Myth: America is Conservative

An old friend of mine (and self-proclaimed right-wing nutjob) recently told me that “politics is war conducted though other means.” Although that's probably true, it got me wondering why, considering the position they are in, aren't conservatives taking a more conciliatory approach these days? They are blindly attacking everything that Pres. Obama and the Democrats are proposing without regard to public opinion polls or the state of the economy. And they aren’t offering alternative policy ideas, either (funny enough, earlier today the GOP put out an alternative budget with NO hard numbers, LOL.).

Don’t they realize that Americans roundly repudiated conservatism in the November election?

They were given a choice between a continuation of conservative policies with McCain or (if you listened to what the GOP was saying) socialism from the terrorist friendly Barack Hussein Obama. We all know what happened. Obama whipped McCain 365-173. In the popular vote Obama won by more than 9.5 million votes, which was the 6th largest victory margin of all time, and the largest ever by a non-incumbent.

The Dems also made large gains in Congress. In the House, Democrats captured GOP-held seats in every region, adding 19 seats to the 30 they took from Republicans in 2006 (the Dems now have a 257-178 advantage). In the Senate, Dems picked up 8 seats, bringing their total to 57 (if you count the two Independents caucusing with the Dems, it’s 59). By the way, the Dems won the governorship in MO, increasing their lead 28-22.

In addition, polls have shown that Americans are more liberal (than they probably even realize) when it comes to the vast majority of Democrat causes: universal healthcare (64%-27%!), equal rights for gays, stem cell research, more regulation of markets, equal pay for women, abortion rights, more government services (here too), unions, clean energy, increasing the minimum wage, the environment, immigration, etc.

Recent polls (here, here, and here) have also found that the Dems hold a ~10 point advantage in party identification. 

Ok, that’s today, what about the future? It's not looking good for Republicans. Young people (you know, the ones that are going to be around for a while), Blacks and Latinos (who are poised to become the majority in the US by 2050) and educated voters (presumably these are the “lemmings” my conservative friend refers to) identify more with Democrats. Also, Independents tend to lean Democrat.

In other words, contrary to the oft-repeated mantra by Republicans that the US is a “conservative country,” the votes and public opinion are actually on the Dem’s side. As Virginia Republican Congressman Tom Davis said after the election, the GOP has become “a white, rural, regional party.” He ain’t lying. The South accounted for 111 of the 173 electoral votes earned by the McCain-Palin campaign. This means that nearly two of every three electoral votes for the Republicans came from the South.

Robert Reich reminds us that history is also on the Dems’ side:

The liberal ideas that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and germinated in American soil sought—for the first time in human history—to improve the well being of all people, not just the rich and the privileged. Liberalism has stood for an economic system that betters the lives of average working people and for a democracy that gives voice to the little guy. That liberal tradition animated American abolitionists of the nineteenth century who fought against slavery. It inspired suffragettes who demanded that women have the right to vote. And it motivated civil rights workers who put their lives on the line for equal rights.

Finally, I'll Ieave you with a snip from Gary Kamiya's excellent piece in Salon:

..American conservatism no longer has any purpose except perpetuating its own power and concentrating as much wealth as possible in the hands of the already wealthy. It poses as the guardian of tradition and morality, but its obeisance to an amoral free-market ideology is far more destructive of tradition than the regulated capitalism championed by liberals. It preaches small government, but insists that abortion rights, recreational drug use and gay marriage fall within the purview of the state.

This is not a "movement" that means anything that anyone can explain. As Christopher Buckley, the son of the late William F. Buckley, intellectual father of modern American conservativism, put it in a much-discussed piece, "I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case."

The GOP stands at a crossroads. Republicans can pretend that nothing has really changed, that this is still a "center-right" nation, and that only an ill-timed economic meltdown cost them the White House. This means leaving their party in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists. The culmination of this approach would be to nominate Sarah Palin as their presidential candidate in 2016. Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

If they choose the second [option], they will not only save their party, they could help heal the grievous wounds their divisive politics have inflicted on the country.