The House passes the Senate's healthcare reform bill 219-212.
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Trending right
Here’s an interesting tidbit to think about on Election Day: Using Polidata projections for the 2010 census, and electoral distribution from the 2004 presidential election, Republican states will grow (in both congressional seats and number of electors to the Electoral College) while Democrat-leaning states will shrink. As analyst and columnist Michael Barone has pointed out, the demographic trends don’t prevent President Barack Obama from being reelected in 2012—
but they would make it marginally more difficult. Demography, modestly, favors the Republicans, and more than modestly over the long haul.
The demographic trend is more significant in light of what Gallup and others are finding regarding individual Americans’ shift to identifying themselves more prevalently as conservative. But as E.J. Dionne has pointed out, “There is a debate over what these ideological labels actually mean to voters.”
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As an initial matter, demographic trends tend to favor R’s due in part to the Roe effect. However, the situation is too fluid to put much credence in that; for one thing, the Roe effect is dampened by Hispanic immigration, as the majority of Hispanics tend to vote D.
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And blacks are largely Dem supporters even after all the Rs and President Lincoln did to advance civil rights.
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I think it is evident that the nation is trending right. Now, if only the Republican Party would do the same.
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I’m not sure that there’s a trend. We have always been a moderate-right country, and will remain that way for a while.
The problem for the GOP is that the party is seen as being too beholden to populist social conservatives. True enough, McCain didn’t exactly fit this mold. But McCain lost because he was the GOP candidate, not because he was moderate, liberal, or whatever. In fact, McCain ran as well, if not better, that GWB did in the Deep South and the Arkoklatex region. But he got hammered in states, such as Indiana, where the GOP trends in a more moderate direction. These data do not suggest that the GOP lost because it was too moderate. Rather, they suggest that many moderates abandoned the GOP because they did not believe that a moderate GOP President could keep the Christian populists in line.
In the Reagan era, a moderate-right big-tent conservatism won the day because the Reaganites offered competent and creative solutions to complex problems, and sold their solutions in a positive tone. If the GOP wants to recover, it will need to again look to competent and creative people who can create buy-in for their ideas. But this is the dead opposite of where the Christian populists want to take us: They have little to say on issues that don’t relate in some way to sex, and generally present their ideas in a negative way.
I believe that the next 7 years may be devastating to our economy and our place in the world. (And yes, I do believe that Obama will be re-elected.) But, honestly, the GOP just has nothing to offer America right now, except for knee-jerk opposition to the Dems.
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Um, it doesn’t matter which way America is trending. Obama has usurped the authority of the Census and plans to gerrymander his way into a second term.
Other schemes to augment the stealing of the Census include class warfare, eliminating taxes for 50% of Americans and legalizing illegal immigrants. People who depend on the government are less likely to vote against their own entitlements. Plus Acorn is bought and paid for to commit more voter fraud. And Obama has purchased GE and NBC, major banks, GM and the unions and mainstream media.
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