Republican party identification, which had already been at fairly low levels, in fact appears to have slumped further since Inauguration Day, although the gains are being had not among Democrats but by voters who identify themselves as independent.
Several polls conducted within the last week have attracted attention for their notably low levels of self-reported Republican voters. In particular, ABC/WaPo reported the number of Republicans as 21 percent, CBS/NYT at 20 percent, NBC/WSJ also at 20 percent (not counting "leaners"), and Pew at 22 percent.
FOX, by contrast, which generally reports higher numbers of Republicans and Democrats but fewer independents, put the number of GOPers at 30 percent (although this nevertheless represents a decline from most of their recent polling). Rasmussen put the number of Republicans at 33.2 percent in March, essentially unchanged from recent months; they have yet to report their results from April.
The following chart combines the numbers from these six organizations since August 2008, while adding LOESS regression trendlines.
Per the LOESS curves, the number of Republicans has decreased by about 5 percent since Inauguration Day, from roughly 27 percent to 22 percent. The number of Democrats has also decreased slightly, however, from 38 percent to 35-36 percent. The gains have been made by independents, whose numbers have increased from 30 percent to about 36 percent, such that there are now roughly equal numbers of independents and Democrats.
The shifts in the number of Republicans and independents appears to be a somewhat recent phenomenon, dating not from Inauguration Day itself but rather from the past 50 days or so. My guess is that it is related to increasing -- if possibly unwarranted -- optimism about the economy, perhaps coupled with the GOP's lack of focus in articulating an agenda.
4.30.2009
Party of No(body)?
@ 9:33 AM
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103 comments
maybe the tea parties drove them away?
To give some additional perspective on the current blip in party affiliation, could you provide charts of similar polls going back say 1 and 5 years?
Interesting that some polls apparently indicate nearly twice as many independents as other polls do.
I figure the turning point was Barack Obama's speech to Congress on Feb. 24 and Bobby Jindal's poorly-received response to it.
Didn't democrat affiliation numbers drop under the Bush administration early?
Here is data shoing the drop in repub affiliation is a continuation of a trend from 2004 onward...
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1207/republican-party-identification-slips-nationwide-pennsylvania-specter-switch
...and here is data showing the drop in dem affiliation after the 2000 election.
Lets hope the dems hold onto these people longer...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/26308/Democratic-Edge-Partisanship-2006-Evident-National-State-Levels.aspx
@justsomeguy
Yes but the bottom never dropped out like it has with the GOP. This is a drop following 4 years of decline. I suspect Nate's title might be part of it. If people do believe that the GOP is the Party of No, and polling data has suggested so, this makes sense.
Much to the chagrin of the actual politicians I'm sure, the "entertainers" like Rush have become the face of the GOP. An ugly, divisive and unappealing face. When the widely perceived face is a farcical collection of losers, malcontents, and hucksters it's hardly surprising that people don't want to be identified with that.
maybe its time to think of a third party to replace the republicans, but on the left. maybe the rise of a socialist party would force all but the radical right to join the dems thus obsoleting the republicans to maybe(just a guess) >10%? if we could get even 10% in a socialist party, the dems would be the moderates (whats new?) running the show there would at least socialism would be on the main stream political american scene more than just Sen Sanders
Great to see independents marking big gains :) I'm not a big fan of parties.
"Independent" is mostly just another term for "Republican, but too embarrassed to admit it."
I've seen the trend of people who are R's claiming to be I's on various message boards and find it humorous to see the data backing up my anecdotal experience.
There are two components to such shifting reported PartyID numbers: (1) changing response rates by different partisan groups, and (2) changing partisanship (party ID) at the individual level.
As for the first component, demoralization of GOP identifiers is likely to make them less likely than Democrats to respond to the survey at all, thereby skewing the party ID results. That there are two components also means that the reported party ID division in the graphic that you've produced may be skewed in by differential response rates -- not only by shifting party ID at the individual level.
So any possible future resurgence of GOP identification could come about as a result of both of these two components as well.
@Nate: Doesn't Rasmussen weight their surveys by party ID? True, they change the weights periodically, but if they haven't done so recently this would retard their estimates of the GOP loss in identifiers.
I see two phenomenon:
1. Some fraction of those recently feeling more party identification with Democrats getting scared by the endless screeching about "socialism!" coming from the right-wing noise machine
2. Some fraction of long-time Republicans being turned off by the spiraling lunacy of those right-wing activists turned on by the screeching
Juris makes some great points, a rarity in the commentary.
I do not know what to think about the decline of the Republican label. I would like to see the breakdown by geographic region.
ANES uses a 7-point scale; but acknowledging that independent leaners are often partisans in disguise, the number of true independents can and should be minimized when collapsing the categories into three. In this event, especially with the ANES, I don't think you're going to see quite the precipitous decline that we are finding in snapshot polling.
The question is why the Republicans are losing people. That would be real interesting.
For example, people who were disappointed with liberals like McCain having too much influence, or people who felt that the Republican party has moved too far to the right that it no longer represents them.
If it is the former, the Republican party might actually be in better shape. Without the extreme right of the party, they can afford to move more to the center. And, they can still count on the vote of these independents.
If it is the later group, it means these people may be declaring their independence from the party as the first step to becoming regular Democratic voters. After all, if you live in the NY-20 congressional district, how many Democrats do you have to vote for before you decide you're a Democrat after all?
New Jersey use to have an extremely viable Republican party. Unfortunately, the base of the party comes out during Republican primaries and elect the most right wing guy on the ballot. Come the general election, the Democrat creams the Republican candidate.
Now moderate Republicans are leaving the party because they see no future in it. The party's finances are in bad shape, and New Jersey has gone from a Bluish/Purple hue to deep blue. At one time, New Jersey could have been a swing state during the Presidential elections, but no more.
The Republicans should look closely at New Jersey and see what could happen to their party if they're not careful.
Is there a component of people identifying as independent to claim that they are above the petty partisan bickering, politics as usual, etc.?
Almost like an appeal to authority fallacy there is an idea that protests from independents are free from party politics and therefore somehow more legitimate. Members of the minority party try to cast themselves as closer to the True opinions of America when you move beyond the two parties.
Or it could be fiscal conservatives can't remember any fiscally conservative party.
Thanks Ken!
As far as the ANES goes, AFAIK a lot of researchers just rely on the responses to the first question and not the follow-up that determines which way the "independents" lean. Some do take those leaners ("independent Democrats" and "independent Republicans) and put them into a party category rather than leaving them as independents.
I think there's another issue in how ANES (American National Election Study) researchers treat the responses, however, that could be very significant in the context of a possible resurgence of "libertarian" thinking. Namely, in response to the first ANES party ID question, some respondents Refuse, some say "Don't Know" (DK), and some say "other."
During a period in which there appears to be a lot of shifting, or simply turmoil in party ID, it's very important to decide what to do with the DK's, Refuses, and "Others." Most researchers drop the Refuses. But what about the DK's and Others? Some researchers put both groups into the middle ("Independent") category. But there's good reason to doubt that either the DK's or the "others" belong in that category. Further, there's good reason to doubt that the DK's are similar in demographics or political orientation to the "others."
I would be interested in knowing whether there is good published research on these analytic decisions -- on allocating the DK's and Others in party ID analyses. And then somebody needs to go back to the beginning of the ANES -- 1948, say -- and see not just how many respondents fall into these two categories but how things may have shifted over time.
Nate (who posted the second comment)…
“Maybe the tea parties drove them away?”
Ha! Nothing like a few well placed scrota to send the evangelicals screaming for the exits…
@"Nate": The comment on tea parties is interesting to me, because it seems like it could work in a couple ways. The tea parties weren't conceived of by the Republican party institution, and generally aren't much more supportive of it than they are of the general institution of government. It's at its core a hard libertarian movement, anti-authority and anti-institutional. So when the party mouthpieces and leadership started to latch on to this type of movement, that move could scare away moderate-to-conservative Republicans that previously felt fairly well-represented by the institutions of government and party. There's another group that could be affected, though -- libertarian Republicans. Those with whom the tea parties resonated would be just as likely to drop the Republican identity for an independent one (even if it meant voting R most of the time in practice).
5 percentage POINTS, Nate, not 5 percent.
But seriously, folks…
The likelihood that so many people (from 27% to 22%) actually switched or abandoned parties between Election Day and Inauguration Day is pretty slim. What this survey surely reflects is the embarrassment Republicans feel in identifying themselves as part of the GOP. Not that I blame them, but I’d like to see a survey that controlled for that impulse, otherwise results like these can’t be relied upon.
For example, if some scandal involving President Obama would suddenly surface you’d see an instantaneous swing back in the other direction.
The intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican right can be readily accessed by listening to their spokesmen. Hannity , Rush, Mark Levin, Monica Crowley. Barack Obama is “weak” He just reads the teleprompter – he doesn’t even know what he is saying. No explanation for the global meltdown and bank failure. Prescriptive solutions unrelated to the current reality ie more tax cuts for the rich, cut government spending, spewing hatred of government workers –they aren’t even jobs. Do they mean policemen , firemen, teachers, librarians, professors at public universities, employees of the Post Office, members of the Armed Forces, National Institutes of Health, E$PA, OSHA, Federal Reserve, Justice Department, Forestry Service, Coast Guard, State department, Ameri-Corps, Peace Corps, Nation Institute of Health, the National Center for Disease Control, NASA, the National Weather Service, the folks who pick up our garbage who build and maintain our water and sewage systems I could go on and on. If government isn’t the solution what is? If the problem is less demand leading to less employment leading to less investment leading to less employment leading to less…. Tax cuts?? Give me a break. Obama caused this?? Give me a break. Torture keeps us safe?
Obama’s message of hope rebuilding America’s infrastructure, attacking climate change through developing our own new energy resources nuclear, win, solar, geothermal, yes providing affordable healthcare for al American’s and guaranteeing access to a College Education to all American’s this is “Pork” This is Fiscally irresponsible? After $3 trillion wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan I could go on and on. White Southern Males may be attracted to this Limbaugh’s incoherent mess ,but the rest of the world is ready to move on. Just wait for the first Tuesday in November of next year. John Shelley
Actually, the tea parties may have driven alot of people away.
Like I've said in the past, the majority of the electorate is not a hardcore member of either party, and would rather focus on their daily lives than politics. The party that comes off as sane, reasonable, and more likely to think things through wins.
The party that can't articulate why exactly they're pissed off, disrupts without a clear reason to disrupt, is percieved as annoying and kinda crazy.
Especially when they start talking about secession. That just reinforces the image that the GOP collectively has the maturity of a 15 year old boy.
It would be interesting to add in how independents lean into this data (I know many pollsters ask this question when people identify themselves as Independents). That would add some color to what is happening here. The real question is, are moderates and moderate conservatives moving to the left because of a preceived failure of conservative ideology, or do they just not feel comfortable associating with the Republican party as it moves more and more to the right?
I suspect it has more to do with the latter than the former. Though I do think that there is a certain portion of the population that is not really that concerned with ideology, and are more concerned with being on the side of the "winner."
Two points:
1. Isn't party ID something that is independently verifiable based on registration data? For example, if a poll concluded that only 34% of the population were female, we would rightly question the poll methods instead of ask where are all the women.
2. Party ID and ideology are not the same thing. Look at the findings of the Pew study in March 09 which found something like 70% of the country still in favor of free markets even though they have sever ups and downs. Even half the Democrats still voted for Capitalism over Socialism in a Rassmussen poll.
The problem the R's have is that Social Conservatism has no natural ideological connection to Free Markets or so called "fiscal conservatism." It was at best a marriage of convenience. When the R's ditched fiscal conservatism in the Bush years, there was no benefit of the coalition holding together.
Less Republicans, not less conservatives. That's what's really going on, in my opinion. I've been telling people for years that I'm "a conservative but not a Republican." That's because Bush abandoned traditional conservative principals by essentially deciding that big government was good, so long as it was big because of the military, not because of social programs. He pretty much left a lot of us "real conservatives" behind, while most of the Repubs in power choose to tow the party line for just about all of his presidency -- right up until they realized they needed to abandon him. Ultimately they waited too long and they got their asses handed to them at election time.
I've mentioned before that there are two factions in the Repub party right now, the big-business types and libertarian types. The libertarian types just assume the party won't go their direction, and are probably starting to identify as independents more often.
As long as it's the party of Bush and Cheney, it's going to get worse and worse for them
But Matthew, how do you reconcile that with the recent face of the GOP. For example Jindal's speech wasn't all about "fuck the government"? The tea bagging was nominally about taxes. The GOP in Congress have been hitting the "tax cuts" drum repeatedly and endlessly.
... and the result is really low party ID numbers dropping another 25%?
How much of the upswing in Independents and downswing in Dems and Reps in April is due to there being no Fox poll to include? If their poll so biased, their exclusion could account for a significant portion of the April's change.
"For example, people who were disappointed with liberals like McCain having too much influence, or people who felt that the Republican party has moved too far to the right that it no longer represents them."
Both, both, 1000 times both. So long as both parties offer a paternalistic government (drug prohibition etc.)that will reduce freedoms (campaign finance restrictions etc.) and run the economy to the ground (bailouts etc.) and ruin our future, why stick with the party with the nonsense social conservatism (creationism etc.)?
This is great news!! For INDEPENDENT MAVERICK John McCain!!!!
When times are good, its easy to ignore reality in favor of fantasy. The stock market is up, unemployment is down, and the deficit is small (like when Clinton left office)-they can start to attribute how blessed they are to god's grace. In our society to claim credit for doing the smart thing, the right thing, is percieved as arrogance. We're not allowed to say, "The reason why our country is doing well right now is because we did the right thing". No, we'd rather attribute anything good to god.
When times are bad, people can either 1) blame everything on the devil and take zero personal responsibility or 2) take personal responsibility, decide they're not going to repeat the same foolish mistakes, and start doing the opposite of what got them into this mess.
Option 1 is the GOP model. Anything good comes from god, anything bad comes from the devil, mankind has no real power or responsibility-like we were a race of permanent children with two cosmic dysfunctional parents that are always fighting, like we were stuck in an eternal divorce court waiting for the judge to determine whether we spend weekends with god or Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays with satan.
Option 2 is the Democratic Party. Our central philosophy is that if it hurts to bang your head against a wall, stop. Don't waste time imagining that the devil is causing the pain in your head or that its god's will that you keep pounding away, just stop hurting yourself.
Its okay to believe in god. You still have to accept some responsibility for your actions, though. In the end, god isn't making you harm yourself, and neither is the devil. You are your own devil. And its only by learning self-control that you can stop the bleeding.
Yes WE can. There's this old joke down here about some hurricane from ages ago, when this guy is trapped on his roof from the flooding, and a guy comes by in a boat and tells him to climb aboard. The guy on the roof refuses, saying god will save him. A second guy comes by a few days later, and the guy on the roof is hungry, hasn't had any fresh water in more than a day, and really needs to get in the damn boat. But he still declines the offer for a ride to dry land, for the same reason. Lastly, a third boat comes by when the guy on the roof is half-dead, and he still refuses, claiming all the while that his faith is so strong there's gonna be this dramatic miracle and the sky's gonna open up and there'll be some golden chariot coming down from heaven to give him a ride to safety.
Well, the chariot never comes. Dude dies. And when he gets to heaven, he asks god why he didn't come to help.
God responds, "I sent you three boats, asshole. It's your job to get in"
Now, with this financial crisis, its only going to get better if we fix it. Global Warming isn't going to stop unless we get in the boat (the Rainbow Warrior, perhaps?). You can't pray the Swine Flu away, but you can wash your hands.
Gof helps those that help themselves. Now is the time to take personal responsibility, instead of waiting for some dramatic miracle to save us. We are our own miracle.
Yes, we most definitely can.
Note that it went from R to I just when the stimulus passed. Up until then the inflection point there was some hope that the Republicans would engage the President. These new independents do not necessarily agree with the President on his solutions but they did want some bipartisanship. In short it's the moderate Republicans going buh-bye. Unlike Senator Specter we don't know if they will become Democrats.
Whenever a Republican whines about the deficit, all anyone has to do in reply is quote Dick Cheney, who said, when Bush proposed his enormous budget-busting tax cuts for the rich, "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
So either Reagan, Cheney or the entire GOP philosophy is just plain wrong.
There are three factors coming into play at once. First is a rejection of the current incarnation of the negative party and its spokesmen. The wedge cultural issues are not seen as being particularly important, and snarling negativity without solutions is not a winning ticket during the Great Recession.
Second is a long-term continued decline in strong party ID, particularly with younger voters. Some of thse voters will continue to vote for one party all the time, but their party identificaiton isn't strong.
Third is the Obama phenomenon, outside the South, where moderate Republicans like the President, and don't like the way the Republicans have been attacking him and his family.
I too was surprised that Specter became a Democrat instead of an Independent. Probably had to do with primary logistics--as a Democrat he will have a smoother ride to re-election.
wv readem: ...and weep
Ah . . . such a civil and insightful comment section when the trolls are away.
The article out today in the Crystal Ball also supports the death & dearth of the GOP.
Hoping Nate will also do a follow-up on the stats regarding the wide divide in the youth voter alignment as documented.
"According to the 2008 national exit poll, 18-29 year-olds made up 18 percent of the electorate and they cast 66 percent of their votes for Obama vs. 32 percent for his Republican rival, John McCain."
Highly recommend reading:
'The Obama Generation'
Celebrity Worshippers or Responsible Citizens? by Alan Abramowitz
@
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article.php?id=AIA2009043001
"When times are good, its easy to ignore reality in favor of fantasy...we'd rather attribute anything good to god."
Really? My impression is as societies become more successful, they become less religious. On the other hand, from my studying about the plague in Europe, collapse led to both greater religious and libertine behavior.
"Now, with this financial crisis, its only going to get better if we fix it."
Depends what you mean by "crisis", "only", "we", and "fix".
If you mean to solve the problems created by excessive federal borrowing and even more excessive spending with more of the same, I foresee another crisis on the horizon.
If your definition of "fix" is to have no company go bankrupt and no one get a penny less pension than he was promised, no matter how transparently impossible fulfilling his union negotiated contract was or his age when he retired, then I guess the only way *is* to put it on the federal tab.
Just don't tell me action is always better than inaction, or your way is the "only way".
"We are our own miracle"
Individually, I would agree with the sentiment, if not in the supernatural. But if you mean collectively, you are just as short a step from justifying authoritarianism as the right when you use religion. Which is a big problem with religions, and leftists are uniquely blind to this because at least the right has the left calling them on it all the time.
Matthew said...
Less Republicans, not less conservatives. That's what's really going on, in my opinion. I've been telling people for years that I'm "a conservative but not a Republican."
+1
Obama is the conservative right now, not in the sense of the Social Conservatives or the Libertarians, but in the sense of Edmund Burke, whom the Republicans now reject as just another lousy tax-and-spend Liberal/Socialist/Communist/[epithet deleted]. ^_^
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy...Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.
Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)
Glad to see a post on politics rather than on disease. I was beginning to think this was a WHO or CDC blogsite.
Brian ..... If your definition of "fix" is to have no company go bankrupt
Chrysler is now in Chapter 11.
Maybe the Republicans are losing members because they are dying out. No one young is joining and all the old geezers are dying from apoplexy snce BO became POTUS.
Dwight...Chrysler is now in Chapter 11.from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/business/01auto.html?ref=automobiles
"Once Chrysler restructures, the company would receive $4.5 billion in financing to restart its operations, for total American government support through the bankruptcy process and afterwards of up to $8 billion.
That is $2 billion more than Mr. Obama initially said the company would receive if it successfully reached a deal with Fiat.
Chrysler has already received $4.5 billion from the government, under a bailout plan put into effect by the Bush administration in late December, after Congress rejected legislation that would have provided federal aid."
I hope this is the end of its being a ward of the state.
I think what we're seeing here is simply more evidence as to what has really been going on within the Republican Party for the last thirty years. The GOP has lost the limited-government conservatives and they are not making even a token attempt to get them back. It is hypocritical in the extreme for the right to be criticizing Obama for his spending policies when the GOP has been the party of massive big-government spending since Reagan. Now, with the Dems in firm control of both the White House and Congress largely because the religiously-dominated GOPs wasteful spending policies have led to the recession, the economic conservatives simply cannot stand with them any more.
The GOP has only one issue right now: oppose anything the Dems do even if they were doing it themselves just six months ago. Until they actually discover what positions they actually stand for, they are going to continue to lose support.
Barack Obama is cool right now and the Republicans aren't. When you drill down into the actual issues the country is fairly split 50/50. Its just that more people want to be with the cool guy.
Statler N Waldorf said...
"When times are good...God helps those that help themselves.
Now is the time to take personal responsibility, instead of waiting for some dramatic miracle to save us.
We are our own miracle.
Yes, we most definitely can"
April 30, 2009 1:20 PM
****************
@SnW
"Give credit where credit is due":
Standing ovation for this post Sir.
:)
p.s.and o.t.
joint venture FIAT-CHRISLER:Done.
Hope it helps both.
nova_middle_man said...
Barack Obama is cool right now and the Republicans aren't.
April 30, 2009 3:04 PM
@Nova,
I wouldn't put salt on the wound,but:
Palin,McCain,Bush,Cheney,O'Reilly,Rove,Huckabee and fairy band at the rear...of course they aren't.
;)
bye.
The GOP is trying to get Rep. Jim Gerlach to run against Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. There is also an emerging conflict between the Michael Steele-led RNC and the new "National Council for a New America" with Jindal, Barbour, Romney, Jeb Bush and others. So maybe the GOP is going into "Civil War"-mode, which I think is necessary to turn things around. Because as it looks now, the Republicans are going to get another drubbing in 2010, but since they have lost their possibility to filibuster, they can risk losing a few more seats if it means abandoning the far-right wing and moving to the middle.
The problem of rebranding is that you have to lose your old brand first before you can get a new one. The Republican leadership has not yet been willing to accept the necessity of change (after 2006 and 2008). So it seems that they have to lose it all to allow some change - maybe it's the loss of Specter that serves as a signal - but if not, that is, if the GOP reacts to their problems by becoming even more conservative, another disaster in 2010 will follow and the Senate will be so liberal that even moderate Demcorats lose their importance.
A drop from 27% to 22% isn't a drop of 5% so much as it's a drop of roughly 18% of the raw number of Republican respondents.
With unemployment running about half that, maybe the personal loss of a job or a spouse's loss of a job leads to these former Republicans being slight less willing to listen to the idea that if you aren't rich you just didn't work enough and you deserve to be poor. Maybe those same voters are suddenly more willing to listen to the value of unemployment insurance, SCHIP, WIC and food stamps when their McMansions, SUVs and bass boats are being repo'ed.
My hunch is that a more detailed poll (which I hope will be performed) may show the greatest losses among mid to high income Republicans recently under financial stress... a lot of those laid-off financial workers, mid-level managers, entrepreneurs, and white collar workers used to be part of the free market, root hog or die, screw the poor genus of Republicanism. (ie libertarians)
Simple explanation: Many Republicans can not handle being labeled as LOSERS, so they now claim themselves "independents". They're full of it. My 70 year old Republican friend in Arizona recently registered as an "independent", but we both know he's Republican to the core. He hates when I call him "loser". :D
Marvin8 nails it.
On Election Day for the presidency, Democrats are more likely to defect and vote a Republican than are Republicans to defect and vote for a Democrat. If it comes to that, Republicans just stay home.
Losers.
If I were Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins or Charlie Crist, I'd seriously be contemplating switching to the Democratic Party. Even Independent would be a lot of sense at this point. The GOP is plumbing new depths of insanity and bad taste, literally on a daily basis.
http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001265/
I despise these people.
Republican identification began to plummet about the same time that Michael Steele started making headlines re: Limbaugh and contradictory positions on abortion, etc. If these events were a major factor in convincing Republicans to stop identifying with the party, that could stem from some combination of Steele's ineptitude, Steele's race, or the Obama admin's elevation of Limbaugh to unofficial GOP leader. But I also acknowledge that the lack of any coherent Republican economic plan is likely a major factor behind their decline.
Marvin8 said...
"....My 70 year old Republican friend in Arizona recently registered as an "independent", but we both know he's Republican to the core. He hates when I call him "loser". :D..."
April 30, 2009 3:29 PM
********
-70 y.o.
-Arizona.
-Loser.
gosh,
If your friend also believe that "the foundamentals of the economy are strong"...you have very important friends...
:P
Well, it looks like Obama's plan to bailout the auto industry has been an abject failure. $15 billion to Chrysler and it didn't work.
When Obama said "only the government can save the auto industry", I wish he would have suggested bankruptcy in the first place.
Like I've said before, the government doesn't run anything very well. Why did they think they could run the auto industry? Apparently,he thinks the UAW will do a better job.
@Brian
Yes, they will be getting a loan. *shrug* However they are still going through bankruptcy.
No, it's not optimal. Unfortunately, for now, the government is the last best engine running to keep the economy from implosion. A consequence of the financial industry seriously hosing itself up ... after being allowed a much more laissez faire operation. The fraction of the population willing to live with the hardship and destruction of boom and bust, swindle and sham, that is inherent in what you seek is quite small. Which makes a lot of sense since it isn't particularly efficient.
Which is why you are quite unlikely to see anyone less "liberal" than McCain sitting in the Whitehouse in any foreseeable future. Goldwater wouldn't be any more electable now than in '64.
Welcome to where you've always been, but nobody was kind enough to let you know. Green Party territory.
@GROG
Whose plan? Chrysler got what? ???
GROG said...
April 30, 2009 3:58 PM
@GROG
#1-Right from the beginning Obama said Chrysler must find out a partnership...and they did.
#2-for the bankruptcy:
due to the fact that some greedy USA creditors do not believe in USA car industry they had to declare bankruptcy in order to allow FIAT to buy 20% of partnership.
#3-You can't foretell the end of the game BEFORE the game it's over and this game is just starting now.
In Italy economist are seeing very positively this deal and FIAT too.
FYI:FIAT also control and saved FERRARI and ALFA ROMEO.
Relax.
Give them both an opportunity and let the chips fall were they may.
;)
were=where
sorry Juris....
"The fraction of the population willing to live with the hardship and destruction of boom and bust, swindle and sham, that is inherent in what you seek is quite small. Which makes a lot of sense since it isn't particularly efficient."
The system of Unions negotiating contracts with politically connected corporations that defer the cost of paying employees to the future is the greatest sham here. The employees retire young. Then the corporations pass the cost of pensions on to the federal government. In this case, the government is giving a loan no one else would do, so it is a bailout.
You know, I've heard this canard from the right alot about how the gov'r is inherently inept.
It isn't. The people who say that are just making excuses for the fuckups they made when they were in power. "Oh, its not our fault! Government is always poorly run, no matter who runs it!"
Bullshit.
I've heard people say, "Oh, you don't want the government running healthcare! Then your hospital will be just like the post office, and who wants that?"
You know something, if I spend 35 cents on a stamp I can have a letter sent from New Orleans to Alaska in about 3 days. I use the post office alot, and they have never lost a package that I either sent or was supposed to receive. The few times something did get lost, it was because either I or the person on the other end fucked up by forgetting to put a stamp on it or waiting to mail it until the last minute.
So yeah, I would want my hospital run like the post office. The post office is fast, inexpensive, efficient and reliable. Why is that a bad thing?
Now, if you appointed a Republican to be postmaster general, and the guy walked into the job saying, "I'm going to fuck up for the next however many years I have this job and blame it on how gov't itself is the problem", then yeah, your mail service will probably suck. What do you expect when you elect people who tell you that they don't think gov't can ever work?
I believe government can and frequently does work well when there are competent people at the helm. Especially people who don't try to shift personal responsibility off by claiming its not their fault and that government is the problem.
Ronald Reagan lied. I don't believe your stupid bumper sticker slogans, and I think you're a bunch of lazy fuckups that spend too much time at the Crawford Ranch and not enough time getting shit done, and that's why you screw everything up. It's not government's fault. Its your fault for being bad at governing.
@Brian,
what do you mean when you say:
"The employees retire young."
at which age americans generally retire.
just curios...
hahaha you can't be serious. Ds often use the post office analogy
What about fedex and ups who do it faster and cheaper while also turning a profit.
There is a role for government in areas where making a profit is not your number one priority. The education system is one of the best examples and socail services is another area. For many of the other things that governments do a private company could do it much better, faster, and cheaper.
Healthcare is an interesting issue. There needs to be real debate from all parties. The American people have to decide where to draw the line between efficiency and level of care. In this case I think the more choices we have the better.
Harry Truman- "The buck stops here"
Barack Obama-"Don't blame anyone else for my mistakes."
Ronald Reagan-"Government is the problem"
The first two said, "I take personal responsibility for my actions"
The last one said, "I blame everything on anyone but myself."
Who do you consider to be a real role model? If I ever adopt kids, I'm teaching them how to take personal responsibility and not try to pass the blame off on someone or something else.
Fuck you, Ronald Reagan. And fuck you to everyone who's ever been inspired by you to duck responsibility. My role model is Barack Obama, because he doesn't waste time looking for excuses. My role model is 'Give em hell' Harry Truman-because he stood up like a man and took the heat.
Reagan was a Hollywood actor that played at masculinity. He thought being a man meant intimidating people less powerful than himself.
Barack Obama doesn't have to act, he actually is a man, a real man. A man that takes responsibility and works hard and doesn't look for excuses or try to blame it all on 'the government'.
The President is the government. If government is the problem, then the President is the problem. If government is doing well, then the President is doing well.
No excuses. No more bullshit. No more sloganeering. Just do your job, and do it better than anyone else.
Dwight wrote: Which is why you are quite unlikely to see anyone less "liberal" than McCain sitting in the Whitehouse in any foreseeable future. Goldwater wouldn't be any more electable now than in '64.Goldwater wouldn't be electable now but perhaps not for the reason you think.
In 1964 Goldwater was the personification of extremist right-wing conservatism. By 2009 his views are considered so liberal that he would considered too left-wing for the Democrats, much less the Republicans. That is how far to the right the country as a whole has gone in the last 45 years.
You would certainly never see any Republican today rail as vigorously against the Religious Right while supporting the right to abortion and gays in the military as staunchly as Goldwater did and even most Democrats would be hesitant to do so. No Republican can possibly get elected in today's political environment while holding those positions.
Spin it however you want, but the government bailouts of the auto industry have been a failure. GM will follow Chrysler into Bankruptcy and $20 billion dollars will be down the drain. Conservatives have been saying this for months and we were told we're the party of do nothing. Well, it looks like doing nothing and letting them go into Bankruptcy was the best solution after all.
@ Statler: The USPS is going broke.
@Statler:
Do you have any examples of when Obama's teleprompter has ever taken responsibility for anything?
He still, like the rest of the left, blames Bush for everything.
> Spin it however you want,
Me calling bullshit on the gross inaccuracies of what you wrote is "spinning"??? O_o
GROG said...
"...Conservatives have been saying this for months and we were told we're the party of do nothing..."
***************
nope.
connservatives "suspended the campaign" asking Obama "to join together as americans".
remember ?
I consider myself a federalist more than a libertarian. Rather than conduct massive irreversible social experiments on every issue at the federal level, lets let government succeed at the state level. But if no state in the union can have efficient health care or education or drug prohibition etc., the go to solution should not be an even larger version of the same type of thing that has been failing.
Note that centralization increases partisanship, as more gets tied together with control of Washington.
@Dwight:
Whose plan? Obama picked his car czar Rattner. It failed.
How much? $20 billion to the auto industry. It failed.
@GROG,
Saving jobs is NOT a failure.
good-night.
:)
Hey Juris, sorry to get back to you so late. Generally the DK and Others have been limited to very, very few in the ANES. The goal is to gently prod the respondent to give one of the answers. I have not churned the preliminary data from this last election yet.
The collapsing of 7-points down to 3 is common and accepted. Interestingly enough, weak Democrats are more likely to defect than Independent leaning Democratic.
The reason I suggest looking at the ANES is its stratified sampling technique. That is not something obtained by or cared for by the pollsters running these weekly snapshots. That would get at the breakdown by region.
You could also look at whom the respondent voted for in previous elections. If you're looking at an Independent who voted for Bush in '00 and '04, you're probably looking at a newly-minted Independent and/or a stealth/disenfranchised Republican.
Favorite Goldwater quote, on the subject of Jerry Falwell:
"What he needs is a good swift kick in the ass."
The quote isn't quite right. The actual quote is, "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass." He said that in response to Falwell's commentary about Reagan's nomination of O'Connor to the Supreme Court when Falwell said, "Every good Christian should be concerned."
Goldwater's best quote about the subject came in a September 1981 speech before the Senate.
"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A, 'B,' 'C' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' "
As I said earlier, you will never again see a Republican publicly state positions such as these and have any chance of getting elected. No Republican today has the moral courage to stand against the religious wing that dominates the Party that Goldwater showed.
Bunning Poised to RetireCan someone smarter than me, tell me if this is good or bad for a Dem pickup in Kentucky?
SnW: I've heard this canard from the right alot about how the gov'r is inherently inept....
I've heard people say, "Oh, you don't want the government running healthcare! Then your hospital will be just like the post office, and who wants that?"
You know something, if I spend 35 cents on a stamp I can have a letter sent from New Orleans to Alaska in about 3 days.First, I'd be surprised if your letter arrived on time - I'd recommend 42 cents, unless it's a postcard or part of a large discount-rate mailing.
Second, as much as I support single-payer health care, there are some things government really isn't competent to do. Start with building construction: we invariably hire contractors when we need foundations poured or drywall hung. The idea of a committee of elected officials overseeing an active construction site should make every sensible person uneasy. As a minor elected official myself, I know there are things we do pretty well, and things we ought to leave to private entities.
@GROG
Whose plan? Obama picked his car czar Rattner. It failed.Define failure of that? What, that Chrysler is going into bankcruptcy? Isn't that what you are calling for anyway? Or am I confusing you with someone else?
How much? $20 billion to the auto industry. It failed.Signed off by whom and when?
See, Obama is the one saying "not good enough to get more on top of what Bush gave you". Obama is the one holding them to some sort of standards for a realistic plan to get the serious money, and the one saying bankcruptcy and no money if you can't get your crap together.
Well there was some daily operationg funds to bridge over the last money and some going forward, but most of the money spent so far was last fall.
What to bitch about this all catch a flight down to Dallas and the head West till you get strip searched by federal agents.
SnW:
It's wonderfully educational for me to receive your wisdom regarding Ingham County politics. It illuminates for me the degree of knowledge and scholarship you must apply to all your other opinions.
In the case of Ingham County, and the changes we're trying to make in the method of financing primary law enforcement in rural parts of the county, your cluelessness is exactly equal to the certainty of your opinions.
Finally, I note that you simply didn't understand the point I offered in my politely phrased response to your comments. I add my name to the list of people who will never reply to you again, and I have added your name to my roll of trolls.
The system of Unions negotiating contracts with politically connected corporations that defer the cost of paying employees to the future is the greatest sham here. Oh sure pension underfunding an accounting sham, bordering on out right fraud. One in which the perpetrators are long gone with the spoils before it hits home. Yes, the government, and to some extent the employees that were contractually promised those things, end up holding the bag.
Such is the lot of a country living with poor or non-existant regulations.
P.S. There are more federalist models to health care. In fact Canada actually has a fairly federalist model. The provinces are largely responsible for implementing health care administration, hospitals, and such locally. The federal government handles the stuff that it is better suited to, handling the guidelines and minimum standards as well as some uniform laws spanning the nation and providing a large portion of the funding.
In truth medicare was started by a province (Saskatchewan) rather than by the federal government.
But then Canadian politics and politicians are used to that as we are organized that way in general. I don't know how well that would work state-side. Having only 13 local governments rather than 50 probably helps a lot.
Also you do have some states that have been creating some more universal coverage models, just as Tommy Douglas did way back when in Saskatchewan.
Oh sure pension underfunding an accounting sham, bordering on out right fraud. One in which the perpetrators are long gone with the spoils before it hits home. Yes, the government, and to some extent the employees that were contractually promised those things, end up holding the bag.Why should the government end up holding the bag? Independently securing the pension plans is an item for the union to negotiate for, and their failure to do so was part of the contract they signed. Did they really not know that until recently? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/business/24ford.html
The whole thing was smoke and mirrors all along, and those who didn't get fooled don't deserve to get fleeced. More to the point, those like me who made totally unrelated bad financial decisions shouldn't have to pay for these too just because the unions give to powerful politicians!
There are more federalist models to health care. In fact Canada actually has a fairly federalist model.North America has something resembling a competitive model, too: Canada has socialized health care, and Canadians come to America for timely treatment. Americans, admittedly, go abroad to pay for drugs.
But kudos to you, if the provinces are truly free to experiment with different systems, and adopt that which is best from each other while adapting it to their idiosyncrasies.
Having only 13 local governments rather than 50 probably helps a lot.I think it's telling we never hear about a state where medical care works, or a state asking for being able to opt out of federal programs and use the money differently. America should let the states try their hands at the problem and if it turns out that there is a great system, but only 25% of states can afford it, or it only works in states of a certain size, or something like that, see how it can be applied elsewhere and go from there. Instead what gets proposed is gambling the entire nation on something that has never worked anywhere. Even if the proposed system were perfect: times change. For example, our current system was not designed for drugs to be such a large percentage of medical spending. The political process in Washington seems particularly unable to deal with changes like these.
All those independents might mean a good true libertarian small gov party would have a shot...
Wow, now THAT is some pretty cool stuff!
RT
www.anonymity.ru.tc
My predication is coming true! The GOP is going to split! This is great news for fact-based reasonable people everywhere. I'm really curious to see what party makes a move for all these new "Independents." Will anything work? Independents might love their independence too much. : )
Why should the government end up holding the bag?
Because it is inevitable. There is a cost to things and you end up paying one way or another. You just want to pay another way, and you would. Dearly.
I'm moving to Texas, which has no state income tax. But the total tax as a percentage of our family's income isn't really going to change, if anything it is going to rise. Because there is a cost to things and you pay. One way or another.
Same thing with medical. One way or another you pay. Might as well make it a relatively efficient one.
Canada does have some specialist MD retention issues, that can cause localized wait times to go high. But it's more a macro-level thing, urban vs rural, that is going on respective of mode of payment. The more federalist arrangement has actually exasperated that somewhat in the past but the provincial Health Ministers have been slowing chipping away on that issue.
I imagine you wish you could just do away with bureaucracy but the scale and size of society says it's here, whether you like it or not.
@justsomeguy
Well, a small-government libertarian independent got elected to the governor's mansion in Minnesota just a decade ago. As we found out from Ventura's example, nothing will unify the Republicans and the Democrats more quickly than a legitimate third-party threat. He called them "Crips and Bloods in Brooks Brothers suits" and he was right.
Simple explanation: Many Republicans can not handle being labeled as LOSERS, so they now claim themselves "independents"<>
I suspect the same thing. When you have nearly one-fifth of a party's identifiers go independent in less than two months, the shift ought to be approached with some skepticism.
At the moment, the word "Republican," like the word "liberal" in the '80s and '90s, has a negative connotation. Just as liberals called themselves "moderates" or "progressives," I suspect you have a lot of Republicans calling themselves independents.
This does represent an opportunity for the Democratic Party, and I think Obama's even-tempered, moderate tone offers the best chance of converting those independents to Democrats for the longer term.
People change their political affiliation in two steps. First, they become undecided, or independent. Then they join the other side. To make the second step, they need to re-examine their reservations about the other side and overcome them.
In the '80s, the Reagan Democrats were reeled in by the contrast between Reagan's simple optimism, and appeal to the working middle class, and the Democrats' complexity and furrowed brows, and their appeal to the non-working poor.
If there is to be a class of Obama Republicans, they'll be attracted by the contrast between Obama's reasoned, open, and steady approach, and the Republicans' knee-jerk, empty nastiness.
My hunch is that, barring an outright economic collapse, Obama's handling of the torture issue will be a pretty big factor. He has staked out a position in the middle between Democratic liberals who want war crimes prosecutions, and Republicans who are essentially pro-torture.
The public rejects both of those views, and supports Obama's handling of the issue. If Obama can prevail in his view, while bringing a measure of justice that will at least keep the liberals from going batshit crazy, then I think he'll go a long way in convincing some of those independents that he's not a typical pacifist Democrat of yore. His steadfast action against piracy, and his stated admiration for the military, will help as well.
At the kitchen table level, I think the health care issue will be huge. The Republicans have dug a trench, and will oppose any real change. The public has reached a real pain level on health care, but those who remain insured (the vast majority) are afraid that a new plan will screw up what they like about the current system.
If Obama can change the health care system significantly for the better, and steer a careful and moderate course on the hot button torture issue, I think you could see a class of Obama Republicans that would rival the Reagan Democrats in significance.
Nothing will be permanent. American politics is a pendulum. But a class of Obama Republicans could insure Democratic primacy for the next 20 years, and that's enough time to get an awful lot done.
There's nothing the least bit surprising in this. Republicans have spent the last 15 years jettisoning their conservative credentials, culminating in 8 of the least fiscally conservative GOP-led years in history. The base has no faith in the party to represent their principles. Moderates and right-leaning independents see nothing worthy of their allegiance either. Put in business terms The Republican Party has last its brand. The question is how its leadership will try regain it. If it buys into the fatally flawed 'big tent' notion and continues on its path to pander to the muddling middle, chasing after the likes of Specter, Collins and Snowe the party will be in the minority for a generation or more. If, on the other hand, it quickly realizes that principle and conviction are the backbone of any successful enterprise (regardless of the howls of extremism which will undoubtedly accompany that choice), the base will unify, the message will clarify, moderates and conservative-leaning independents will again see a message that, while not representing their full philosophy at least represents most of it, and the GOP and conservatism will again find solid footing America. The country remains right-of-center and simply needs a right-of-center party worth voting for.
The Democrats, by the way, will make it easy if the GOP lets them - they are already grossly overreaching in their policymaking, very courteously setting the table for a late-70's-like economic malaise which will cry out for rescue by sensible fiscal responsibility. The question is whether the GOP will position itself to be the savior or simply another part of the problem.
Rick wrote:
> Put in business terms The Republican Party has l[o]st its brand. The question is how its leadership will try regain it. If it buys into the fatally flawed 'big tent' notion and continues on its path to pander to the muddling middle, chasing after the likes of Specter, Collins and Snowe the party will be in the minority for a generation or more.
DB replies:
Honestly, I hope you win your argument and the Republican Party, as a whole embraces your philosophy. Good luck!
Rick wrote:
> The country remains right-of-center and simply needs a right-of-center party worth voting for.
DB replies:
All of the evidence indicates exactly the opposite, but by all means, please continue to believe as you do.
Rick wrote:
> The Democrats, by the way, will make it easy if the GOP lets them - they are already grossly overreaching in their policymaking, very courteously setting the table for a late-70's-like economic malaise which will cry out for rescue by sensible fiscal responsibility. The question is whether the GOP will position itself to be the savior or simply another part of the problem.
DB replies:
That "economic malaise" actually began in the Nixon administration, when inflation kicked into double digits. Rather than encourage tightening the money supply, which would attack inflation by stalling the economy, Nixon tried wage-and-price controls. That didn't work, so his successor, Gerald Ford, tried his "Whip Inflation Now" gimmick. Do you remember the WIN buttons? That did nothing at all.
Meanwhile, stagflation -- inflation in a standing-still economy -- kicked in. The Peruvian anchovy crisis (I'm not kidding) in 1972 and the oil price shocks of 1973-74, combined with scaling-back of military spending after our withdrawal from Vietnam, aggravated the problem.
Partly because they were frustrated by the ongoing economic malaise, the voters elected Jimmy Carter in 1976. Unlike Nixon and Ford, President Carter did the one thing that was necessary to whip inflation: he appointed a hard-nosed inflation hawk to the Fed.
Unfortunately, doing the right thing for the country meant political suicide for Carter. Under Paul Volcker, the Fed ratcheted interest rates above 21%. This kicked the country into a recession that happened to coincide with the election of 1980. You might recall that, in the first two years of Reagan's presidency, the unemployment rate was above 10%. But inflation was strangled to death and the economy rebooted in time for Reagan to take credit for the boom (fueled by deficit spending) that followed.
So that's the story of "late-70's-like economic malaise," Rick. It wasn't caused by "overreaching" free-spending Democrats (the last balanced budget of the era, for FY 1969, was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by LBJ in 1968). It was caused by political timidity during the Nixon-Ford years combined with commodity price shocks over which the United States had no control.
@Dan Brin:
I agree with your analysis, save that you omitted the second set of oil price shocks in 1979, which was OPEC's reaction to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty successfully concluded with the help of Jimmy Carter. No good deed goes unpunished!
Yes, the 1979 oil shock was a factor, but I recall that it was more of a panic response to the Iranian revolution (and the cynical exploitation of that panic by the oil companies) than a result of actions by OPEC.
Carter does deserve a lot of credit for the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
There's another thing that Carter deserves credit for -- though whenever I mention it I hear shrieks from conservatives who are offended by my transgression of one of their most sacred myths: Jimmy Carter actually increased the military budget, reversing the downward curve of the previous two (Republican) administrations. Reagan merely continued and accelerated a military buildup that had already begun under Carter.
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