Posted by D. Cupples |
Finally, so-called liberals and conservatives agree on something: that President Bush and many congressional Republicans have done a bad job. The latest Washington Post and Gallup polls indicate this, and a poll by The Conservative Voice slams the sentiment home:
"A poll of 1,015 conservative activists and donors shows that 77 percent are either seriously disappointed with Republican Congressional leaders or want them replaced."
"The survey also found that 54 percent of conservatives feel so abandoned by current Congressional leaders and President Bush that they plan to reduce their contributions and/or grassroots work for GOP candidates in the next election...."
People of all political persuasions seem to be harboring noticeable disgust -- in some cases hostility -- toward the GOP. In yesterday's New York Times, David Brooks' piece "The Republican Collapse" gently explained it as follows:
"Over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots.... Suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing."
What Brooks seems to be saying is that neocon politicians have put ideology (and political gain) above taking care of the people's business. I think he's right, but it would have been more helpful if he'd taken off the kid gloves and said it straight out.
Under largely Republican "leadership" since 2001, our national debt passed the $9-trillion mark, government spending and waste have excelled, we Americans have found ourselves paying for a highly questionable war, and we've seen an avalanche of evidence that we cannot believe our leaders' words (e.g., WMDs, the economy is great, we do not torture...).
Eventually, people were bound to notice the great chasm between many Republicans' political rhetoric and actual policy results.
John Cole at Balloon Juice (apparently a former Republican) explains the GOP's decline with a more in-the-trenches realism than Brooks had managed to muster:
"For starters, people got tired of being associated with these drooling retards [neo-con media personalities]. Then, when they [Republican voters] realized that these drooling retards had ideological allies running the show in the Bush administration and then began to experience their idiotic policies, they moved from disgusted to outright hostile.
"Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion....
"I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.
"That is why the Republican party is in shambles. The majority of us have decided that the movers and shakers in the GOP and the blogospheric right are certified lunatics who, in a decent and sane society, we would have in controlled environments in rocking chairs under shade trees for most of the day, wheeled in at night for tapioca pudding and some karaoke." (Emphasis added.)
I don't think I can add anything to that, but we've covered recent polls in the posts linked below.
* Wall Street Journal: GOP Losing its Grip on Main Street Republicans?
* New Poll & Breakdown -- Republicans Bombing on Several Issues
* Why Democrats Beat Republicans in Gallup Poll, even on National Security
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