"80% of Republicans are really Democrats who don't know what's going on."

[areo64]

This was in a BRAD BLOG interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A TruthOut excerpt:

"You know I've known this for many years, because of my anecdotal experience. I give about 40 speeches a year, in red states to Republican audiences, and I get the same enthusiastic responses from those audiences as I get from Liberal college audiences. The only difference is, is that the Republicans often say to me, "How come we've never heard this before?" I made the conclusion many years ago that there's not a huge values difference between Red State Republicans and Blue State Democrats. The distinction is really informational. 80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on. And my anecdotal conclusion was confirmed by a survey done immediately after the 2004 election called the PIPA <7> report, which tested Bush supporters and Kerry supporters based upon their knowledge of current events. It found that among Bush supporters, they were widespread in its interpretations, or there were factual errors in the way that they viewed Bush's major public policy initiatives.

For example, 75% of the Republican respondents believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and 72% believed that WMD had been found in Iraq. And most of them believed that the war in Iraq had strong support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and our traditional allies in Europe, which of course is wrong. The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events. And then PIPA <8> went back twice to these same people. The first time it went back to the people that had these misinterpretations, and asked them where they were getting their news, and invariably they said talk radio and FOX news. And PIPA went back a third time, and made inquiries about their fundamental values, and it did start with a string of hypotheticals:

"What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the U.S. Invasion of Iraq had little support among Iraq's Muslim neighbors and was largely opposed by Iraq's Muslim neighbors, and by our troops and allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?" And roughly 80% of Dem and 80% of Rep said the same thing, "We should not." And so the values were the same. It was the facts, the information, it was the access to information that was different."


Living in Georgia for quite some time, I have to say that I can't agree more with Robert here. The warhawks and jingos don't know a THING. It might not be politically correct to say this, but the reason we are so militaristic a population is because we're ignorant. How many intelligent people support these constant wars (I mean besides the people waging the wars)? The mass grassroots support comes from people who've never traveled more than two counties over.

[Nikki Stone 1]

1. The information gap is really a problem, especially since FAUX insures

that it remains.

[areo64]

2. It's not even FOX's political leanings as their

complete lack of concern for anything resembling decency. They just are unprofessional and screaming, raving lunatics.

[cdsilv]

3. A Republican is a Democrat who has never been arrested....

...saw this somewhere (here, I think).