Just Some Random Post-Election Tidbits

[throwingstardna]

The Republican party doesn't have a communication or a tactical problem. They have a values problem. A majority of the American public simply doesn't want what they're selling.

Vaginal Americans Delivered:I'm going to go out on a limb and say that waging a campaign against contraception was probably a bad idea. Calling women who use

Comments

[trundle]

The problem with Hume and Hindraker's arguments is the implicit assumption that a vote for Obama was a left-leaning vote. If we had a clear left-right election (say, Dukakis vs. Goldwater or something), you could make some reasoned inferences about the political orientation of the country based on the outcome. But regardless of Fox News claims to the contrary, outside of healthcare* there hasn't been much about Obama's actual policy initiatives that looks all that leftist. His foreign policy is fairly hawkish and mostly in line with what the Republican leadership would endorse if they weren't too busy hating everything about him. His economic policy in the first term was pretty centrist or even center right -- his spending increases weren't any more than any Republican executive would have endorsed in times of crisis (e.g. W in 2008). There's some indication he might move marginally to the left in his second term, but even now he's willing to spending cuts for revenue increases at a 3:1 ratio. I don't think you can read the election as a sign that the American electorate is "center-left" as much as a sign that the structure of the Republican primary process produces candidates that are pretty far past "center-right." An across the board 20% tax cut isn't anywhere near the center. Nor is outlawing abortion even in cases of rape, or exiling children who grew up believing they were Americans and remain productive members of society.

*And even on healthcare, the ACA is hardly a socialist policy, as the expansion is Medicaid has to be weighed against the massive subsidy to private enterprise in the individual mandate.

[throwingstardna]

You're absolutely right. My point in posting those quotes is that they have, for a long time, maintained that most of Americans see eye to eye on them on the issues-this just isn't true, and this is now evidence of that.

But yeah, of course by "liberal" or "left," these guys (and most modern conservatives) just mean centrist; people that are not completely batshit insane right wingers, which is to them, the normal default position.

Moderates aren't really "liberal," they're, well .... moderate, which is why they rejected the extreme right positions that most of the GOP espouses. The Democrats, by comparison-although disparaged as crazed left wing hippie commie radicals-are really just centrist moderates on almost every position.