No wonder conservatives don’t believe in evolution. The annual Values Voter Summit gives an interesting view into how the conservative mind works, or in some cases doesn’t.
People there are worried that Mitt Romney is losing the election. Well, duh. But of course they think that the problem is that he isn’t conservative enough. A leader of the American Family Association, which co-sponsors the event, complained about the speech by Paul Ryan “He didn’t say one single word about marriage. This is the safest environment in the United States of America to talk about marriage. I’ve got to believe that that came from on top. Marriage won 61-39 in North Carolina—in 2012! That’s in a state that President Obama won in 2008. Marriage is a winner. It’s just a mystery to me that they won’t touch this thing.”
He seriously thinks that the reason they are losing support is because Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan aren’t complaining about gay marriage enough.
Social conservatives believe in miracles, because they are still hopeful about Romney and Ryan’s chances. As Mike Huckabee put it in an email “Before you decide the election is over based on September polls, remember that coming out of the 1988 Democratic convention, Gallup showed an insurmountable 17-point lead for that great former president, Michael Dukakis.” What he fails to mention is that the Republican convention happened after the Democratic convention, and George H.W. Bush erased that lead. While Romney/Ryan received almost no bounce after their convention.
Also at the conference was William Temple, the “Tea Party Patriot” who dresses up in colonial garb and yells “Huzzah!” when he agrees with something. But he’s worried too. “We picked probably the weakest candidate we could. Someone like a Herman Cain or a Michele Bachmann would have ’em fired up.”
I think he’s on to something. The Republicans really missed an opportunity to show us what a Michele Bachmann presidential campaign would look like. That would show us! We definitely need more “Pants on Fire” lies in our politics.
And after the election, these same conservatives will never admit the real problem, even though Rick Santorum pretty much spelled it out for them at the conference. Santorum said “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”
For once we agree.
And Santorum seems to want to keep it that way. He sharply criticized the only wing of the Republican party that seems to attract “smart people”, the libertarians. “When it comes to conservatism, libertarian types can say, oh, well you know, we don’t want to talk about social issues.” Santorum claims this won’t work, because “Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”
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Look at this photo, graphing belief in evolution to per capita GDP and note that everythuing generally fits the curve, except for the US which is the sole outlier.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=473436639344019&set=a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035&type=1&ref=nf
It has been shown that the more education someone has, the more likely they are to have liberal views. I think that is because the higher the level of education you complete, the more you have been forced to test your hypothesis against facts, abandon them when proven false, and seriously consider other points of view.
Maybe after campaign finance reform, real education reform is the best thing we can do for the country.
Oh yea, Michelle Bachman was the more viable candidate. The woman who only got 80% of the votes that she literally paid for at the Iowa Straw Polling.
Republicans NEED to keep the abortion and gay rights issues around forever. So it’s unlikely that they will make abortion illegal. In fact, they’ve set such a goal so difficult to reach–an amendment to make abortions illegal–that it is impossible to reach. This keeps the issue alive. This keeps the anti-abortion crowd voting for them Some for gay rights. There is no one less in touch with life’s realities than Tea Partiers, though garden variety conservatives are not far behind. What a bunch of idiots. If they make more gains in this election I’ll almost certainly leave this country.
Remember, it was on Mitt Romney’s watch that Massachusetts became the first state to mandate health insurance and allow gay marriage. Okay, on the latter his veto was overruled, but still.
I would laugh so hard if Obama brought this up in the debates.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein.
The Cons can try going more and more conservative, pushing further to the right, and they can expect to have more success when they do. But they’ll end up doing nothing more than driving themselves into complete obscurity, and hopefully at that point more common-sense Republicans can retake control of their party, and bring it back to the table to do things like governing.
Issues like abortion, gay rights, and evolution are rallying cries. They represent old Republican talking points that were taken seriously by the hard Right, who now represent the controling body of the party. They were used to create solid voting blocs. Conservatives can deny evolution all they want, and they can deny rights to women and gays all they want. They are already in denial about changing demographics in America, to the point of believing that it must be a Liberal conspiracy to allow illegals into the country so they will vote Democrat. Republicans are firmly stuck in the past, and it will take a major jolt (like losing Congress and the White House, perhaps) to get them into the 21st Century.
Arthanyel – “the more education someone has, the more likely they are to have liberal views”. I’d have to disagree. I see plenty of poor uneducated people who have “liberal views” and plenty of poor uneducated people who have “conservative views”. What I see the most of are people who have mixed views. For instance I amd a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I believe in a strong, but flexible military. I am greatly dissappointed in most major political personalties, because they ALL flip flop to get the vote. They must or their base will vote them out and they’ll never attain majot status. Point in case Romney “evolving” on Obamacare to oppose it while Obama “evolved” on gay marriage to approve of it. Clearly both moves were made to appease the party base.
I know on this site there are many there are many like minded contributers to myself. We may disagree on the how to, but often agree on the need for change.
Psgt: I wasn’t stating an opinion, just a fact. The higher the level of education a person has completed, the more likely they are to vote liberal. But your statement is also true – the LOWER the level of education complete, the more likely someone is to vote liberal. Conservatives tend to be better represented in high school graduates and bachelor’s-level.
You know that I am in the same boat as you – fiscally conservative, socially more liberal. And neither party represents my views. At this moment in time (and for the last decade and more) unfortunately the Republican party appears to represent people that don’t care about the truth and will do anything to win, and therefore I can’t support them.
Agreed Arthanyel- I would also venture a guess that it depends also on what type of higher education one attains that influences their beliefs and party affiliations.
I am still not sold on any candidate; I’ll wait for the debates and then make a decision while holding my nose.
I’d really like to see 5 different parties:
Liberal/progressives
Democrats
Republicans
TEA Party/conservatives
Libertarians
Psgt: If we could have those 5 parties then we would really be able to make something happen – and I think people would be pleasantly surprised how many times the Republicans and Democrats worked together to get things implemented.