I suspect the author of this piece may be advancing an agenda.
Stuff like that.
You seem to be trying to make the case that conservatism is in resurgence, with young blood and fresh ideas. But your arguments to support that idea are all over the map. Is Glenn Beck the new voice, for slamming the Republicans, or is Mark Levin the breath of fresh air, for slamming Beck?
Just what are you trying to say?
There were lots of lessons to learn from the presidency of George W. Bush. I don’t expect his supporters to become liberals, but I had hoped they’d take something away from the experience of having him as president. Bush told them what they wanted to hear, they nomintated him, and (judging by his popularity numbers) many were disappointed. I hoped they put a lot more thought into choosing nominees in the future. Hold those primary candidates’ feet to the fire. And when someone promises you tax cuts and a balanced budget, laugh him off the stage.
Now you’re telling me that conservatism is in the hands of those who were children when Bush was elected. If they can’t even remember his failures, they seem primed to make the same mistake all over again.
First of all, the ‘ignorami’ at CPAC was very educated. Did you notice the stats on the number who were either in college or college graduates?
Second, I’m well aware of the Demographic problem facing Republicans. But I’m also aware that voting blocs can be won and lost. Hispanics were solidly Republican until the Republicans went off the rails on Immigration and social issues. Then they moved towards the Democrats. They can move back. Young people are starting to trend more towards libertarianism than conservatism, but they’re not becoming more liberal - they’re becoming more conservative/libertarian. You guys are losing them.
Soured A BIT? In 2008, Millennials favored Democrats by a ratio of 62/30 - a 32 point spread. Today, it’s 54/40, and the trend line is not flattening out. You guys are losing the millennials at a rapid rate. The number who say they ‘lean’ Republican has doubled in the last year.
You’re right that the Millennials are generally the most pro-government cohort. If you’re losing them to the Republicans, that might just be an indication that you’ve gone too far to the left.
Similarly, Democrats captured the independent vote in the last election, and in the last year they’ve managed to lose it. Independents are now breaking 2-1 for Republicans.
By the way, any cite to a poll that’s more than six months old is out of date. Things are changing rapidly. The electorate in the United States is changing faster than I’ve ever seen it change before. And the change is not in favor of the Democrats.
Yes yes, we get it - Republicans are evil, homophobic, racist monsters. You can tone down the spittle any time now. As for the tea party/CPAC crowd being anti-immigrant - did you notice a glaring omission on the tally of issues they cared about? Immigration didn’t even make the list. And the speaker that captured all the attention? Marco Rubio - whose parents are Cuban immigrants.
So what’s your point? That he made up the Amazon numbers? That’s all I used that piece to cite.
This part is rich. We wouldn’t want “socialized health care” now, would we?
And the Esquire poll is only representative of the people they polled.
My point remains.
If you want to use the CPAC poll as telling a useful story then so too can the Esquire poll. As long as we remain aware of those polls’ limitations then no problem.
Yet you entirely dismiss one while being more than happy to use the other.
Confirmation bias much?
There’s one common thread emerging from the new Conservative coalition - a renewed determination to oppose big government and a renewed commitment to fiscal sanity. It’s the overriding issue, and it’s what’s animating the base right now. Cultural issues are off the table. Maybe they’ll come back in the future, but for now, that’s not what people care about. Hell, the Tea Partiers came out in full force for Brown in Massachusetts, and he’s a full on, pro-choice social liberal.
But outside of fiscal issues and classical liberalism, there is lots of disagreement between them, and they’re still sorting it out. Sarah Palin is a polarizing figure amongst the tea party crowds right now. So is Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They’re arguing over tactics, they’re arguing over whether they should support Republicans or start a third party, they’re arguing over who should be their ‘voice’, if anyone.
But so far, they’ve shown a willingness to put those disagreements aside when it comes to trying to win elections.
This reminds me a lot of the Republicans circa 1980. Like today, they were coming out of an era where they had supported a big-government Republican (Nixon), and then saw a liberal Democrat take office in his wake. They didn’t llike what they saw, and shifted back to the core conservative principles of small government, and elected Ronald Reagan.
They have. At CPAC, the one thing heard over and over again was, “We’re tired of electing Republicans who go to Washington and behave like Democrats with respect to spending and big government.” They’re trying to work out pledges for candidates that hold their feet to the fire so they won’t be co-opted and turn into big-government Republicans. They’re shunning the ‘old guard’ Republicans who have proven to be unreliable in this regard. They know exactly what was wrong with Bush, and they don’t want to repeat the mistake.
I will admit that I think there’s still a disconnect there. I heard a lot of promises to cut taxes, and a lot of promises to cut spending, but I don’t think many of them have a real understanding of just how much spending would have to be cut to balance the budget if you’re also cutting taxes.
Marco Rubio is an exception. He was saying that entitlements were a stick of dynamite in the room, and the fuse has been lit. He think major reform is needed, and needed now, and it sounds to me like he understands what that would entail. But like I said before, I don’t think he or anyone else has a hope in hell of changing anything in a substantial way. Not even Obama. His latest health care plan, which started out as an attempt to get health care spending under control, turned into a trillion dollar expansion that makes things worse. He’s even increasing Bush’s prescription drug benefit. It’s just the way Washington works.
Oh, please. Just because CPAC attendees were young doesn’t mean that conservatism is in the hands of children. Any more so than the popularity of the Daily KOS convention means that the Democrats are being run by Kos Kids.
Well, maybe you have a point. The Democrats are certainly acting like children.
I would like a cite, right now, for where I dismissed the Esquire poll. Don’t worry - I won’t call you a liar if you can’t find it. That’s your side’s trick. I’ll just assume that you aren’t actually reading my messages. Or you read them, and translate them in your head as you go into some caricature of what you think I said.
To refresh your memory:
The only negative thing I said about the Esquire poll was that the person who wrote the questions doesn’t seem to know what Republicans want, because many of the answers were ‘none of the above’ with respect to the set of choices offered. I said nothing about the accuracy of the poll, or its sample size, or bias, or anything else. In fact, I mentioned twice that it seemed to track the CPAC poll quite closely where the questions were the same.
My criticism was of YOU, who chose to cherry-pick one response out of the Esquire poll to try to make the case that Republicans were becoming ‘Fundamentalist’, despite the fact that other answers in that very poll showed Republicans moving away from social conservatism and immigration and abortion and more towards moderate positions on those subjects. Hell, 74% of them said they’d vote for a pro-choice candidate if the candidate agreed on other issues. Do you think you could get 74% of Democrats to vote for a pro-life candidate? Maybe it’s you guys who are becoming ‘fundamentalist’.
In short: The Esquire poll was fine. Your OP was a load of crap.
And this time they really, really mean it. Honest.
Now we’re getting to the issue they really care about. Where is the conservative support for pay-as-you-go legislation? For Obama’s commission to reduce to the debt?
Now, maybe these conservatives do want the federal government to have more fiscal responsibility, but it seems to me that they’d rather it didn’t happen at all, than that the Democrats should get the credit for it. Winning is more important to them than results.
Fine…I read, “Cherry pick opinions from one poll and use it to paint them all as a bunch of ‘fundamentalists’” as not just picking one question out but an indictment of the poll because it is “one” poll (albeit a unique one given who they were asking which is why it stands out more than a generic poll).
I used the one example but there is plenty more there.
First off write-ins were allowed to apparently the respondents did not have to live with the choices given.
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45% (combined…30/15) would see Olympia Snowe and Colin Powell booted from the party if they could have their way. Yet only 7% see Michele Bachmann as a problem (and face it, that chick is nuts).
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71% seem content with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. 94% if you include the ones who want them tone it down a bit with only 6% thinking they go too far.
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29% think Obama is the worst president…ever.
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78% would like to see more troops and resources committed to fight the Taliban…as much as it takes.
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59% believe the US has a right to impose its will on other countries.
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71% think invading Iraq was a good choice.
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83% think climate change is not caused by human activity.
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69% think the Republican party is diverse enough (racially and so on) or do not care about diversity (watch the CPAC convention or the Republican Convention in 2008…play find the minority).
So, I think there is more there than one cherry picked item worthy of note.
YMMV
Amazon currently ranks Atlas Shrugged at #251 in Literature and Fiction.Apparently it is much less popular than it was just a year ago. Why do you suppose that is?
That’s a good question. Economic indicators haven’t improved much, have they?
Hey, I’m as cynical as you about anything getting done. Did you read what I’ve been saying in this thread? I have said repeatedly that they don’t have a chance in hell of getting the cuts they need to balance the budget, and that if they try the system will crush them. So they’ll wind up becoming the same get-along/go-along politicians that populate Washington on both sides of the aisle.
Obama’s commission to reduce the debt is a joke, as is his supposed discretionary freeze. He couldn’t get Congress to agree to a commission, so he’s doing one by executive order. This means it has no teeth, and congress will use the ideas they like for political cover, and ignore the ones they don’t. The result will probably be a piling on of the debt or tax hikes matched with even bigger spending hikes.
If Obama was serious about cutting the budget, he wouldn’t have hiked discretionary spending by 13% this year. He wouldn’t be signing off on another 12 billion dollar jobs bill. He wouldn’t be turning the student loan system into a federal entitlement program. He wouldn’t be extending Bush’s prescription drug benefit in his new health care plan. He wouldn’t be canceling the tax on ‘gold-plated’ health care benefits. Obama’s actions to date are wholly inconsistent with his stated goal of cutting spending.
His ‘freeze’ is just a way of locking in the big increases he’s already managed to get passed.
I don’t think that’s true of this bunch. If it were, they wouldn’t be so angry at Republicans. What I do agree with is that it’s a lot easier to oppose ‘big spending’ in the abstract than it is to support specific cuts that impact real people. I learned this a long time ago (in the 1980’s), when I first read “The Triumph of Politics” by David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director. Reagan told him to cut the budget by X%. But when Stockman came back with specific proposals, Reagan would say, “Oh, we can’t cut THAT. It will hurt people. Find something else.” In the end, Reagan got his tax cuts, but never implemented the spending cuts needed to keep the budget from blowing up.
When you have a deficit that’s going to hover near a trillion dollars as far as the eye can see, there are no easy cuts that can balance the budget. You might be able to come up with 10-20% of it through drastic cuts in discretionary spending, but that’s about it. The only thing that’s going to work is dramatic entitlement reform - that means scaling back Social Security and Medicare benefits, raising the retirement age, means-testing, or big tax increases. I don’t see anyone achieving that. Not the Republicans, not Democrats.
Wow… That’s a stretch. But I’ll give you an A for effort. Using the term “one poll” is an indictment of the poll? Good one.
Your other examples do not paint a picture of fundamentalism - they paint a picture of partisanship. I’m sure more Democrats think Bush was the worst president ever than Republicans do about Obama. Does that make them ‘fundamentalist’?
And so Republicans want the liberal/moderate accomodationist members gone. Tell me again how you feel about Joe Lieberman? You know, the Democrat who his own party tried to destroy?
And 71% seem to like Rush and Beck well enough. Tell me, how do you feel about Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow? Are you feeling a bit fundamentalist yet?
And wanting to defeat the Taliban makes them fundamentalist? I think that describes the large majority of Americans at this point.
Yes, they’re partisan. Yes, they’re angry at Democrats and Obama. That doesn’t make them fundamentalist. On the issues that actually DO represent fundamentalism, such as racism, opposition to gay marriage, ‘family values’, and abortion, the people in both the CPAC poll and the Esquire poll are turning away - in large numbers. This is by far the biggest story of those polls: The complete collapse of the ‘family values’ Republicans. And that conclusion is the exact opposite of the one you’re trying to draw.
I suspect it’s because a lot of the people who have a renewed interest in the subject have already purchased it, and because there are NINE different editions of that particular book for sale on Amazon. By the way, following your link it shows me that it’s at #201, not #251. And that’s for all books, not just literature and fiction.
Regardless, I was asked for a cite showing that it was a 'best seller", and did so. No book stays in the top 10 forever. Especially one that’s over 50 years old. But the fact remains that it did spike right back up into the ‘best seller’ class last year.
Never mind.
Cite? Not for repudiation or even for argumentation purposes, mind you, but for my own edification – AIUI, the current student loan system really is a tremendous entitlement program…for banks.
Is that correct? My understanding was that the proposal doesn’t cancel the tax, but does raise the floor of what qualifies.
I know plenty of republicans. I come from a family of them. I know exactly what they think.
HAH? Oh, it’s top 100 … same thing as a best seller!
The definitive list of best sellers is the New York Times. Unless it was #1 on the Times, it was not a BEST seller.
So, yes, you are a liar.
Partisanship is informed by one’s ideas on how things should operate. When those ideas drift to the loony fringe you have a fundamentalist partisanship. Heck…they just put out a Contract With America V.2.0 as a purity test they expect members to abide by or lose campaign funding.
As for “worst president” Obama has one year under his belt. Bit early to tell yet with no historical perspective on how his actions have panned out. We do however have 8 years of a Bush presidency to look at and history has had some time to look at the results. In a recent thread asking this question even conservative Dopers here seemed content to put him in the bottom five for sure and could entertain the debate on “worst”.
So, I would say, it is more than partisan and is a fundamentalist position to hold that Obama, already, is the worst president ever. You have to be waaay out on the fringe to get there already and yet this fringe view is front and center.
First Lieberman is not a Democrat. There is no (D) after his name.
Second Lieberman campaigned on behalf of McCain (including a speech on his behalf at the Republican National Convention).
Third…tried to destroy him? Destroy by giving him (and letting him keep) the coveted Chairmanship of Homeland Security? Allowing him to continue to caucus with the Dems despite him holding them over a barrel on health care? That destroy?
Olbermann and Maddow are not the equivalent of Limbaugh and Beck but on the other side. Not even close. Want to engage in a list of wholly insupportable arguments made by both sides and tally them up? (By which I mean provably factually inaccurate?) Olbemann and especially Maddow blow them out of the water on that count. That does not even address who is more divisive.
Being willing to write a blank check is fundamentalist. A “defeat them at any cost” mindset and to hell with any other considerations.
I do not recall making this about Family Values republicans. The OP is about them thinking Obama is a Socialist. Not about Obama is a baby killer.
I also am not willing to write off the religious aspects underlying these groups. Currently they feel there are more pressing problems than (say) evolution being taught in schools but it is still out there…just not getting the press (witness the very current fight over textbooks in Texas and how evolution is taught).
The religious right is not gone, just found something different to bitch about for the time being.