keep murderers, torturers, rape-torture murderers, and the often used but seldom understood “terrorists and terrorist sympathizers” (read “enablers”, Merijeek ) alive and well treated?
