I recently ran into another political blog called the 'Conservative Majority.” First of all the name is a misnomer. There are more moderates than conservatives according to Media Matters. According to Gallup, one in five Democrats is conservative. These Blue Dogs usually vote down the middle but they are hardly the far right ditto head the Republicans call conservatives.
John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, fellows at the Center for American Progress.America. There study shows political views are evenly divided Between Progressives/Liberals And Conservatives/Libertarian.
For years, traditional public opinion polling has broken down Americans’ political ideology into three distinct groupings: liberal, moderate, and conservative. Based on this simplified categorization, there has been remarkable stability in ideological orientation with roughly one-fifth of Americans identifying themselves as ‘liberal’ and about 4 in 10 classifying themselves as ‘moderate’ or ‘conservative’, respectively, according to Gallup polling from 1992 to 2008.
Two new studies conducted by the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress break down the electorate on a new 5-point scale of political ideology that reflects the primary approaches people ascribe to today. Under this schematic, 34 percent of the country self-identifies as ‘conservative’, 29 percent as ‘moderate’, 15 percent as ‘liberal’, 16 percent as ‘progressive’, and 2 percent as ‘libertarian’.
After moderates are asked which approach they lean towards, the overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative or libertarian and the rest unsure.
As Media Matters has indicated, many moderates hold progressive views. A nation that is evenly split in its political identity is decidedly center-left in its policy orientation:
• By a margin of almost nine to one, Americans agree that “government investments in education, infrastructure, and science are necessary to ensure America’s long-term economic growth,” (79 percent agree, 12 percent neutral, 9 percent disagree).
• More than three in four Americans (76 percent) also agree with the president’s argument that “America’s economic future requires a transformation away from oil, gas, and coal to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.”
• Nearly three in four Americans believe that “government regulations are necessary to keep businesses in check and protect workers and consumers,” (73 percent agree, 15 percent neutral, 12 percent disagree).
• Nearly two in three Americans (65 percent) agree that “the federal government should guarantee affordable health coverage for every American.”
Complementing this agenda are significant demographic shifts that favor progressives. Between 1988 and 2008, the share of minority voters in presidential elections has risen by 11 points, while the share of increasingly progressive white college graduate voters has risen by four points.
But the conservative share of white-working class voters, who have remained conservative in their orientation, has plummeted by 15 points. The overt racism of the GOP will continue to bring more blacks and Hispanics into the Democratic Party.
Regardless of what Americans call themselves, the Democrats had a huge political victory in 2008 due to the incompetence of the Bush administration on a variety of issues such as the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, Social Security, and the financial meltdown. The US came close to being pushed into another Depression by conservative experimentation with deregulation and US financial institutions.
The problem with conservatism in the US is that it has become extremely authoritarian and ideological. Because conservatives are inflexible, they desire to maintain the status quo by being the 'party of no.' In these tumultuous times the Republicans left in their wake, pragmatism and flexibility are essential.
Rightardia has long maintained that libertarians are an insignificant utopian political movement in the US. Ron Paul (R-TX) was never taken seriously by the GOP in the 2008 Republican primary. The 2 per cent of Americans identifying themselves as libertarian seems to prove this.
Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/11/halpin-teixeria-progressive-study/
Get 30 days of free traffic analysis simply by going to Web-Stat: http://www.web-stat.com/?id=2955
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
Improve blog traffic with TrafficG http://trafficg.com/splash/splash01.php?uid=eelder1
Netcraft rank: 30670
No comments:
Post a Comment