AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Foxfyre wrote:

It's okay McG. You have certainly defended at least some MAC principles in the past because the Republican Party has defended at least some MAC principles in the past. I can remember a time when the Democratic Party did too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you wish the Republican Party would ditch some of the more radical initiatives of the radical so-called Religious Right so that it would be more perceived as more of a big tent. It certainly doesn't have to separate itself from those issues, but it doesn't have to make them a litmus test for who can be a Republican either. For instance I am staunchly pro-life, but I can support a pro-choice Republican (or Democrat) President who is willing to work with the public conscience on that. An ideologically pure MAC would assign that as a State Right issue, but that would not have to remove all federal involvement either. I think Roe v Wade, as it was originally intended, wasn't as bad a law as some staunch pro-lifers think it is.

I bet you don't have much problem with most MAC principles in that definition we've been using too.

Not at all. I find most of the MAC principles to be in line with the Republican philosophy.

I am all for the big tent though, as at the end of the day, it's the number of votes that gets our candidates elected. Getting the votes of the anti-abortion crowd, despite my not agreeing with them, gets my guy elected. My guy will pander for the votes, but when it gets down to brass tacks, they will not actually try to change the laws in regards to abortion. that's one example.

I am definitely for small government, which remains a Republican plank despite the failings of the last Republican congress. I am for less governmental influence in the daily lives in American. I am for a strong military and defending our country from enemies both foreign and domestic. I am for lower taxes combined with less govt spending (pipe-dream, I know), I would like to see more government reform in the way of ZERO earmarks, consolidation of various govt entities performing identical functions, etc.

There is lots more, but I am tired of typing.

Seven Principles of the Constitution Party are:

1. Life: For all human beings, from conception to natural death;
2. Liberty: Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual;
3. Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted;
4. Property: Each individual's right to own and steward personal property without government burden;
5. Constitution: and Bill of Rights interpreted according to the actual intent of the Founding Fathers;
6. States' Rights: Everything not specifically delegated by the Constitution to the federal government, nor prohibited by the Constitution to the states, is reserved to the states or to the people;
7. American Sovereignty: American government committed to the protection of the borders, trade, and common defense of Americans, and not entangled in foreign alliances.

I notice, however, that there are now more people who identify themselves as Independent than those identifying themselves as Democrat or identifying themselves as Republican. That would suggest a growing disenchantment with both major parties;

The parties were also evenly matched on basic party identification in 2001 (which does not take into account the partisan leanings of independents), with 32% identifying themselves as Republicans, 33% as Democrats, and 34% as independents. The 2009 data show the GOP losing five points since then, with identification increasing three points among both Democrats and independents.

The proportion of independents now equals its highest level in 70 years. Owing to defections from the Republican Party, independents are more conservative on several key issues than in the past. While they like and approve of Barack Obama, as a group independents are more skittish than they were two years ago about expanding the social safety net and are reluctant backers of greater government involvement in the private sector. Yet at the same time, they continue to more closely parallel the views of Democrats rather than Republicans on the most divisive core beliefs on social values, religion and national security.

While the Democrats gained a sizable advantage in partisan affiliation during George Bush’s presidency, their numbers slipped between December 2008 and April 2009, from 39% to 33%. Republican losses have been a little more modest, from 26% to 22%, but this represents the lowest level of professed affiliation with the GOP in at least a quarter century. Moreover, on nearly every dimension the Republican Party is at a low ebb " from image, to morale, to demographic vitality.

By contrast, the percentage of self-described political independents has steadily climbed, on a monthly basis, from 30% last December to 39% in April. Taking an average of surveys conducted this year, 36% say they are independents, 35% are Democrats, while 23% are Republicans. On an annual basis, the only previous year when independent identification has been this high was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran a popular independent candidacy.
http://people-press.org/report/517/

In the week before Election Day, voters favored a generic Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican by margins as big as 12 percentage points. Just three months into the new Congress -- and still a year and a half out from the midterm elections -- Republicans appear to be pulling even, particularly among independent voters.

Three recent polls show the GOP gaining ground on the generic ballot question, starting with an NPR survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (R) and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (D) that put the two parties exactly square: 42 percent for each. Independents, however, preferred the GOP, 39-30. Democrats led slightly overall, but trailed even worse among independents, in a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll out last week that phrased the generic ballot question in terms of curtailing Democratic power.

The latest Diageo/Hotline data gives Dems a little more breathing room, with the generic Democrat leading 37-32. But the trend line was clear: In January, 46 percent favored the generic Democrat; at the beginning of March, 40 percent did so. Independent voters, who at the beginning of March favored Democrats by 3 points, now lean towards Republicans by the same margin.

If these polls are early indicators of an independent break toward the minority party, it will be doubly surprising given those voters' continued support (subscription) for President Obama. Independents were crucial to the party's success in 2008, going 52-44 for Obama last November and 51-43 for Democratic candidates, according to exit polls.

The majority party still has plenty to cheer about, however, including a steady rise in public approval of Congress and the percentage of people who say the country is headed in the right direction. All of the above polls gave Obama, the public face of the party, strong approval ratings as well.

So why are Republicans rising on the generic ballot question? The answer might be found in the talking points of Republican National Congressional Committee director Guy Harrison at a Hotline panel discussion last week: The public gets uncomfortable with one-party rule, and has traditionally punished a new president's party during his first midterm.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/pn_20090406_8228.php

I am all for the big tent though, as at the end of the day, it's the number of votes that gets our candidates elected. Getting the votes of the anti-abortion crowd, despite my not agreeing with them, gets my guy elected. My guy will pander for the votes, but when it gets down to brass tacks, they will not actually try to change the laws in regards to abortion. that's one example.

McG wrote:

Quote:

The political leanings of the majority of the A2K members that post in political threads is definitely to the left. With that large a population criticizing the Bush administration, I did not feel it necessary to add my voice to the cacophony. Though I did here and there.

I think people of McG's persuasion have missed what has happened to the republican party during the past eight years; Bush totally ignored conservative principles, and the current so-called leaders of the party have become the "No Party." Those who speak out are the Limbaughs, Cheney, Hannity, Boehner, Palin and McCain, all the while as the party gets smaller and smaller from their misdirection and confusion in leadership.

Nobody has yet said WHY it is wrong or why even 'preliminary' numbers aren't applicable in the way they are used. Nobody has shown me that the results would be any different if they had been compiled a few days later. Show me with a credible source that the numbers are in error and I'll stop posting the numbers when it is appropriate to post numbers like that.

If you guys keep posting polls that show something and I have a poll that is equally applicable, I'll probably just keep on posting it. If that annoys you, please put me on ignore and you'll breeze right by with no angst at all.

If you think it's childish take it up with Fordham. Fordham isn't exactly a bastion of rightwing ideology. They explained where they got their numbers and compiled the data. So if you have a problem with their numbers, dispute them with something other than your own biased opinion.

Fine. We'll use your list which still shows Pew doing well and Gallup doing much less well. The ratios of accuracy did not change much. And that had nothing to do with the subject being discussed anyway, but was posted purely to support my opinion of Gallup polls in general. Your list supports my opinion just as effectively.

:"Fox, if I may further disrupt your question to liberals: I continually see those on this thread disagreeing with MAC principles misunderstanding that MACs or Classical Liberals, as you have defined, can be equated with any particular politician who is a registered member of the Republican Party."

:"It's true enough that Republicans are not classical liberals. But If this is an important distinction for you, the time to make it was 2003/2004: when the Republican party controlled every branch of government, and when president Bush was popular and up for re-election. If you make a big deal of this distinction now, you're no longer taking a stand on principle. You're no longer distancing yourself from the Republicans under Bush. All you're distancing yourself from are those 30% approval ratings that the Bush administration left office with. "

"You're no longer distancing yourself from the Republicans under Bush. All you're distancing yourself from are those 30% approval ratings that the Bush administration left office with. "

I know what I'm talking about. Back in 2003/2004, when my libertarian ideology was purer than today, I frequently argued that Bush's policies made no sense in terms of their stated goals, given conservative theories of how the world works. I remember being generally lonely when I argued this point. In particular, I was opposed at that time by all those correspondents who insist today that there's a big distinction between conservatives and Republicans.

"So please forgive us for not buying the distinction from those correspondents. It's not about ad-hominems, it's about experience."

"Conservatives today. . . .need to go back to the deeper sources of the American political tradition, rediscovering the founders, and Lincoln, who was always looking back at the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Conservatives need to go back to the order that liberalism was invented to replace."--Charles Kesler, Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College.

"Liberals have Woodrow Wilson, the welfare state and the hippie movement. Conservatives have the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Abraham Lincoln.

This is a fight from which conservatives need not shrink." --Peter M. Robinson

[If he is not removed from office, Obama will eventually say,] "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'