Comments on: Polarized Polls

CBS' Kathy Frankovic: Partisan Divide Has Risen Sharply

[johnpatrick9]

The last "good" Republican was Dwight Eisenhower. Since then they've become the party of bigots, selfish rich, neo-fascists and religious nuts. As American as dog *** on my shoe.

[hawksprings]

Wow Razzl, Republicans must be really really smart to pull off this off and "drive" the Dems to where they are today.

It's been my observation that most Americans are conservative by nature, and a Democrat candidate, especially a liberal Democrat, has to pretend they are a conservative to get elected. If they campaign on their REAL beliefs they lose.

...

[jimfinster]

Well, the Repubs are not the brightest bulbs on the tree. If they had Genghis Khan as their president, their approval for him would still be 74%.

Sad to say, but the Repubs clearly value party loyalty far more than competence, integrity, and wisdom in their leaders...

[oleander8]

"How interesting that we are treated to a constant drumbeat of how low Bush's approval ratings are, but we're never told that 74% of Republicans approve of Bush and only 6$ of Dems approve."[hawksprings]

I think those numbers should be interpreted to read "of the 34% that approve of the job Bush is doing, 74% are republican, and 6% are Democrats."

[Razzl]

It has been a deliberate policy of Republican strategists since the time of Gingrich to shun diversity and demand ideological purity, so Republicans brought us to this point. Clinton, you may recall, was the product of a movement within the Democratic Party to promote centrism and was agreeable enough to the wider public that he got re-elected, so if Democrats are polarized today it's because outrageous Republican conduct and beliefs have driven them there.

It is indeed better that the parties represent clear ideologies rather than be vague country clubs for the ambitious, but Republicans can't win a war of ideas catering to religious extremists. The other ideas within conservatism--libertarian social values or free-market economics, for instance--can win elections that theocracy and militarism can't.

Opinion polls from the late '70's onward have consistently shown that the American public by a wide margin (60%) has liberal social values even if they were taught to revile the label by conservative propaganda. The larger public has always believed in women's abortion rights, gay rights, separation of church and state, and government social programs like social security. If the Republicans reject all of these values they hand the center to the Democrats in perpetuity and relinquish their rule everywhere except the rural south.

[hawksprings]

How interesting that we are treated to a constant drumbeat of how low Bush's approval ratings are, but we're never told that 74% of Republicans approve of Bush and only 6$ of Dems approve.

That puts those polls in an entirely different light.

Thanks Kathy Frankovic for pointing this out. I hope CBS doesn't fire you for this...