I have been asking myself this question since the election results of the November 6, 2012 election.
I mean, really, in poll after poll asking Americans their political ideology the majority say that they are conservative. In second place, generally, people will consider themselves moderate or middle of the road. People who consider themselves liberal bring up the rear.
Once again, how does this jibe with the election results?
I am sure I have addressed this somewhere back in the RVFTLC archives.
If this poll from Gallup is correct, in only two states of the union, do a majority consider themselves liberal. And they should not come as a surprise that one of them is Taxachusetts Massachusetts. The other one is Rhode Island, basically an unincorporated extension of Massachusetts. Think of Rhode Island as where the regular folks live yet still keep voting liberal and Democrat.
So what gives?
Well, look at the link to Gallup. And look at the people that consider themselves moderate. Eight of the top 10 states ended up voting for the Dear Leader, President Obama. Three were considered so-called swing states in the last presidential election and they are Michigan, Nevada and Ohio. Yet six of those 10 states have Republican governors. For the first time in recent memory, the Republican party controls the majority of state legislatures. Have 29 governorships.
Again, what gives?
Well, defining moderate is always tricky. But I will give it a shot.
In general, people that consider themselves middle of the road generally are conservative in many ways yet liberal in others. Their conservatism is on governance, fiscal policy and national security. Their liberalism is not so much liberalism as much as a live and let live attitude on a lot of the so-called social issues. And even there that has to be more broken down by a slew of issues. In other words, they don't want to be boxed in under one party or one ideology. They are most likely to not care for either political party yet in their mind choose the lesser of two evils. But, in the last election, they not not as likely to vote as they did in 2008.
And what about conservatives?
Go backwards and more conservatives stayed home than moderates. And while almost none would identify with the Democrat party, most in the past did with the Republican party. But a sizable number are not happy with the Republican party. Many feel that they just want to elect people with R's after their name and it does not matter what they believe in.
Well, there is something of an explanation as to how the Dear Leader, President Obama, did win reelection.
One, the base was fired up a lot more stealth than in 2008. It was stealth enough that most political analysts did not see it. They fought for and got every vote they could squeeze out. They were able to convince just enough moderates where they had to how eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll Mitt Romney and the Republicans were. And it worked.
Speaking of Mr. Romney, he did not offer a serious vision and basically ran a classic defense campaign not realizing that he was really already behind everywhere he needed to be ahead. And I add one other thing. Mr. Romney could not explain and correlate that taxes and wasteful spending and big, inefficient government is as much if not more a threat than one's city, county or state government.
Which leads to this smart, yet short, piece from Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online.
Remember those swing states I wrote about earlier? You know, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio? All three have Republican governors, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Brian Sandoval in Nevada and John Kasich in Ohio. In Michigan and Ohio, the states legislatures are Republican-dominated. Mr. Goldberg gets to the heart of the matter right here:
I think an overlooked part of the story is the fact that Americans tend to see federal and local governments differently. At the local level, people seem to have a better grasp that it’s their tax dollars at work. They are far more sensitive to tax increases and more easily outraged by spending boondoggles. They understand the importance of sustainable economic growth.
And I think that he is right. And it does go back to when many of these states did have Democrat leadership and how, after a sufficient time to see how lousy things get when the Dems do run things, people want to change and get some adults in the room.
Now California bucked the trend on the whole issue of tax hikes, but that had to be sold as a tax on the rich and the proponents left out the hike on the state sales tax. But the trend will go back to the Republicans when they get their act together here in the once Golden State.
That goes back to where Mr. Romney could not translate the big, bad government in Washington, D. C. to the voter in Ohio that thought maybe the Dear Leader, President Obama, is still kind of sort of a moderate as he is portrayed to be.
And one more thing about us conservatives.
We need to stop eating each other up and focus on what the next years under the Dear Leader, President Obama, will be. Don't blame So Cons and So Cons need to learn a little about economics before going after Fis Cons. And all need to agree that the biggest international threat is radical Islam.
Conservatives need to translate what the majority of Americans believe into a governing majority at the national level.
That is why one Barack Hussein Obama won reelection. Playing up conservative division.
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