> It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican,
> but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us
> that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over
> the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday,
> 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters
> supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as
> there is on most social issues.
wow...he makes it sound like we have been flooded with an outpouring of support for gay marriage!
> Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly
> worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most
> influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral
> values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't
> vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading
> result.
i think that's a pretty straight forward concept. obviously, this guy has conveniently forgotten the concept of code words, as in the phrases that you substitute for what you really mean, as in that people who answer that are most likely thinking of "white, middleclass, college educated, church going, men who marry women, non-criminal types living in nazi-like gated communities"
and seriously, if the other poll choices are things such as the economy, war, health care, terrorism, etc., and if that person still elects "morality" as their number one concern, then obviously, they are saying that they are looking out for number 1.
> The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did
> better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did
> better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts.
define "better". that's an awfully vague word. does he mean number of votes total? well, then actually, kerry also did better than GW did in 2000. or does he mean a percentage of votes?
either way, does he mean number of votes cast total, or is that minus the thousands tossed out for spoilage or because they were provisional? if it's the latter, then a disproportionate number of those that were tossed were in poor neighborhoods.
>That's
> hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly
> in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
and most of those states weren't going to vote for a democrat until you pried their cold dead fingers off the barrel.
> He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as
> president.
or, at least what they imagine he's doing as president as they don't really read the newspapers and are watching re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond when the news is on.
>Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism.
Because most people think that "fighting terrorism" means "bombing the crap out of people." since Bush has bombed the crap out of a couple of countries, he must be doing something good, right?
>They
> had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy.
and what percentage was that? was it very low? was it very high?
>Most
> approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the
> war on terror.
if most foreigners were wondering how Bush could do so well despite the blunder of invading, read this statement for what it is as the american mindset.
if you can scare people enough with soundbites and blurbs that some guy is trying to kill them all, the very act of us sending troops in must mean that we are now safe and will never be harmed again. i don't care if you parade in front of them every coffin and every 20 year old who is now maimed for life because of this crap, and the very fact that nothing supporting any of the allegations materialized, all you have to do is beat them back down with the question of "don't you wonder what the terrorists would have done if johnny over here hadn't bravely lost a leg?" and suddenly, their sense of fear of the unknown is being appealed to.
that's why kerry lost on this issue. people have been mislead into believing that hijacking planes and crashing them into towers or people abducting civilians for televised beheadings is the same thing as being "safe".
> The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for
> Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's
> policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people
> with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.
i think that 2000 was a lesson that people didn't forget. not to mention that fear of the other side's vision coming to reality.
> The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this
> week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've
> spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of
> words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is
> no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this
> week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro
> forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of
> dogma and reaction.
> In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within
> regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex
> layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism,
> American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic
> opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other
> issues.
people get self-righteous. such as drunk driving laws. the majority of accidents with a drunk driver happen with an intoxication level of .17. the number of "deaths" as purported by MADD and the NHTSA are inflated because they include theoretical data and also if a passenger or pedestrian was drunk, even if the driver was sober.
but there is a lot of money to be made in drunk driving arrests as there are in drug arrests. do you realize how much time and money that police forces use in tracking down some stoner occasionally selling a little weed to his friends? they wiretap, hire informants, go undercover, etc. i wish they would put that much effort into finding the assholes who have been going around and stealing everyone's car stereos. however, even if the police force busts a ring of stereo thieves, they aren't going to see the monetary commitment from the state as they do with drug enforcement.
> But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the
> rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and
> condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why
> Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and
> university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people
> in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are
> completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?
i didn't realize that the Bushites were so tolerant of others.
It's interesting that this pops up because it goes along with my theory as to why white people love MLK jr so much. it's a power play as it makes white people nervous to see the underclass trying to fight back. they wave him around to black people and say, "see what you get if you say 'please'? you should learn to ask nicely like Mr King did" and start putting angel halos on their head and say "We should all learn to rise above it", because otherwise, if you have someone like Malcolm X or Al Sharpton pop up, the white people get all nervous and pissed off and say, "see why we don't give you anything? look at what MLK did. you should all learn to be like him and maybe we'll do something nice for you again."
> What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually
> eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are
> important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of
> the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The
> rage of the drowning man.
in a way, that is correct. i never thought i would consider something like this in my life, but i personally think that this country is getting to the point where it's worth jumping ship. Just as the Huegenots fled, just as the puritans left england, or the jews left germany, you can look around at the heart of the place where you are living and know that it's on the downslide. and that sort of thing happens when a country's priorities get highly out of whack, such as worrying more that some gay people are going to get married over worrying about if they are going to be able to support their families.
