Bruce just alerted me to this Gallup poll showing just stable Americans’ ideological preferences have been since just after Obama took office:
Interesting how the percentage identifying as liberals inched during the second half the George W. Bush administration as the percentage seeing themselves as conservative declined, only to quickly rebound once Obama took office.
Independents have also become increasingly conservative in recent years. In 2008, 30% of independents identified as conservative. Today that stands at 35%. At the same time, the number calling themselves moderate fell from 46 to 41%. Only one in five (20%) independents identify as liberal.
More alarmingly is the 7% drop in moderates (and corresponding increases in both extremes), meaning we have become more polarized as a nation. If we were to read the numbers on a purely presidential level, the poll suggests a general dissatisfaction of Bush during his latter years. It also suggests an automatic dislike of Obama once he took office, which has remained unchanged since. Translation: those who don’t like Obama were never going to like him and their minds haven’t changed. As well, it suggests that those who voted for him, remain unimpressed, kind of like the economy hasn’t made and massive changes in either direction. It’s highly suggestive that these numbers will continue in a direction that reflects the economy.
Independents have become more conservative because so many of us conservatives have quit the GOP in disgust over the last decade.
So-called moderates should actually feel right at home in the “Don’t make waves, don’t make trouble, don’t get people riled up” GOP.
Cines*****,
When the government gets pretty darn liberal, doesn’t that drag the “moderates” to a more liberal position than was considered “moderate” prior to the growth in liberalism?
If that is so, then when the voters tire of liberalism, the “moderates” slide back to what was the “old middle.”
Obama and his program to fundamentally transform America is a political disaster. No one is chanting for more “hope and change” and more socialist solutions. The extreme left is in chaos and the Democrat Party is not sure how to reform itself. It will field Obama again, but the party has no hope of regaining the House and it may well lose the Senate.
Voters sense this turmoil and they are looking for stability and constancy. This is a natural trend toward order and the continuity that conservatism has always championed.
I don’t feel especially encouraged by this poll. Because it all depends what “conservative” means.
Example – To see so-called conservatives like Gingrich and Perry mindlessly spouting the OWS/Obama line on Willard Mittens’ tenure at Bain Capital, is most discouraging.
Another – polls show that even majorities of Republicans want, impossibly, Medicare and Social Security to be left alone. Leaving alone entitlements that are dragging America to its doom as we speak, is apparently a “conservative” thing to do now.
Helio, Everything you said sounds fine. Would you say the “old middle” was more conservative or more liberal than the middle today? P.S. why do you use asterisks for some of my name?
Cinesnatch, I think the “snatch” part may be taken as a slang genital reference.
ILC >> Thanks. That’s not how it’s intended. Feel free to call me Vince, Helio.
There is a general sense that this president is removed from reality. The economy gets worse, and he does even more stupid things in response to it. I can’t believe he honestly thinks the course he’s taking could possibly result in a better economy.
When I tell this to my leftist friends, and they start the mealy-mouthing apologia for Obama, I tell them to stow it. I’m not listening to it anymore. They sound rather half-hearted about it, anyway.
The thrill up their legs is gone.
So, he issues a large stimulus to try to ameliorate the economic malaise early in his term. When that doesn’t work, he tries to issue a large stimulus to try to ameliorate the economic malaise that wasn’t ameliorated by the first one. Is that correct? I’m starting to think he isn’t the profound genius that he was expected to be (actually, I have never thought otherwise).
Regarding the commenting issue, I wish this had been addressed a year ago, or maybe before that. I quit regularly visiting/commenting here a LONG time ago cause I got sick of the dogpiles and ad hoc.
I have this dream…
That one day, all citizens, regardless of whether they become artists, businesspeople, or wingnuts, will be required to take a full year of macroeconomics in high school. And a year of microeconomics. So that they may know the difference! Most comments above would be obliterated, but thus is the price of education.
Funny how the dreams of left-wingers always involve forcing people to do things.
Also funny how they involve ignorance – in the supposed name of education. Evan Hurst of course dreams of people being educated in pro-Big Government economics, the very thinking that has caused America’s malaise. If people were educated in high school in real economics, left-liberalism would wither on the vine.
Vince,
The pollsters report (for what it is worth) that the number of voters leaning toward conservative has increased so that the general tenor of the voters is to seek conservative representation in government.
If a person were a “moderate” in 2008 and voted for Obama, that person may still hold the same political ideals and vote for Obama in 2012. However, in terms of polling, that person my now be left of center as the “average” moderate in 2012 has moved to the right and is looking for a less liberal candidate.
That was what I was supposing. Being “moderate” is a snapshot in time. I am a conservative. My principles don’t wander from voting season to voting season. For example, Olympia Snowe is a political basket case to me. She seems to have no real fixed principles that one can rely upon. I vote for someone who will effectively represent as many of my principles as I can find.
I have never understood political moderates in terms of statism versus limited federal government or federal government intrusion versus state government. Or a lot of things about being “malleable” in the hands of federal government social engineering.
On the state government level, I am a fiscal conservative and less of a social conservative. On the local level I am a fiscal conservative and remarkably liberal in terms of taking care of those in need. (Warning: I am tough as nails when an alcoholic moves to my community to get free goodies from our program because he doesn’t get the same treatment and benefits ninety miles away.)
Tim: Nice pose you struck there. Would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Evan,
I have taught economic in high school in the distant past. Thomas Carlysle referred to economics in his day as “the dismal science” and he raised the hackles of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus in doing so. It was all about supply and demand and justification for population control, slavery, poor laws and more.
The arguments of that day sparked Friedrich Nietzche in a later time to join such company as Marx and Engles to look at economics and the state and the freedom of the individual.
Here is Nietzche from The Gay Science:
It is the last point (what is good for me is also good in itself) that is the key. We egocentric humans tend to favor the things that have worked for us over the failures that have brought others down.
The whole dismal aspect of supply and demand (Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”) is that short supply changes the culture and how people respond.
When economics is applied to manipulating how people behave as consumers and ultimately as neighbors, it is no longer a force for measurement, but a force for social engineering.
Lyndon Johnson loved a saying often attributed to Patton: “Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” That is an apt concept for a dedicated social engineer.
I really have no idea whatsoever what you have in mind when you call for macro and micro economics courses in high school. But I imagine it is more along the lines of forcing people to behave according to some high prescription than it is to help them understand not to fall for the crap that Freddie Mac, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton got us into in this highly underrated and understated world wide economic depression which is growing worse by the day.
I have a lot of ammunition stored away as well as a long lasting food supply. You see, if our economy were to collapse (and it could) I know how people will behave. The ammunition will be better than gold in the barter economy that will result. It will also be useful in protecting the food supply I have stocked up.
However, if we can bypass the chaos, I have not acted irrationally or stupidly. The ammunition will not rot and I can donate the food to the needy. On the other hand, if the worst prevails, those dependent on the nanny state will find themselves stripped bare of any recourse other than to pillage and burn. Even the police power will go rogue. And absolutely nobody will give a tinker’s damn about macro or micro economics.
Have you made any effort of your own to understand the global economy and the speed of light shift to printing fiat currency and incurring more debt as a means of stopping the hemorrhaging?
Please return with simple instructions on how to borrow and tax our (marco economics) way from a position of horrendous debt back to prosperity and a sound economy. I am all eyes and ears and looking forward to a good educational thrashing.
Maybe a few economics courses would have taught the SCOAMF that an economic crisis brought on by the irresponsible over-leveraging of the private sector cannot be fixed by an irresponsible over-leveraging of the public sector.
But I doubt it, since that is precisely the insane prescription noted economists like Paul Krugman are preaching.
Yup.
The sustainability of liberalism and liberal thought relies on one thing and one thing only: the concept that you can get something for nothing.
It always amuses me that people who have made of ecology a religious belief and can pontificate for hours on the evils of a road cut through a virgin forest can advocate economic policies that are the rough equivalent of strip mining.
It’s not the quality of economics education that is bothersome… It’s the total lack there-of.
I’ve sub’d for one of the few high schools that includes an economics class. First problem – It’s an elective. In my view, intro to economics should be a core curriculum class. And most college students don’t take it in college. So when the average post high schooler or college student, who hasn’t had a course delving into the basics of economics theory, sees an opinion piece by Paul Krugman full of stilted Demo-nomic talking points, they haven’t the tools to be able to ask, wait, is he right or wrong on this opinion…. He MUST BE RIGHT, because, you know, he has a Nobel Peace Prize in economics.
The economics books that I’ve seen in the few classes I’ve sub’d for were not bad. They were pretty even handed. Yes, they were heavier on Keynesian economics than Supply Side, but the former has been around a lot longer than the latter. Regardless, the two books I got a chance to examine did explore the strengths and weaknesses of both theories pretty well.
So true, Heliotrope, and why, at its core, liberalism is all about making people as dependent on the government as possible.
If the government is feeding you, sheltering you, and paying you, resistance or disobedience equals loss of paycheck, house, and food. The only people who are able to resist or disobey are those who are not dependent upon the government for any of those things — which is why the primary tenet of the Obama Party and OWS is to demonize them and obtain their resources by threats, legal and actual violence, and public excoriation.
The contradictions of their worldview are extraordinarily entertaining. Take for example Evan Hurst’s bragging about how the OWS leader for his town owns a profitable business, lives in a huge tastefully-redecorated house with granite countertops, drives an expensive German luxury car, and is debt-free. All of which, according to OWS Obama economics, means he is a greedy and rapacious exploiter of his workers and the environment who should be forced to hire more people whether he needs them or not, double his workers’ pay, sign over his house and car to the poor, and direct the money he might have spent paying off debt to finance marijuana shops instead.
But, like the celebrities who harangue us about reducing “carbon footprints” after just having driven up in the SUV bringing them from the airport where their private jet has whisked them from their 25,000 square foot lakeside mansion, Evan Hurst and his fellow OWS Obama Party members have no intention of changing their behavior or expectations.
They simply expect the rest of us to finance them. They view us as the natural extension of their parents and can’t understand why we won’t pay them for breathing. Hence, they resort to the tactics they used in dealing with their parents, including namecalling, insults, and general public tantrums.
Mitt Romney is not a conservative on his best day and he is trying to survive the primary. Americans need to Coalesce behind a strong conservative candidate. Maybe that’s begun in South Carolina?
There is a poll out showing Newt and Romney in a statistical tie in South Carolina. I don’t think it’s quite time yet to coronate the King of Bain.
http://youhavetobethistalltogoonthisride.blogspot.com/2012/01/tgif-political-circus-edition-lion.html
What would be illuminating would be a comparison of the self-identification of “liberal, moderate, conservative…” against some benchmark reference-point. What may be “conservative” or “moderate” here in suburban NJ might well be quite “liberal” in rural Alabama or Colorado in-comparison.
Yes, there may be more conservatives than libs in the US but in the end, moderates must vote more liberal than conservative. Why else would this country be closely divided down the middle?
Ted B,
You may have discovered the meaning of “fly over” America. I am certain that the measurements of liberalism and conservatism shift from city to countryside in New Jersey and from New Jersey to Kansas.
I live in New York City for several months a year and in Key West, Florida for several weeks a year. If there were a major collapse, riots and cannibalism would break out in NYC. In Key West, fresh water would be a real problem, but people would have fish and a million stray chickens to harvest and the sense of community would be almost instantaneous. Both are very liberal places, but one is totally government dependent for survival and the other would only need a few days to get a rum distillery under way. I would put my money on the Conch Republic any day, even though some of its denizens are flat out loopy weird.
I imagine Evan’s other dream is a mandatory course on how to claim your UK National Lottery winnings and help poor Nigerians via e-mail.