Thread: The GOP in Meltdown

Here's a Gallup poll dated June 15, 2009


“Conservatives� Are Single-Largest Ideological Group


June 15, 2009

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early ’90s

by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

These annual figures are based on multiple national Gallup surveys conducted each year, in some cases encompassing more than 40,000 interviews. The 2009 data are based on 10 separate surveys conducted from January through May. Thus, the margins of error around each year's figures are quite small, and changes of only two percentage points are statistically significant.
To measure political ideology, Gallup asks Americans to say whether their political views are very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal, or very liberal. As has been the case each year since 1992, very few Americans define themselves at the extremes of the political spectrum. Just 9% call themselves "very conservative" and 5% "very liberal." The vast majority of self-described liberals and conservatives identify with the unmodified form of their chosen label.

Party-Based Ideology
There is an important distinction in the respective ideological compositions of the Republican and Democratic Parties. While a solid majority of Republicans are on the same page -- 73% call themselves conservative -- Democrats are more of a mixture. The major division among Democrats is between self-defined moderates (40%) and liberals (38%). However, an additional 22% of Democrats consider themselves conservative, much higher than the 3% of Republicans identifying as liberal.
True to their nonpartisan tendencies, close to half of political independents -- 45% -- describe their political views as "moderate." Among the rest, the balance of views is tilted more heavily to the right than to the left: 34% are conservative, while 20% are liberal.
Gallup trends show a slight increase since 2008 in the percentages of all three party groups calling themselves "conservative," which accounts for the three percentage-point increase among the public at large.

Thus far in 2009, Gallup has found an average of 36% of Americans considering themselves Democratic, 28% Republican, and 37% independent. When independents are pressed to say which party they lean toward, 51% of Americans identify as Democrats, 39% as Republicans, and only 9% as pure independents.
Ideological tendencies by leaned party affiliation are very similar to those of straight partisan groups. However, it is worth noting the views of pure independents -- a group usually too small to analyze in individual surveys but potentially important in deciding elections. Exactly half of pure independents describe their views as moderate, 30% say they are conservative, and 17% liberal.

As reported last week on Gallup.com, women are more likely than men to be Democratic in their political orientation. Along the same lines, women are more likely than men to be ideologically "moderate" and "liberal," and less likely to be "conservative."
Still, conservatism outweighs liberalism among both genders.

The pattern is strikingly different on the basis of age, and this could have important political implications in the years ahead. Whereas middle-aged and older Americans lean conservative (vs. liberal) in their politics by at least 2 to 1, adults aged 18 to 29 are just as likely to say their political views are liberal (31%) as to say they are conservative (30%).

Future Gallup analysis will look at the changes in the political ideology of different age cohorts over time, to see whether young adults in the past have started out more liberal than they wound up in their later years.
Bottom Line
Although the terms may mean different things to different people, Americans readily peg themselves, politically, into one of five categories along the conservative-to-liberal spectrum. At present, large minorities describe their views as either moderate or conservative -- with conservatives the larger group -- whereas only about one in five consider themselves liberal.
While these figures have shown little change over the past decade, the nation appears to be slightly more polarized than it was in the early 1990s. Compared with the 1992-1994 period, the percentage of moderates has declined from 42% to 35%, while the percentages of conservatives and liberals are up slightly -- from 38% to 40% for conservatives and a larger 17% to 21% movement for liberals.
Survey Methods
Results are based on aggregated Gallup Poll surveys of approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, interviewed by telephone. Sample sizes for the annual compilations range from approximately 10,000 to approximately 40,000. For these results, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Originally Posted by attaboy

Trotskyites like Kristol came to the Republican Party calling themselves "neo-conservatives" and succeeded in destroying it from within.

That is so funny.

Neo Cons were Trotskyites in disguise.

The downfall of the Republicans is because of a Communist conspiricy.

The Republicans didn't notice until it was too late.



I am laughing so much!


^Nice graphs by the way.

I'm glad you liked it and sought to embellish it with your own humor. Kristol's father, Irving, a founder of neo-conservatism, wrote an essay titled, Memoirs of a Trotskyist.

atta

and 911 was also a Communism inside job ? jesus, you are so delusional

yeah, the GOP can be upgraded by becoming Socialist, they will be on the right path

911 is your conspiracy baby, Butters. Tell us again about the missiles and timed explosions.

Originally Posted by ItsRobsLife

^Nice graphs by the way.

the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' mean little or nothing in the american political context.

'republican' and 'democrat' are an entirely different matter. here is some polling data from last month....

A new Gallup analysis shows that the precipitous decline in the number of people who identify themselves as Republicans is widespread across nearly every demographic group -- a development that suggests that there is no simple solution to solving the party's current problems.

As we have written about before, the number of self-identifying Republicans stood at 21 percent last month -- the lowest it has been since the fall of 1983.
This tendency for people to disassociate themselves with the Republican Party is echoed in Gallup's data. Combining several months of surveys -- with a large sample of more than 7,000 adults -- shows that over the last eight years self-identifying Republicans have gone from 44 percent to 39 percent while self-identifying Democrats have risen from 45 percent to 53 percent. (These numbers push independents who lean in one direction or the other into the party toward which they lean.)

While Republicans have lost ground in nearly every demographic group, the decline is particularly pronounced among college graduates (a 10 percent loss in party identification between 2001 and 2009), people 18 to 29 years old (nine percent) and those of "moderate ideology" (nine percent).

The only groups among which Republicans have not lost ground over the last eight years are those strongly within the base (conservatives, weekly church goers) and those that were never inclined to support them (black and Hispanic voters).

Put simply: Toss-up demographic groups eight years ago have moved en masse in Democrats' favor, leaving the GOP with only its base still on its side.

The Fix - Gallup Poll: Republican Shrinkage Widespread

21% of americans identify themselves as a republican.

the only people who still identify as republicans are the silly people who go to church every week....and i suppose a few teabaggers too. but it begs the question.....can one be a teabagger and church goer?

Originally Posted by ItsRobsLife

I am laughing so much!

yes, attaboy does have his moments.
i particularly like it when he takes it upon himself to defend talk radio hosts...as if they're his friends or something.
good times.

June 15, 2009

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early ’90s

"conservative" and "liberal" does not translate perfectly to Dem and Repub.

Obama is definitely not a liberal, as we've now seen.

You're right Milky. According to the poll 28% of Democrats describe themselves as conservative, the type who voted for Reagan.

People follow trends. I'm not surprised to see some follow the herd back and forth from Repubs to Dems. Calling yourself a Republican these days is not likely to get you laid. There are those who follow the pussy, segue to ray, he will say anything to deflect attention from his commie brethren. Take the way he covers for "Prof." Ayers. Glommed onto him too, ray?

Originally Posted by attaboy

911 is your conspiracy baby, Butters. Tell us again about the missiles and timed explosions.

here is another conspiracy: Iraq had WMDs

put too much sugar in your coffee this morning, atta ?

ah jeez, it's on a new page. nevermind.

Originally Posted by attaboy

I'm glad you liked it and sought to embellish it with your own humor. Kristol's father, Irving, a founder of neo-conservatism, wrote an essay titled, Memoirs of a Trotskyist.

Many consider Neo-cons to be left wingers.

The PNAC policy of spreading democracy by force has it's roots in Trotsky's belief that communism must be a world revolution spread by force. I can understand Trotsky's view. It must be spread worldwide as quickly as possible because it cannot stand on it's own against capitalism. Look how Castro whines that he needs US trade for his revolution to be successful.

Originally Posted by attaboy

ah jeez, it's on a new page. nevermind.

yeah, sure ........because it's a new page.

Irving Kristal talking about the Communist idealism of his youth.

Is it then perhaps my radical past, now so firmly disowned, that bothers me and makes CCNY unhallowed ground? I think not. I have no regret about that episode in my life. Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment.

It seems that the Trotskyite/Neo Con connection is rather spurious and comes from the close connection of CCNY and another group The New York Intellectuals in the post WWII period, basically debating societies of the privately schooled elite.

ESR | March 22, 2004 | Neoconservatives and Trotskyism - Page 1

A very good article on the subject and worth a read Attaboy.

For paleocon polemicists, it matters little that Kristol has spent almost his entire adult life as one of America's most prolific and high-profile intellectual proponents of democracy and capitalism.

Anyway the Memoirs of a Trotskyite was a magazine article not a manifesto and was a recollection of his youth in postwar America.

When you put it into perspective with his other publications, only the less inteligent would judge it's content at face value.

From Wiki.

Articles

• "Men and Ideas: Niccolo Machiavelli," Encounter, Dec. 1954.
• "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July 1967 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America).
• "Memoirs of a Cold Warrior," New York Times Magazine, Feb. 11, 1968 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness," The Public Interest, Fall 1970 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America and Two Cheers for Capitalism).
• "Pornography, Obscenity, and Censorship," New York Times Magazine, Mar. 28, 1971 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America and Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "Utopianism, Ancient and Modern," Imprimus, April 1973 (repr. in Two Cheers for Capitalism).
• "Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism," The Great Ideas Today, ed. Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, 1976 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "Memoirs of a Trotskyist," New York Times Magazine, Jan. 23, 1977 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "The Adversary Culture of Intellectuals," Encounter, Oct. 1979 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).

Books

• On the Democratic Idea in America, New York: Harper, 1972 (ISBN 0060124679).
• Two Cheers for Capitalism, 1978 (ISBN 0-465-08803-1)
• Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, 1983 (ISBN 0-465-06872-3)
• Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, 1995 (ISBN 0-02-874021-1)

Also from Wiki.

In 1973 Michael Harrington coined the term "neoconservatism" to describe those liberal intellectuals and political philosophers who were disaffected with the political and cultural attitudes dominating the Democratic Party and were moving toward a new form of conservatism[4]. Intended by Harrington as a pejorative term, it was accepted by Kristol as an apt description of the ideas and policies exemplified by The Public Interest. Unlike liberals, for example, neoconservatives rejected most of the Great Society programs sponsored by Lyndon Johnson; and unlike traditional conservatives, they supported the more limited welfare state instituted by Roosevelt.

Hardly the viewpoint of a Socialist.


A quote from Kristal.

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."

Originally Posted by raycarey

Originally Posted by attaboy

ah jeez, it's on a new page. nevermind.

yeah, sure ........because it's a new page.

Well ray I wanted the link between you and Ayers to be more apparent so the joke would be better understood.


here ya go:

Prof. Ayers: I'm a communist.

ray: Me too!

Prof. Ayers: Yes, but I was a communist before you.


ray: Yes, I know, comrade, but I was right behind you scuffing the backs fo your shoes!

I've read it Rob. He admits, if I recall correctly, four Trotskyites in the early stages of the movement.



Here's an example of an article by a conservative about the neocons and their foreign policy:



George F. Will: Neoconservatives have a lot to learn

By GEORGE F. WILL

Tuesday, Jul. 18, 2006
'GROTESQUE' WAS Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct, up to a point. This point:

Hezbollah and Hamas were alive and toxic long before March 2003. Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson — one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job — about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Rice called it "short-sighted" to judge the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some couple of years" into the transformation. She seems to consider today's turmoil preferable to the Middle East's "false stability" of the last 60 years, during which U.S. policy "turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces."

There is, however, a sense in which that argument creates a blind eye:

It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a sign of progress. Violence is vindication: Hamas and Hezbollah have, Rice says, "determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East."

But there also is democratic movement toward extremism. America's intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq which, by benign infection, would transform the region. Early on in the Iraq occupation, Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable political culture, they also can help create such a culture. Perhaps. But elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament.

The Bush administration has rightly refrained from criticizing the region's only democracy, Israel, for its forceful response to a thousand rockets fired at its population. U.S. reticence is seemly, considering that terrorism has been Israel's torment for decades, and that America responded to two hours of terrorism one September morning by toppling two regimes halfway around the world with wars that show no signs of ending.

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly Standard — voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservativism" — everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . ." You get the drift. So, The Weekly Standard says:

"We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions — and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Assad's regime does not fall after The Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that The Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises — all of them unpleasant — that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that The Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation —the bombing of Syria?

Neoconservatives have much to learn, even from Buddy Bell, manager of the Kansas City Royals. After his team lost its 10th consecutive game in April, Bell said, "I never say it can't get worse." In their next game, the Royals extended their losing streak to 11 and in May lost 13 in a row.

George Will's e-mail address is georgewill[at]washpost.com.

Originally Posted by MM

Many consider Neo-cons to be left wingers.

Originally Posted by Rob

Nobody would have said that before the downfall of the Republican party.

Sure they have, only you haven't read anything about it.


Early 1970s: Neoconservatives Coalesce around Conservative Democratic Senator






Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson. [Source: US Congress]
The recently formed neoconservatives, bound together by magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965), react with horror to the ascendancy of the “McGovern liberals” in the Democratic Party, and turn to conservative senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) for leadership. Jackson calls himself a “muscular Democrat”; others call him “the Senator from Boeing” for his strong support of the US defense industry. Jackson merges a strong support of labor and civil rights groups with a harsh Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union. Jackson assembles a staff of bright, young, ideologically homogeneous staffers who will later become some of the most influential and powerful neoconservatives of their generation, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Jackson’s office—“the bunker,” to staffers—becomes a home for disaffected, ambitious young conservative ideologues with a missionary zeal for change.

Context of 'Early 1970s: Neoconservatives Coalesce around Conservative Democratic Senator'

so GW Bush team and friends were Trotskytes ?

only a delusional loser would try to blame the stupidity of the Republicans on such an outrageous claim

With the majority of their Republican members being that dumb, that kind of propaganda might work, but not with anyone outside the Republican party

Rob, take a look at my post above I've added to it. While you were posting.


Conservatives ave been critical of neocons for years.

Ok well your edit is more of a backtrack, but to a certain extent I agree that Trotskyite ideals can influence the agenda of the right wing but only as a model of political expediency, (after all totalitarianism is bi-lateral), and I agree only to the extent that you could also say that the Neo-Cons were ancient Greeks because they read Plato's Republic.

^ Read that in one of your rabid libbie books, didya? Linkie?