Nathaniel

Shockey

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August 26, 2009

A Nation of Conservatives . . . a Nation of Democrats

A recent Gallup poll reported that for every American who considers himself a liberal, there are two who consider themselves conservatives. Forty percent identified themselves as conservative, 21 percent as liberal and 35 percent moderate. In fact, every single state in the United States featured more people who identified themselves as conservative than liberal.

In lieu of this data, it is especially interesting to note that only six states have more people who call themselves Republicans than Democrats.

The primary value of this data rests in word association, because the poll asked how one described his political views, and the options given were:

a) very conservative

b) conservative

c) moderate

d) liberal

e) very liberal

It didn’t ask about government size, capital punishment, gun control, abortion, free market or defense spending. So based on this poll, we can merely guess what the terms “moderate”,  “conservative” and “liberal” meant to those polled.

Reducing this poll to a political guessing game would only detract from its actual meaning, which is substantial. So the conclusions we glean from this data ought to stay true to the survey. So here are a few.

The label “conservative” is not nearly as offensive as many of us may have been led to believe. Evidently, the term “liberal” is twice as offensive.

Second, to utter the word “Republican” is still relatively offensive, while saying something such as, “My dog Spot is our household Democrat,” would be utterly vanilla.

And third, the United States’ two biggest political parties do not reflect their citizens’ politics very cleanly.

Personally, I’m much more willing to share my conservative views than the fact that I almost always vote Republican. For whatever reason, the word “Republican” seems to convey narrow-mindedness. It suggests distaste of gays, the poor and Mexican immigrants (legal or not), among other demographics.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t necessarily dislike anyone aside from Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush and the late Jerry Falwell. Anyone gutsy enough to admit an ounce of Republicanism will almost always have to follow with either a defense or denouncement of Obama’s predecessor. In fact, this may even include discussion among Republicans. For some reason, be it force of habit or perhaps just disgruntlement about Bush’s general reputation, I have a hard time talking even to someone who shares most of my political opinions without first coming to our former president’s defense.

This is why the proverbial “well” for any campaigning Democrat is to cover his opponent so completely with the Republican label that he is no longer recognizable as a human. Obama rode the Bush-train all the way to the White House, with a little help from a collapsed economy. And likewise, the go-to strategy for any campaigning Republican is to paint his opponent with about 50 coats of liberal. You may remember McCain supporters relentlessly explaining that Obama was the most liberal senator in our country.

An interesting question to ask would be: Is America more conservative or Democrat?

But the most important point of this poll is that America is still more of a conservative nation than anything else. Granted, they’re all just words. But still, if political parties shift with the wind, the words conservative and liberal at least have the decency to wait for the tide.

Most would agree that the majority of the media is liberal. Although the majority of talk radio is conservative, the hosts usually admit it. The scary thing is that many of our political representatives, including our president, seem convinced that the media is a relatively accurate sampling of our population. How else would Obama conclude that the recent outcry against his proposed health plan was simply an organized minority and not a natural representation of how most Americans actually feel about socialized medicine?

Liberals can either continue to rely on the media to paint our nation a color it simply isn’t, or they might consider doing a better job of actually representing Americans. And conservative politicians might consider spending less time worrying about being painted as Republicans and more time representing the interests of a constituency that is evidently twice as large as the constituency they fear to lose.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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