A new Gallup poll finds that:
The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
They now identify as independents, 10 years from now a majority of voters will self identify as independent of the two parties
May 20th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
“Independent” – that makes sense. I don’t want to be identified with either Nancy Pelosi or Rush Limbaugh right now …. (however correct they may be on some issues).
May 20th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I’m surprised it’s as high as it is in groups like male, $75K+, married, white, Westerner. We do tend to be around people like ourselves, but almost none of my friends and acquaintances in those groups would lean Republican. Maybe if I lived further from the Coast I’d know different people.
The difference between Midwest and West is interesting. “Main Street” states like Nebraska and Iowa have lost their moderate Republicans that represented small business owners and farmers. The self-identified sagebrush rebellion Mountain states still have their share of Yahoos in Congress.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:39 am
What is interesting is that this is asking about parties — not political philosophies. I have no doubt that many people still support conservative (traditional liberal) ideals of liberty, etc… (listen to Rush callers for 10 mins and you’ll see that). The Republican Party is a mess though.
Will Michael Steele be able to change this? Doubtful. The ‘tea parties’ on April 15 highlight that conservatives (traditional liberals) are moving away from the republican party as institution. The party is gonna have to wait for the effects of socialism (ie tax/societal costs of GM/Chrysler/35 mpg subcompacts etc.) to take hold before they see people identifying with them again.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:18 am
David,
It is a complete bastardization of classical liberalism to equate it to “conservativism” or free-market fundamentalism. Not to be too glib, but as Jack Nicholson says in Easy Rider, it’s hard to be free when you’re bought and sold in the marketplace. Noam Chomsky points out that if one were to actually read, say, 18th century classical liberal Wilhelm von Humboldt, it becomes impossible to conclude that his ideas were arguments for unfettered capitalism. Indeed, one might even suggest that – writing in the 1790s – he foreshadows the early Marx.
Lets compare them. Marx writes about the “alienation of labor when it is external to the worker,…not part of his nature,…[so that] he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself…[and is] physically exhausted and mentally debased,” alienated labor that “casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines,” thus depriving man of his “species character,” of “free conscious activity”, and “productive life.”
And, here’s “classical liberal” Humboldt, writing some 60 years before Marx: Since true human action flows from inner impulse, “it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it….[F]reedom is undoubtedly the indispensible condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very beins, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.”
So, both Marx and the classical liberal Humboldt suggest that humans are born to inquire and create, and that when a human chooses to create out of free choice he is elevated to the status of artist, as opposed to when a human is degraded and alienated from their work by compulsion. Of course the classical liberals were pre-capitalist, and had no idea what shape corporate capitalism would take. It’s reasonable, based on Humboldt’s writings, to conclude that he and other classical liberals would have been anti-capitalist, coming to the same conclusions as did Marx regarding capitalism’s deleterious impacts on liberty.
The point is that there is a long history of argument as to what “liberty” means, and I’m not going to stand back and permit free-market fundamentalists to claim that liberty is equivalent to capitalism. And, it seems possible that people responding to this current poll are perfectly able to recognize that the political ideology of republicans has been one of unbridled markets, and that people increasingly realize that “liberty” is by no means ensured through “markets”. It’s hard to be “free” when you have no house, health insurance, etc.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Until the Republicans drop juvenile tricks like renaming the Democrats and investigating Nancy Pelosi and get serious about helping fix America’s problems, they’re going to continue to sink.
On the bright side, Cheney’s approval rating has climbed from 29% to 37% with all of his TV appearances. He’s broadened his appeal to include all of the dead enders — and over half of self-described conservative Republicans.