The Hill, noted for the record last week:
Nearly half of Republican voters say that ACORN – the community organizing group that closed in 2010 – aided in stealing the 2012 election for President Obama, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
The survey, conducted by Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling, found that 49 percent of GOP voters believe that the president did not legitimately win reelection because ACORN interfered with the vote. A full 50 percent of Republicans said Democrats engaged in some sort of voter fraud.
More from Public Policy Polling’s election aftermath polling memo:
Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.
One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%. [Pols emphasis]
“Swastika Guy,” circa February 2009.
Almost from the moment President Barack Obama took office, the opposition to his agenda took on an extreme, overheated sense of urgency on the right. Political rhetoric on the right evoked a sense of desperation trending toward outright rebellion–generally based on false, and often hysterical, predictions of what Obama’s agenda would mean for the country.
This irrational radicalization of the grassroots right wing reached its peak during the passage of health care reform legislation and the 2010 election cycle. The fact is, “Obamacare” as finally passed by Congress and signed into law is a far cry from true left-wing aspirations for health care reform, and has more in common with conservative proposals for reforming health care from the Heritage Foundation (or Mitt Romney) than anything one can legitimately call “socialized medicine.” This resulted in a situation where liberal base Democrats were nonplussed by Obama for “giving away too much,” while the right wing painted Obama as a “communist” unfettered by objective facts about his very much centrist actual policies.
Today, their failure is evident everywhere. The intense four-year campaign to irrationally vilify Obama is bankrupt. Only a declining number of hardcores (see poll) are not aware of this.
But those hardcores aren’t going away. Indeed, they think they define “true conservatism.”
We’re not saying this one poll is gospel, but a drop in Republican self-identification, if it’s corroborated and if it continues, could portend an historic re-alignment–real upheaval in the party, or perhaps even a new party to represent the half of America with ideologically conservative predispositions. Among many Democrats at least, there’s a sense that the GOP is permanently marginalizing itself, hastening an irrelevance for political conservatism that many even on the left would say doesn’t fairly represent the views of our ideologically divided nation.
If that’s what must happen, the question is, how many elections will it take? The answer is almost certainly more than the one we just finished. It’s not going to be pretty. The traditional Republican core of wealthy business interests has always required a coalition with other popular movements to survive, but they chose poorly in subsidizing the “Tea Party”–the latest iteration of the John Birch radical right they used to be much better about keeping at arm’s length.
Like we said last week, Republican elites who would like nothing more than to euthanize the “Tea Party” now that it is no longer useful can’t do so–because as this poll indicates, the irrational grassroots they whipped into a froth in 2010 have a life of their own. This is their base now.
And if it is pushing the GOP out of the American mainstream, nobody is stopping it yet.
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It’s not a question of will voters change their views. That will continue but most of it has already occurred. The big change is due to demographics – every day old people die and young people reach age 18 and can vote. And that shift over the next several year will decimate the percentage identifying as Republican.
of Republicans polled definitely want their states to remain in the United States of America? That’s pretty stunning.
I’ve seen this voter fraud claim before but I haven’t seen it accompanied by specific allegations of specific cases. No allegations that voting machines in specific places were tampered with or boxes of uncounted mail-in ballots from R leaning precincts were found in a landfill, etc.
I suspect their proof of voter fraud goes something like this. The lying mainstream and Dem leaning polls said Obama would win and they always lie. Our polls were fair and balanced and said Romney would win. Since Obama did win, it can only be because the election was stolen.
No wonder Republican identification is shrinking. Almost half of what’s left has already seceded, not yet from the country but from reality. So much for the effort to broaden the party’s appeal. The base appears to be doubling down on driving out minorities, young people and women.
They expected to win this time by suppressing the Dem leaning vote and just can’t believe all those “urban” (minority) voters were successfully “pulled out of their apartments” (where they imagine all minorities live) to vote and actually stayed in line for hours to do so. So they’ve decided it didn’t really happen that way.
As demographic change continues and their voter suppression strategy proves ineffective, how do they expect to win next time and the time after, outside of their safe gerrymandered CDs? Rejecting loyalty to country and denigrating everyone but a shrinking pool of angry white men is no way to attract the votes they’ll need to survive as a national party. On the other hand, losing the crazies now means losing most of their base. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of monster creators.
I don’t really care if there is a “new party to represent the half of America with ideologically conservative predispositions.” Calling BS, Guvs. The fact that Republicans have engineered their own destruction cannot be separated from their whole movement’s essential moral bankruptcy and lack of redeeming goodness. It is one and the same.
The true GOP agenda has strayed so far from the interests of the majority that maybe it’s just time for them to burn, then exist as a semi-permanent minority for awhile. Maybe fuck ’em.
Like a tax incentive to denounce their citizenship? Anyone that no longer wants to be an American because their side lost an election needs to know they have the opportunity to make that happen, and I say we should help them.
Call it as Twitty’s job stimulus program.
Give the sorry losers (for want of a better term) a tax write off for the expenses it takes for them to leave at the earliest opportunity (excluding any oversea expenditures), thus injecting money into the U.S. economy and opening up employment opportunities.
Well, I mean unless its all just talk. Then it wouldn’t work.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/dan-froomkin/republican-lies-2012-election_b_2258586.html?icid=hp_search_art
Run! It’s the Zombie CORN!
This is yet one more example that despite how smart we are as a species (at least relative to most other animals), despite our technologiws,and art accoimplishments, we can be stunningly stupid.
Making up the “fact” that ACORN, a tiny, defunct activist group, could steal an election – without leaving a trace – is just like religion. Making up “facts” without evidence.
And these unfactual facts are impossible to let go of. People die to prove that their hallucinations are true and yours aren’t. People, humans, discuss these unfacts with passion and duration, yet there is not one shred of evidence.
And people wonder why I’m a cynic?
What’s happening to the Democratic Party?
It seems to me that the words “progressive” and “liberal” are no longer considered frightening labels in the party at large. Maybe the tenets of this “fringe” are becoming more mainstream in the party? Or have Democrats who hew to the left, and have always been there, lost their fear of “coming out”? (If Bill Clinton were to declare today, “The era of big government is over.” he’d be showered with demands to, at the least, explain himself.)
It’s commonly accepted that the Democratic Party is more unified–in its diversity, yet–than ever before. Why? It can’t be only because Republicans are silly.
Did the Occupy Movement touch our guilt and awaken our more progressive instincts? Have liberals finally worked through their battered spouse syndrome? Why are blue dogs no longer as handsome as yellow dogs?
Besides my jealousy that Republicans are having so much fun navel picking, it seems to me Democrats too should be studying themselves, so down the road we can replicate this seeming reincarnation–say, in about 20 years when the Republicans, whatever they’ve become or named themselves, come slithering back.
… that poll wasn’t exactly fair.
Look, if you’re an average voter and get a poll question asking whether ACORN helped steal the election, you’re going to assume that there must have been some credible evidence to that effect, or else you wouldn’t be getting the question in the first place.
This is the flip side to those polls asking whether Obama was born in Kenya, or is a Muslim. The mere fact that the questions are being asked lend the point of view some (unfounded) legitimacy.
And as for Republicans believing that there was “some sort of” vote fraud in 2012 – well hell, I’m a Democrat and I’m sure that there was SOME vote fraud – if miniscule – going on. It just stands to reason.
What does disturb me, though, is that 25% of Republicans favor seceding from the Union, and only 56% of Republicans oppose (while the rest don’t even care!). That is absolutely disgraceful for the party that regularly cloaks itself in the flag and cheap, tawdry displays of patriotism.
Dinesh D’Souza is our next contestant on Hypocritical Family Values Conservatives!
D’Souza, author of “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” (basis for the box office smash hit “Obama: 2016”), is out as President of King’s College this week. Why? D’Souza went to an evangelical conference in South Carolina with mistress in tow. D’Souza being married and King’s College being an evangelical university didn’t mesh well with the whole mistress thing…
D’Souza was a vocal advocate of many of the whacky theories believed by thousands of this year’s conservative voter base.
….to spell “Hypocrite.”
It’s as predictable as the sun coming up.
Apologies to Janis.