Months after the November election, conservatives are still wandering dazed through the cratered post-apocalyptic fever dream of an America they no longer recognize, one where a socialist tyrant somehow was democratically re-elected by a majority of voters to steal all the monies from the rich (2% of the population) and redistribute them to the poor (everyone else). “But we are a center-right nation!” the flying monkeys like George Will and David Gregory and Fuck Toad gargle and screech on the Sunday morning circle jerks that pass for entertainment in that dead time when we are just waking up to face our Saturday-night hangovers. That Barack Obama’s politics mark him as a moderate seems to forever escape the notice of the flying monkeys, as does the fact that Americans, no matter what they tell pollsters, actually kind of like many of the welfare-state policies and programs that a conservative would decry.
Few of the screeching flying monkeys screech louder or masturbate all over their monkey cages harder than Mark Levin, who today proclaims his gob utterly smacked by some recent Gallup polling showing that45%40% of the American people self-identify as conservative,30%35% self-identify as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. Please tell us why this has your blood boiling with rage, Mark Levin:
And you can’t beat Barack Obama, what is the problem here! The problem is execution! You’re being outworked! You’re being outsmarted! You’re not standing on…conservative principles! You’re not an alternative to Obama!
Mark, may we suggest an alternate explanation for those poll numbers? Maybe conservative self-identity polls so high because Americans as a whole do not really understand the whole left-right, liberal-conservative political-leanings spectrum. Because it turns out when you ask them about specific policies that might be considered even vaguely leftist, depending on how you phrase the question, they like those ideas!
For example, Medicare, which is OMG SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! When Kaiser Health, which does a lot of this sort of thing, has polled the American people and asked if they would like to change Medicare to a premium-support system where the government does not pick up nearly as much of the tab, the vast majority say “Nyet!” And when you ask if they would like a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare, but available to everyone, vast majorities say “Da!” They also are okay with requiring people to carry insurance and offering financial assistance to those who cannot afford to pass it on their own. Polls throughout Obama’s presidency have shown that if you say the word “Obamacare,” people get nervous. But poll people about individual provisions in Obamacare? They like those! It’s why GOP leaders have at least paid lip service to “repeal and replace.” As in, “We’ll get rid of the scary word Obamacare but keep everything that it does because it turns out the American people like it when the government pays for their health care.”
Or take gun control, which was not an issue during the election season but for some reason seems to have become kind of a big deal. Fully 83% of Americans in a February poll were all in favor of universal background checks for anyone wishing to buy a gun. Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines get over 50% support, though because our Senate now requires sixty votes to pass anything, today Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault-weapons ban was yanked out of the larger gun-control package. America may not really be a center-right nation, but the Senate is a center-right body at best.
Here is our contention, Mark Levin: throw out your notions and prejudices around the words “conservative” and “liberal” and “center-right nation” (that last one in particular really gets on yr Wonkette’s nerves). The vast majority of Americans are too busy worrying about their jobs, their commute, their next meal, their aging parents, their desire to cheat on their spouses with the young hot thang in the next cubicle at work, driving the kids to soccer practice, whether Virgin Bachelor Sean will pick Catherine or Lindsay, what asshole put a dent in the fender while the car was parked at the mall, and other such every-day mundanities. They do not know if an idea is liberal or conservative, just whether it sounds fucking good and might relieve a tiny bit of the pressure and stress they feel as they slog through this long Ionesco comedy we call life. Fewer guns around to out of nowhere kill you or a loved one? Sure, cool. Government picking up the tab for your insanely expensive health care? Sounds awesome. Agreeing with something Mark Levin said so he can continue to win liberal-vs-conservative arguments with the crazed shrieking voices in his head that constantly taunt him and drive him towards madness? Nobody gives a shit, Mark Levin.
Nobody.
“And the Republican Party is going to split, and there’s going to be two parties.”
He says that like it's a bad thing.
Burke & Montesquieu? I think there's one at the mall -- their prices for silk neckties are ridiculous.