Stop, Look, and Listen
By Steven Osborne | Thursday, October 7th, 2010 | PoliticsI want everyone to channel out the noise of this current election, just for a few seconds.
Consider this, here we are in October which is really the crunch time for election season. In these final months of the election, a critical point is often overlooked and lost in the noise. Which voters are the candidates making their appeals to right now?
For all of the traditional talk about middle of the road voters making all the difference all the time (and in some instances they do), the candidates are primarily trying to get a strong turnout from their base. The Democrats have the President trying to rally their dispirited base. While the Republicans are sounding more ideological and Tea Party-ish everyday.
Is it possible that perhaps the ideological spectrum is not laid out as we often envision it? With the typical left, right, and then moderate center. Is it possible that the center is really not that moderate at all? Perhaps the center is a lot more closely aligned with conservative thought than many would assume. Or perhaps truly undecided voters are more drawn to a strong message than to moderation.
If the conservatives truly form the base of the GOP and the liberals form the basis of the Democratic Party, then what we see less than a month before the election is two parties trying to turn out their base. This lends credence to the idea that perhaps election results, or at the very least midterm results, have much more to do with base enthusiasm than with appealing to a mysteriously undefined center.
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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About the author
Steven Osborne is a grassroots conservative activist from Central Virginia. He is currently furthering his education at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. In addition to writing for Bearing Drift he is also a columnist for the Christian Law Journal.
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13 Responses to "Stop, Look, and Listen"
Steven,
Nope. Gallup is way ahead of you and has been tracking what you refer to as “a mysteriously undefined center” but what most of us call Independents. Among the most likely and least likely voter turn-out models, Gallup finds that Independents will approximately equal Democratic voters next month at about 30% and that they will be only single digits behind the Republican base turn-out of 36-38%.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143363/gop-positioned-among-likely-midterm-voters.aspx
The difference between this year and 2008 and 2006 is that the Independents overwhelmingly oppose continued Democratic control of Congress.
Party die-hards are always trying to find ways to define their party as the majority in one way or another, such as voter preference polls, party base turn-out percentages, etc. The truth of the matter is that Independents vote at approximately the same rate as the two major political parties and that they hold the balance of power. Independents gave control of Congress to the Democrats in 2006 and elected Obama in 2008. In 2010 they will give control of Congress, at least in the House, back to the Republicans.
HisRoc,
A conservative independent would normally be considered a part of the Republican “base.”
I am not talking about party registration, I am talking about ideology.
HisRoc,
How can you be a party to what is going on in the Republican Party if you witness what is going on? The Republican Party is being taken over by extremists. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are the leaders and the Tea Party are the followers.
No room for moderates, and if you dare be moderate within office as a Republican, the Tea Party will run you out of office.
How can you claim to be a moderate if every time your moderate voice is over-ruled by the extremists? I have never heard anything but condemnation for moderates from Rush Limbaugh.
LittleDavid,
Excuse me, but exactly when were Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck elected to any public office as Republicans? They no more represent the Republican leadership than Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Jeremiah Wright represent the Democratic leadership.
Pardon me, but your rant is every bit as imbecilic as those right-wing birthers who claim that Obama is a Muslim socialist.
Steven,
Independents are immune from ideology. We are the political pragmatists. We don’t trust either party and believe that both the Republicans and Democrats deserve to go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs. The only debate is which party should go first.
Ditto Hisroc. Both parties are so far removed from what the framers intended that neither can support the constitution without I’ll gotten money.
For the most part I agree with HisRoc. There are plenty of independents, and the largest part of them are in the center. They (and centrists in general) do show up to vote as well as d’s and r’s, libs, and conservatives, in the GENERAL election. THey of course do NOT show up to vote in primaries regularly (even when they can, as in VA) Therefore the more ideological right or left candidates win their parties primaries and their stances on the issues appeal to the respective bases, not the centrists. Many centrists are voting r this year because they dont want the same party to control both houses of Congress and the presidency, and they are generally dissatisfied with whats going on in washington. Its also more anti liberal/democrat than it is pro conservative/republican
As liberals make up 20% of our population (if that), Conservatives are tired of deciding between which liberal to vote for. There’s Obama on one side with his $1 trillion Keynesian spending program and McCain who wants to spend $600 billion. Meanwhile, Conservatives don’t want the government to spend anything. It defeats FREE MARKET principles.
You have Bush who spent galore and took it out in debt. Obama has spent more n deficit than our first 40 presidents. Meanwhile, our deficit has exceeded $1 trillion each year for the past two years and our debt just surpassed $13.5 trillion. …and they wish to continue spending. It’s like giving crack to an addict, they keep wanting more. So, this government has showed NO FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.
They passed two massive bills (healthcare and financial reform) of 2,000+ pages affecting healthcare and finances creating over 150 new government agencies. They decided to purchase a couple of car companies, break contracts in the name of their perceived fairness and give away money to their union buddies. So much for having a LIMITED GOVERNMENT.
Conservatives aren’t dictating to everyone the right way to live, the right things to eat, the right things to say…and we’re tired of paying for irresponsible behavior. If that’s an extremist—sign me up.
I agree that there are a lot of independents who are fed up with both parties. They are tired of politicians who are more interested in playing partisan games than addressing the country’s problems. We’ve got a crumbling infrastructure and a looming demographic problem as the baby boomers retire and they aren’t enough workers to support their retirement. NEITHER of the major parties will seriously address these issues. Instead we get arguments over gay marriage and gun control.
HisRoc,
How did the Tea Party movement get going? Was it not egged on by right wing talk show hosts?
Are you a moderate? Well moderates are not welcome in the Republican Party not just according to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck but according to the Tea Party. Are you not aware of what happened in Delaware? Even Mike Castle was too much of a RINO and the Tea Party Express came out strongly to support the successful nomination of O’Donnell who even Karl Rove more or less called a clown.
The rise of the Tea Party was amongst the reasons I have decided to declare Democrat. The Democrats still have a special category within their party where I am welcome, they call them Blue Dogs. The Republicans have a special category for voters like me and that one is RINO. Let the Tea Party have the Republican Party and I am now a Democrat.
@LittleDavid
What do you know about the Tea Party? 1) fiscal responsibility, 2) limited government and 3) free market, how can you be against that?
LittleDavid,
The opposite of Republican is not Democratic. Moderates are no more welcomed in the Democratic Party of Nancy Polosi and Harry Reid then they are in the Republican Part. That is why the largest voting block in our country identifies themselves as Independents.
@LittleDavid, I was a conservative while I was still a democrat, then I was conflicted and rejected by my former party. Since I am not running for office, I switched horses midstream.
Zell Miller (D) put it best by stating “Deeds mean a lot more than words. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are but how you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.”
The Tea Party is coming down on electeds whose dirty deeds are not worthy of them remaining in office regardless of party. It is interesting to note that the Tea Party is harder to pinpoint on issues and maybe that is by design, but, the members and leaders alike do not seem intimidated by either party. They are fed up with members of both and at this time your party’s leadership is not displaying anything approaching the character, passion and integrity exhibited by Zell Miller.. and to be fair, neither are many members or candidates of the GOP.
Moderates are a large part of the republican base but they have been blackballed from leadership. Social moderates are not so much of an issue but fiscal moderates lacking a moral compass from either party are jointly leading us off a cliff. Our boat is sinking, we as a country are listing to port. The answer is not to add more water to ballast the opposing side but to restore order and discipline so we can all stay afloat. Someone correct me if I am wrong but this is what the tea party is helping political leaders bring us.
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