GOP Brand Has Declined Since Obama Took Office, According To New Polling Data

[shagdrum]

The larger point is that liberalism and socialism are contrary to the human spirit.

Individualism vs. Collectivism.

Liberty vs. Tyranny.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

You initially stated that you thought the Democrat party was in decline because of their "willingness to bend over backwards to accommodate the GOP during this health care debate."

And you went on to later expand upon the point saying, "The progressive left has been plenty angry at Obama for several things...... What we now have in both bills from the House and Senate in the form of “public options” have been significantly watered-down from pressure from both the GOP and blue-dogs."

Dude, you’ve lost yourself in your own circular argument.

YOU pointed out (correctly) that both parties are in decline. I agreed and explained why I think the Dems are losing support (willingness to accommodate the GOP).

You said “That's absurd to think that the Democrats are loosing support because you don't think they are radical enough.” I responded that progressives are dropping support for the Dems for several reasons, and listed those reasons which are clear indications that Obama and the Congressional Dems are not “radical enough” for their taste. “Independent” does not necessarily mean “moderate” or middle of the road politically, it also collects the fringes. Far left progressives will tend to claim “independent” when disillusioned with the Dems, JUST LIKE the far right conservatives are claiming “independent” when disillusioned with the GOP.

So, let's avoid the misleading language and just talk about what's really at stake here. A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM.

How about instead of moving the goal posts and discussing something that is clearly NOT what I was talking about and has been covered ad-nausiem in other threads, we stay on topic with the decline of the GOP?

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B287C056-18FE-70B2-A88C6D5F0E6061E5

Conservatives take aim at leaders, Crist, other races
By: Jim VandeHei and Alex Isenstadt
November 2, 2009 05:15 AM EST
The conservative coup in upstate New York did much more than lay bare the power of conservative activists: It exposed how little control GOP officials hold over this surging and formidable political movement.

In the wake of conservatives’ role in forcing liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava out of Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 23rd District, GOP officials are trying to make it seem as if they are helping to stoke the passion — and can harness it to upend President Barack Obama and Democrats. They didn’t — and they can’t.

Many of the activists who helped knock out Scozzafava told POLITICO that the passion is building despite — and sometimes to spite — Republican leaders in Washington.

“I don’t give a crap about party,” said Jennifer Bernstone, a tea party organizer for Central New York 912, which helped to lead the anti-Scozzafava charge. “Grass-roots activists don’t care about party.”

Says Everett Wilkinson, a tea party organizer in Florida: “We are not going to allow our [movement] to be stolen by the GOP or by any political party.”

This energy on the right seems to exist outside the control of the conventional political structure, and GOP politicians and operatives are as likely to be victims of this anger as beneficiaries.

GOP leaders are about to learn the lesson again, several conservatives warned. Grass-roots activists are ready to turn their fire on Republicans in a host of races across the country, said Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, an organization that helped gin up the tea party protests and town hall flare-ups.

“If you look at other bellwether races, we’re still going to be on opposing sides,” said Brandon, who pointed to the Florida Senate race, where a conservative former state House speaker is taking on GOP-establishment-backed Gov. Charlie Crist as the next major conservative electoral stand.

“There are going to be other conflicts,” said Brandon. “We have a lot of work to do. The [Doug] Hoffman campaign was the beginning. It was not the climax.”

Tom Davis, former head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said this rage against the GOP machine might feel good for disgruntled conservatives, but it could also land Republicans deep in the minority for years to come.

“It becomes a challenge for Republicans to harness this energy in an appropriate fashion,” he said. “Part of the responsibility of the minority is to harness the energy against the majority.”

Still, he warned, load on too many conservatives, and they will “sink the boat.”

To be blunt, many conservative activists couldn’t care less what Davis and top party officials think about them and their brand of politics.

They feel they were had by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who urged them to stomach earmarks for the good of the party; by George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who urged them to stomach a massive expansion of education and Medicare for the good of the party; and by the rest of the Washington gang that collaborated in the largest expansion of government in their lifetime for the good of the party.

Erick Erickson, founder and editor of the conservative RedState blog, said grass-roots activists are done listening.

“Republicans are going to have to come our way,” he said, before going on to trash NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for backing Scozzafava.

Their “level of disingenuousness ... is disgusting,” Erickson said.

His influential blog is now calling for Sessions to get the boot from the NRCC as a penalty for mishandling the race.

Erickson’s bombast may seem overboard, but it captures the depths of anger over the handling of this special election. It’s not just that Scozzafava wasn’t conservative — she was very liberal on abortion, unions and gay marriage and even left the impression she might join the Democrats once elected.

Indeed, on Sunday, the day after pulling out of the race, she endorsed Democrat Bill Owens.

“There is already a party for people who think like that,” conservative columnist George Will said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“It’s called the Democratic Party.”

Right now, the power, the energy, the momentum — and the results — are on the side of the conservative activists.

The newest incarnation of confrontational conservatism — driven more by animosity toward government and Obama than by the social passions of the 1990s — has plenty of energy and bodies to turn out big crowds at tea party events, hijack congressional town hall meetings as it did in August and defeat a GOP-establishment-backed House candidate.

It also has leaders with louder microphones than those of House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Facebook page, Rush Limbaugh and his radio show and Glenn Beck with his popular 5 p.m. slot on Fox News.

Those commentator-entrepreneurs are far better known and are considerably more influential with the conservative grass roots than the GOP’s Washington leaders — congressional Republicans such as Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey and even Steele have both been forced to call Limbaugh to apologize after making critical statements about him to the media — yet they carry unmistakable downside risk. Not only are they unpopular with many moderate voters, but they also have histories of saying wildly impolitic things.

Make no mistake: There is a huge divide between the public rants of this activist wing and the private angst of party leaders in D.C.

Numerous GOP officials have told POLITICO they worry that the party has been hijacked by a noisy and powerful minority that will keep the GOP in a noisy and not-so-powerful minority for a long time.

It will be impossible for GOP leaders to make this case anytime soon. The trick, instead, will be to find common ground on running conservative candidates who appeal to activists but can also run campaigns not entirely predicated on the hardest edges of their conservatism.

The Virginia governor’s race, which will also be decided Tuesday, could be the prototype for this kind of compromise. Until then, Charlie Crist should get ready for a rumble.

Here's an August poll from Rasmusen that shows only 32% support a Single Payer System.

OOohhh!!! You found ONE (relatively ancient) poll that supports your argument, FROM A PREVIOUSLY DISCREDITED, BIASED SOURCE. Whoopeee! Here’s a cookie.

And, could you try to tone it down a little bit. Your angry, hateful simpleton routine is getting old.

Tell you what, Cal. As soon as I see some consistency from you calling for others to “tone it down”, such as in this post:

You're a sh*tty little snark, fox. You don't listen to Rush, you don't have the first clue what he said or what he meant. You think you know everything, but you're ignorant and clueless. You conveniently ignore all of Shag's points while perpetuating your stupid little smear. Your carbon footprint is more than the rest of the world can bear. Go take a flying f**k at a rolling doughnut.

…… I’ll think about “toning it down” a little bit. Until then, kiss my a$$.

:blah: :blah: :blah:

:sleep: Somebody wake me up if this guy EVER says something that lifts his credibility back up from ZERO.

Oh, and lastly…..

As Shag pointed out, even this survey was bogus based upon it's sampling data. You don't need to take Shag's word for that, LARRY SABATO made the statement. If you're not familiar with Sabato, and I don't think you are, I suggest you read some of his work.

#1: The original article referenced Pollster data, which is the average of SEVERAL DIFFERENT polls trended over a long period of time, not just the one WaPo/ABC poll. But it’s nice to see that you and Shag see nothing wrong with supporting an “analyst” who builds straw-men arguments from cherry-picked data.

#2: I don’t care who made what statement, if it comes via “Twitter”, it has ZERO credibility. But it’s good to know you and Shag hold hearsay in such high regard. “I saw it on Twitter so it MUST be TRUE!!” :bowrofl:

#3: As I had stated earlier, the party ID data was a fall-out data product from the poll. ANY CREDIBLE poll will include these results in the report so the reader can take the rest of the results for what its worth. IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT A SHRINKING NUMBER OF RESPONDENDTS, TO THIS AND MANY OTHER POLLS WHERE DATA IS COLLECTED FROM RANDOMLY SELECTED PEOPLE, ARE EMBARRASSED TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE GOP. This data is NOT the result of the poll takers intentionally biasing their pool of respondents to under-represent Republicans as you and Shag are attempting to argue. The ONLY shred of evidence either of you have provided to the contrary is a lame “analysis” that merely compares one poll’s results with data from other polls taken at different times that just happen to be different in the direction that helps support their argument. Talk about cherry-picked data. It cannot be denied that the trend of hundreds of polls over the last year as shown by Pollster’s graphic shown in my original post, is what it is.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

There may be a large pool of independent or undecided voters waiting to be swayed in one party direction or another. But they aren't trending Republican. If anything, they are staying away.

Amazing what 3 weeks and an election can do.......

Seems those independents are swinging back towards the dems, while the repugs continue their slide towards oblivion.

 

[foxpaws]

I hope the GOP does something - they are floundering, especially on a national level, and are going to be split into ineffectual factions if they don't get their act together.

 

[fossten]

I hope the GOP does something - they are floundering, especially on a national level, and are going to be split into ineffectual factions if they don't get their act together.

You're such a phony. You don't hope for any such thing. This is yet another of the long running examples of your dissimulation.

 

[shagdrum]

Amazing what 3 weeks and an election can do.......

Seems those independents are swinging back towards the dems, while the repugs continue their slide towards oblivion.

Again, Pollster is not an actual poll but an average of ALL the polls. To cite that as you would an actual poll is to mislead.

 

[Calabrio]

According to gallup, Republicans edge ahead of Democrats in 2010 elections:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124226/Republicans-Edge-Ahead-Democrats-2010-Vote.aspx

 

[foxpaws]

You're such a phony. You don't hope for any such thing. This is yet another of the long running examples of your dissimulation.

I have voted for many, many republicans, including this past election. I have stated many times in this forum that a one party system sucks. Heck a two party system isn't great.

I believe Foss your hypocrisy continues to stem from this need you have to attack me on personal levels.

Fine, your ammunition is really of a rather small caliper... a mere annoyance actually.

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

Fine, your ammunition is really of a rather small caliper... a mere annoyance actually.

Did you mean to say "caliber"? Or were you saying he needs calipers to measure it? :bowrofl:

 

[foxpaws]

Did you mean to say "caliber"? Or were you saying he needs calipers to measure it? :bowrofl:

I leave it to Foss - he can decide whether I meant a .17 caliber or if I was referring to the measuring device...

 

[fossten]

Fox, I call 'em like I see 'em. If you can't take it, leave.

And it's caliber, not caliper.

Please, keep your fantasies about my size to yourself. We already know your sizes.

 

[Calabrio]

Back on topic,
to repeat what I mentioned earlier:

Republicans Edge Ahead of Democrats in 2010 Vote
Registered voters prefer Republicans for the House, 48% to 44%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124226/Republicans-Edge-Ahead-Democrats-2010-Vote.aspx

So the DNC brand bump following the election was very short lived. Just long enough for the public to start understanding what the Democrat party really stands for and advocates now, a radical differences compared to the way they market themselves during election campaigns.