Enjoy what you’ve wrought. An administration that will happily put business in front of habitat. When the swamps are drained and the rivers polluted, fish and foul are irreversably effected. Salmon are first on the list.
Let me also toss in a pitting for those in the Democratic party that thought it wise to allow the anti hunting tree hugger image to linger. How about growing a spine, getting out your gun, and hunting! Maybe then folks will realize that habitat is vital, and the Republicans may just not have the hunter’s and fisherman’s best interests at heart.
Nurse Carmen, surely you must realize that the Republicans don’t care about salmon habitat or protection for endangered species, and they despise those who do. As long as the Pubs get their tax cuts, they can’t be bothered about the sort of world their kids will inherit.
That’s just not fair, gobear. There are a hell of a lot of hunters and fishermen who are instrumental to protecting rivers, streams, forests, and other habitat. I have nothing to back this up with, but I’m willing to bet that most hunters and fishermen vote Republican.
If Dems were smart (which we haven’t been lately), our appeals to protect the environment would not focus entirely on fighting the corporate boogeyman, but appeal to sportsmen who understand that: (a) if you want to go trout fishing, there better be trout in the streams, and (b) you don’t want to eat venison from a deer that has been feeding on toxic waste.
Sorry, am I the only one who noticed the John Kerry publicity machine making a big hairy deal out of his traipsing around in darkest Ohio shooting at geese just before the election?
Yeah, for the party that calls environmentalists “tree-huggers” and has resisted every piece of environmental protection legislation that has ever been proposed. Voting for the GOP is a vote for pollution and environmental degradation.
The GOP doesn’t care. Their PR wing will just claim that toxic waste is beneficial for deer, that fewer trout will make them that more special, and any claim to the contrary is just pro-terrorist lies of the hippie tree lover lobby.
The GOP has zero credibility in any claims to protect the environment.
And people here on this very board were doubting that a Democrat could be a hunter! We were able to quickly point out, with evidence and cites, that Kerry was in fact a life long hunter. But that does not dispell the problem that the Democratic party currently has. The average (non SDMB’r) hunter actually believes that the Republican party better represents their interests. And the Democratic party has done little to dispell the image.
I have to agree with Ravenman on this one. While I’m not a fan of this administration, including their views on the environment, I recently read something where the hunters and sportsmen were working more and more with environmentalists because they also want these areas preserved. I tried to find the article, but was unable to at this point. I believe I read it on the CNN website a couple of weeks ago.
It made me think of the old saying, “Politics makes strange bedfellows”. I never thought I’d see this type of alliance, but it actually makes sense.
For what it’s worth, I live in the northwest, and I think what is proposed regarding removing protections for salmon runs really sucks.
Just as the archetypal southern social conservative realized at some point that the Democratic Party that represented her parents’ and grandparents’ political interests was not today’s Democratic Party, the traditional Republican who cares about the environment, wants government to keep its intrusive nose out of individuals’ affairs at least by default, and longs for a sound federal fiscal spending policy may soon realize that the Republican Party that once stood for all this isn’t the one currently nominating national politicians for election.
The Democrats could certainly do more to bring about this realization, but they aren’t ignoring it altogether, and the PACs affiliated with them have been harping in it quite a bit. In the long run, it’s the Republicans themselves who will do the most to bring it about.
Certainly there are some northern states that once upon a time were Republican bastions which are now either swing states or solidly Democratic places. It’s not as dramatic as the shift of the solid south from Dem to Pub, but it’s there. What we may see in the next few cycles is a slow swing in the west, if individualism and environmental concerns outweighs “Christian moral values”, and if the Dems can package environmentalism in such a way that it plays as taking care of the land and the resources and not as “let’s wrap up a zillion acres in red tape and keep people from using their own land”.
I don’t dispute that the Republican party, especially the Bush-DeLay-Frist sort of folks who are most beholden to corporate interests, have a terrible environmental record, and I believe do everything they can to loosen up regulations to let major companies pollute more while taken more profits.
But I don’t count hunters as part of that cabal. But hunters do vote for these knuckleheads.
I just found this article which illustrates what I’m trying to get at. According to this poll, 72% of Wisconsin hunters say they are conservative or very conservative. Yet, three quarters said that natural wetlands should not be drained or filled, even if developers replace them with man-made wetlands. 64% opposed loosening the Clean Water Act to eliminate protection for 20 million acres of wetlands. And so on and so on.
The problem here for us Dems is that 83% said that conservation matters were “very or somewhat important” in deciding their vote for President, yet 59% of them voted for Bush DESPITE all the ways he wants to reverse environmental protections. We should be trying to steal those votes from Republicans.
It would work really well if you did try. Pennsylvania and West Virginia should be your model. Democrats in those states have to be reasonable of gun issues, otherwise they will lose in statewide elections every single time.
Much of my family are Democrats. Most of them are gun owners, and this issue does animate them from time to time.
I think if the Democrats jettison the Million Mommie March from their coalition, they will win more votes than they lose. Even if they don’t, they should do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
America has quite enough gun control, thanks. It’s crime control that’s really needed.
Hunters care about the environment very deeply. We are out there enjoying it and experiencing it and we want to protect it. Also, we put our money where our mouths are and back up these feelings with actions.
There are a huge amount of hunters in this country. More than every labor union combined. We all raise far more than our fair share of the funds needed for conservation. I paid about $800 this year for my various hunting licenses. I also pay taxes on all my hunting gear which go to conservation. I’m happy to pay these things.
Hunters, who tend to be republican, are the leading conservationalists in the US.
I believe every word you said. However, I don’t think the Bush record on the environment is something that most hunters would endorse. How does one reconcile an interest in the environment with a vote for Bush?
Most bunnyhuggers support Democrats. They are usually the types that want to destroy the American freedoms of hunting, trapping, and fishing. Most treehuggers support Democrats. They usually side bunnyhuggers and wish to keep access to public lands by hunters, trappers, and fisherman at a minimum.
As someone who makes a living from the agriculture and oil industries and also enjoys the outdoors (outdoors where oil and agriculture industries also exist and do not adveresly affect the enviroment in ways that nutjob treehuggers and bunnyhuggers propagandize), there is no alternative to the Republican party as the Democratic party is the party of enviromental extremism and the absolute cancer of animal rights activism. Being the gun control party doesn’t help either.
I glad the SOB won. Because the alternative would cater to nutjob bunnyhuggers and treehuggers and try to destroy my livelihood and the livelihood of my peers.
Fears that the Democrats were just as interested- or more so- in taking away guns and stopping hunting as they were in protecting the environment.
Fears that Democrats would make the economy worse and therefore not leave hunters with the money and liesure time to go hunting. (49% of Americans thought that Bush would run the economy well; 45% thought Kerry would.)
Fears that Democrats would allow another terrorist attack on this country outweighing one’s desire to go hunting. (58% of Americans felt that Bush would run the war on terrorism well; only 40% of Americans thought Kerry would.)
This is interesting, and illustrates my pitting of the DNC. As a gun toting Democrat from the hunting state of MN, I can attest to being in the minority. But I don’t think any of my fellow gun toters that happen to be Republican actually believe that the Dems want to take their hunting equipment away. Is this your actual feelings jJohn, or are you showing a bit of bluster?
I know this is the pit, but where did you dig those stats up? The numbers I saw before the election showed Kerry ahead of Bush on the economy.
What John Corrado illustrates is that environmentalism apparently was not a deciding factor in how a lot of people voted. I’m not sure I accept his figures and if I do accept his poll data, it shows how dumb the electorate is.
This is a bit of a stretch. The number of Dems that want to take away guns and stop hunting is quite small. The NRA does like to exaggerate this fear since it helps their bankroll.
Again a bit of a stretch. If my job is outsourced, how it affects my leisure time and ability to hunt is the last of my concerns.
This shows that the electorate is dim-witted. Under Clinton’s watch, the Millennium Plot was foiled. 9/11 was a failure of the Bush administration. I’m not sure which is worse, to run touting your failure as the reason to vote for you or the gullible public that swallowed it.
Of the folks I hunt with, many felt that the Democrats were much more friendly to causes like PETA, which is generally understood to be antiethical to hunters. Many felt that Democrats were too sympathetic to gun control causes, and would take away guns. Simple as that.