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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTea Party shocker: Even right-wingers become liberals when they turn off Fox News
Last edited Fri Nov 8, 2013, 03:39 PM - Edit history (1)
FRIDAY, NOV 8, 2013 07:30 AM CST
Tea Party shocker: Even right-wingers become liberals when they turn off Fox News
America's center is to the left, and even Tea Partyers are liberals when they turn off Rush and learn real facts
PAUL ROSENBERG
As the government shutdown neared its end, an NBC/Esquire poll appeared trying to promote the idea of New American Center. Salons own Alex Pareene skewered it rather mercilessly, for various good reasons, not least of which was how the whole enterprise came off: It seems like marketing for NBC and Esquire we represent the sensible (and probably affluent) center! Dont be scared of our political content, advertisers! Pareene wrote. But there was more: It is clearly very psychically important to the elite political media that a reasonable center exist. A common-sense, centrist middle is an essential, foundational myth of the nonpartisan press.
And yet, as James Fallows pointed out in Breaking the News, in 1996, todays elite media also thrives on superficial coverage of controversy, which makes it complicit in generating the very extremism it simultaneous deplores, condemns and needs to hold at bay in order to legitimate itself.
With such a profoundly self-contradictory practice, it should not surprise us that the poll was even more misleading than Pareene described. Polarization in some sense is real and yet also partial, misleading and embedded in consensus as well. Tea Partyers ranting Keep the governments hands off my Medicare! may seem comical but they also show just how broad a true consensus can be. In fact, they reflect two central (but routinely ignored) facts of American public opinion that have remained remarkably stable since the 1960s, despite all thats changed since then:
- Its not just the center vs. the extremes; there is broad consensus across the boards on the basic contours of government spending priorities the historically most important dimension of political opinion.
- Its just that the center is not where its supposed to be: Its not somewhere in between the two parties, its well to the left of the Democrats in D.C.
These two facts are both in full force with respect to the ongoing post-shutdown budget battle. In fact, a sophisticated poll covering 31 budget items as well as revenue sources conducted around the 2010 elections found that, even then, Republican, Democratic and independent voters all agreed on much higher taxes and much deeper defense cuts as the most striking elements of how the budget should be crafted. But before we examine that poll, we need to put these two key facts into long-term context.
much much more at: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/08/tea_party_shocker_even_right_wingers_become_liberals_when_they_turn_off_fox_news/
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There is way more at the link and it explains why we are so confuzzled - you "hear" one thing from the MSM about how conservative the country is, but yet when you go out into wild and talk with real people, they sure seem liberal, because you agree with most everything, which these poll's data show. Personally, I never could figure it out.
Being in the forewarned is forearmed school of thought - hopefully this will be widely read and it will shut down some of the "infiltrators" who've amassed on DU giving, in dribs and drabs, the conservative school of thought. Look at today's main page - "Limbaugh thinks this", "McConnell smacks whomever" (why are these articles allowed here) - seriously, Who Gives A Flying Fuk what any of the GOP/Teabaggers think? They are massive assholes, hate women, hate the US and what we used to stand for, especially here, on DU. I come here to get liberal viewpoints and judging from the article, I don't seem to be the only one.
Hestia
(3,818 posts)Lint Head
(15,064 posts)OldEurope
(1,273 posts)bookmarked for later
CurtEastPoint
(18,639 posts)instead of apostrophe (perhaps?) and it's looking at that as 'start italics'
Hestia
(3,818 posts)It was imbedded with the C&P. Bless you!
CurtEastPoint
(18,639 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)Thanks to DUer RC for this graphic representing federal elected officials ...
Wounded Bear
(58,647 posts)Nice article. Supports what I've suspected for a while.
The fact is that historically, liberals win when it's about policy. Conserves win on image and fantasy.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)and constant PR maneuvers from all sides just to keep 'em going
same with their pundits--the same ones their fans likened to God Almighty Himself? one year or another Anita Bryant, Dubya, Prager, Palin, or Beck provided them with every thought to think, and now nobody's out chanting "Drill here, drill now" or "The President said it, I believe it, that settles it!"