Democracy Corps: Republican Base Voters Living In Another World

There is no reasoning with these people. None. Their minds are made up (of styrofoam).

Fascinating in its findings. Is there an active link to the whole report?

"...[W]e gave these groups...full opportunity to bring race into their discussion - but it did not ever become a central element...."

And that proves what, exactly?

Couldn't even fart and chew gum at the same time. What possible hope is there for them to hold two opposing views in mind at the same time? To think that others might be right to them is inconceivable.

Exactly, Show Me Sanity! Because if there is one thing Americans (except for a pretty good-sized minority) are always ready to offer as the key to their political character is racism.
Does Carville also point out that racism is actually the most rational of their reasons to dislike Obama. After all, out of all the things they said about Obama, that he is not white is the only one which is objectively true.

It's probably true that these lunatics are not primarily inspired by racism -- hell, they felt and said pretty much the same things about Bill and Hillary Clinton. But I don't think there's any doubt that Obama's race and "exotic" heritage (the "Hussein" shit) has given an extra frisson to their paranoia.

After all, these are the same stupid sons of bitches that every cynical conservative demagogue since Tom Watson and "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman have been taking advantage of.

no wonder these people believe bachmann and her deliberate lies. they are as crazy as she is

It's frightening, but not surprising, that people who watch Faux News and Glenn Beck everyday would hold a worldview that has no connection with reality and embraces bizarre, paranoid conspiracy theories.

It's also curious to me that these people believe that Obama's got a "hidden agenda" when what he's doing as president reflects what he campaigned on more closely than any other president in recent history. Obama's doing what he said he would, he's governing on the platform that elected him. In fact, to the extent he's diverged from his campaign promises, it's been in areas where he has governed more conservatively than he indicated.

It's easy to dismiss these folks as batshit crazy, which they are, but at the same time, you have to wonder about the health of a democracy in which a significant minority holds such outlandish views and the extent to which it might turn to violence.

How can they be so sure racism is also not playing a role? Does anybody think that all except total racist nut-cases would not hide their true views under the cloak of rationalized, nutty, conservative talking points?

Be that as it may, the denial, rationalization, and outright lack of compassion among these right-wing zealots is scary and dangerous!

The tea party things, their point of view is, you are all crazy. You know, you are all nut-jobs out there holding these tea parties,

Yeah, I can't imagine where anyone got that idea.

"Oppressed minority" whose views are being "systematically ign ored"?

How about another take? Like: "Extremist fringe" whose exclusionary and self-righteous views aren't representative of the population at large?

"Faith, family, country and freedoms"? What a crock - what they're really pissed about is that the government and media don't seem as likely as they used to to flog their ignorant and bigoted ideology as the norm for the country. Only in America - religious fanatics and neofascist cranks ranting about how their views are being "overlooked" - on TV, talk radio, online, and in publications nationwide.

Which came first, the belief that Obama is a socialist, or Fox News reporting that he is a socialist? In other words, does Fox represent their viewer's beliefs, or do they control those beliefs?

What freedoms have been infringed upon? No 1st or 2nd amendment rights have been touched-- in fact some gun rights have expanded (right to carry in national parks). I guess the "freedom" of big corporations to screw the American public has been curtailed (boo hoo).

I can see Glenn Beck hiring a sniper to "attempt" to assassinate him-- have bullet holes appear on Beck's house or car, report it to cops, makes big headlines, thus "proving" that Glenn Beck has touched on a nerve and the men in black are coming for him. He really is that insane.

I didn't attend a tea party but we, the people, were non-existent according to some of the news stations."

Which stations would those be? The "stations" here in the Northeast all featured the march, the townhall activity, etc. All of them.

I'm sorry these people are so delusional. It can't be a happy existence.

And I agree: they are dangerous.

I'm not sure we can draw the assumption that race isn't a factor simply because the interviewees rarely brought it up. Much of the GOP base has now internalized that racism is bad, but hasn't had a consonant change in its own thinking about race. Much of the racism has just gone underground, since the only lesson many of these people have learned is that you don't verbalize it when you're not sure of your audience.

Agree fully with the above comments about the potential danger these folks represent (fervency + support for individual gun rights = warning, will robinson) and that a certain amount of racism underlies these sentiments.

What makes me particularly crazy is that, for a party that just loves to lecture the rest of us about personal accountability, they have zero of their own. Don't like Obama? Fine. But blame YOURSELVES for not hustling / volunteering / donating enough for McCain last year. You got beat at the ballot box, fair and square. As you were so fond of telling us during the Bush years, Elections Matter. Suck it up and meet us at the ballot box again in 4 years.

You know the bonus of all this (for the left anyway) is that these guys ARE marginalized, they have even split their own party, and if they are as intractable as they appear then the right has either got to split into two parties or become completely powerless for another generation.

The down side is that as marginalized and crazy as they are there is a greater chance that one or several of them will want to become some perverted "real American hero" and try bombings and assassinations to "save America." Remember how ideologically intractable the Weather Underground was?

As a person who lives and grew up in the deep south I'm conservative. So I can say with certainty that these people are anything but conservative. They are religious extremist's and I am surrounded by them everyday.

Rush Limbaugh is the messiah in my area. He tells them Obama is a Nazi socialist commie radical leftist muslim who hates America. Then the next sentence out of his mouth is why America must fail. Limbaugh does a dance with every bad economic news report. He will then go to commercial playing Obama the magic negro song.

He is not a racist. He just hates uppity blacks and Al Gore.

The poster on the front page is the most intelligent one I've seen yet. Koolaid vs Tea Bag. Good stuff!

I think the loss of the election has shocked them. To these types it is almost like religous conversion. They really look at conservative principles like they do the gospel and in their world view the gospel is supposed to spread not contract. So after the loss of 06 and then 08 non of it made sense, because once you tasted conservatism you where firmly changed for life. They have no idea how to fight back so they are just venting and acting like a 2 yr old. No way this leads to any kind of success in anything let alone politics. Treat them like a 3 yr old that is throwing a temper tantrum, ignore them till they get bored and come to their senses.

Sorry about the double-post above. The system hiccupped during submission and it seems to have popped 2x...

Quite an interesting thread. Seeing as I live out here in Whackjob Heaven I can say that there is not so much a lack of curiosity among my (mostly rural) fellows as a FEAR of knowledge, and knowledge about Obama particularly. The more they see of his (comparatively) open, honest style of governance the less they can believe it. It seems they only like believing they are being lied to by white Republican, um, liars. Otherwise it's most unpleasant.

Is it racism that motivates these people? Maybe. Fear? Certainly. But I think it is mostly a (media-fed) privileging of themselves and THEIR heritage (remember all that "authentic American" crap) over that of urbanites (you know, the colorful ones). I would add, perhaps ironically, that one would likely see less of this knee-jerk skepticism of others' motives in the military than in the sorts of voters who valorize the military and concordantly prefer to outsource their consciences to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. People who think for themselves, and access good information. don't think like these people do. But I imagine to them it is less about being a citizen than simply being RIGHT.

Although I believe they did some good research, I don't buy that racism is not involved. What many blacks, especially up north have learned, is you don't have to use overtly racist statements or anything to prove you are a racist. It happens when the black moves into the all white neighborhood that the "they're different" occurs. Same with Obama. many of these folks think its ok to have black neighbors, maybe even a black boss, they probably have blacks at their house, but let one of them become president...they don't think like us is what is motivating them, subconsciously. Is it all of the conservative white base, no...but I would wager it's a significant number based on their willingness to be so hypocritical about their so called faith and family values. Don't hear them complaining about all the ADULTERY going on with conservatives, or crying out about FOLEY or CRAIG or ENSIGN or SANFORD or take your pick of conservative perverts. Didn't hear any complaints about teen pregnancy with Palin (yet the black community has had to deal with the conservatives holier than thou lectures for the rampant teen pregnancy that plagued the black community for years). Their so called "values" only matter on paper, not in practice. As for faith, didn't hear them complain much when Bush kept saying all religions worship the same God, but when Obama said America was not a Christian nation, they lost their mind. Interestingly a lot of the excuses they use as to why they are against Obama (yet the report calls, not race motivated), are some of the same excuses men of the KKK used...faith, family values, preserve our nation, Christian principles, etc., etc). It is nauseating.

Two words:

Timothy McVeigh.

Last month, Taylor Branch was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR, about his new book on his taped conversations with Bill Clinton during his presidency. He said Clinton told him the reason the right was so intent on investigating the FBI raid on Waco was to distract from the obvious right-wing-extremist odor of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Because Oklahoma City turned out to be not a foreign terrorist but a home-grown, corn-fed right-winger who blew up the Oklahoma City government and mangled children and women and innocent people because he saw it as the symbol of the federal government. He was an anti-government zealot who believed the federal government needed to be destroyed, and he did it on the anniversary of the Waco events two years earlier, when there was the raid down in Waco, Texas, and the compound was set on first.

This is a truly - almost an Orwellian moment because after the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton said logically there should be hearings into the anti-government extremism that could restore some balance as to what government could and could not do. Because here was a Christian zealot who that felt - and also a white supremacist zealot who believed that the federal government was forcing integration and government programs on the American people and that it was justified to kill and to set bombs at the federal building and blow up all the bureaucrats inside. Well, logically, you have hearings on that kind of extremism.

Instead, because the Republicans were so invested in just the opposite, that government was the danger itself, they revived the hearings from two years earlier on whether or not the federal government was inherently murderers in Waco. And there were no hearings, really, on the dangers of anti-government zealotry or on Timothy McVeigh or what his motives were. It was totally ignored and literally turned upside down. The danger here is not people who are against the government, but the danger is the government itself, and those hearings persisted. And he complained both about the fact, that unspoken mantra that the essence of our politics is to stop an inherently evil government, continued right through and despite the fact that you had this vivid evidence with 168 bodies out of the wreckage in Oklahoma City that extremists in the opposite direction were literally a mortal threat to the United States.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=113269412

so how do you deal with these people? if you ignore/marginalize them (as is easy to do), you'll only drive them deeper down the crazy hole and reinforce their crazy delusions about communists and the fall of the republic.

But it's also clear you can't really engage them because they're convinced anyone who doesn't think like they do is a communist and can't be trusted with anything.

i guess just be glad that they're in the minority and probably will be for a long time. of course, majority/minority dynamics only work if you're working within the system and i'm afraid at some point one of these folks is going to take things into their own hands.

it only takes one. and with the increasingly violent rhetoric and increasingly crazy self sustaining feedback loop of crazy...

i dunno. i'm hoping that once obama passes his agenda and the republic DOESNT come crashing down in a wave of totalitarian communism, they'll see how silly they've been. it's a long shot, though, i know.

Obama's reelection is going to be soooooo funny.

Okay before I begin let me say that I'm not a troll or a stealth wingnut but reading these comments brings to mind one word: smug. Did you ever have an argument with someone who dismissed not your arguments but your feelings? It's a great way to drive someone mad. These people are misguided and ignorant but their anger is real, meaning that it has a real source in their lives. Beck is megalomaniac who makes his fortune from it but it doesn't emanate from him. I wish I could see some compassion for people whom the left used to have some sympathy for. These are the people that capitalism and Reaganomics has repeatedly kicked in the teeth. There has to be a way to bring them into our circle. To be clear: I find their ideas repulsive but we're not going to win any battles by returning fire. The whole mechanism of our current political-entertainment complex thrives on conflict. It makes for good TV but not good politics.

the summary that's linked on the Democracy Corps website is interesting. Fundamentally, though, they're comapring apples and oranges. I grew-up in and often visit the Cleveland area and many of my relatives and acquaintances there could fit in the "independent" group. I used to live in georgia and have known doctrinaire conservatives there. While you could find "wingnuts" in Cleveland and "idependents" in Georgia, there are fundamental differences between the places. In eneral Midwestern conservatives, even away from big cities can be dragged kicking and screaming toward something new and they actually might like it. Not so in the South. Cleveland has been shaped by waves of immigration and is heavily Catholic, unionist, and communitarian. Grorgia is a socially, economic, and political feudal place (evident even in Atlanta) where there was little immigration between the Civil war and the 1960s. The focus groups are as much about geography as politics and are totally confounded. Obama will never be loved by a large segment of the white Southern population. he's likely to geta fairer shake in Cleveland--duh! If the focus groups were run by Yankees or people perceived as outsiders, you wouldn't get much about race. Southerners are on their best behavior about that--Catholics and Jews are another matter. I have a "Protestant" name, but half my family is Catholic, the Prots have become athiests, and all my mentors were Jewish. I used to enjoy surprising the worst bigots with those challenges to their assumptions about me.

This is a huge problem for the Republican Party, as you can see that Republican politicians must cater to a very large base of people whose political views are increasingly divorced from reality and based on paranoid conspiracy theories. Thus we see Republican politicians being afraid to answer the question of whether Obama was born in the United States, or afraid to support politically popular programs like health care reform. Since one hopes that the right wing zealots will not become the majority, it would seem that the better strategy for Republicans would be to adopt more mainstream positions, and marginalize these people. But again, the problem is that they are still too big of a group to be marginalized.

http://www.hopeandchange.net

Let's face it, this has everything to do with the fact that America is becoming more and more brown by the minute and alot of old angry white people can't/won't accept it. They want their country back, you know, the one where blacks and hispanics and women and gays knew their place. This new America where a black man named Barack Hussein Obama can win the presidency with 53% of the vote over a good ole boy and gal (McCain/Palin) is a complete abomination to their world view. It will only get worse as the demographics continue to change. Just wait and see.

"this is not about racism, but about ideology"

i suspect that if i were listening to the focus group, i would hear people talking in code

i have a long time acquaintance with a medical doctor, a primary care physician, who claims blacks are destroying western civilization

he has black patients

he has been in shock since obama was elected president

he thinks obama is dangerous, that blacks now have the upper hand and the country is in grave danger

he says these things to me privately

he would not have spoken about his feelings about blacks in a focus group

he would talk about his dislike of democratic administration
government, he was happy with government when bush was in office

he believes government is bad when there is a democratic administration

that democrats coddle blacks and enable the destruction of what values

he could talk about his anti government feelings in the focus group

he could never talk about his feelings about blacks with strangers

All this reminds me of the reporting from Iraq around the first elections. The Sunni people believed that, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they were the majority in Iraq. So any elections won by the Shia parties must be tainted by definition.

They keep losing elections. Just sayin'

Yes, these results are disturbing. But if this brief report was correct in saying that the focus groups were done in Georgia among "older, white, Republican base voters," then it explains a lot. This may be the most hardcore of GOP constituencies. That they dodged the race questions if facinating, since a generation ago that would have a more overt issue. But there should be some limits on how much we conclude from these narrowly chosen focus groups.

I think it is about fear most of all.

Some years ago, I reported a story on culture clashes that erupt when one company merges with another. I called an expert, a cultural anthropologist named Nessa Loewenthal (absolutely lovely lady -- has been around the world working on culture clash for Fortune 500 companies). She said the first thing to understand is that every group has "values." Second thing is to substitute "survival skills" whenever you hear "values," because that is what they really are -- tactics that have been important to the survival of that group, at least at one time in the past, though now they may have hardened into submerged shibboleths that are rarely even spoken out loud.

Put together two companies with different sets of values, sets of survival skills, and you could have trouble. One may be built on "be slow and thorough; caution saves lives" while the other is about "take risks or you'll be beat by the competition." In that case, not only does the first side find the second hard to understand, they believe the newcomers are dangerous and even out to destroy the company.

I think the right-wing is built on shibboleths like, "everyone should know their place and stay in it," and "it is a dangerous world -- be mistrustful of new people and new ideas."

It is striking how fearful the right is of terrorists, while the left may consider them a danger, but not an immediate threat to our way of life.

Perhaps it all means that the left's best strategy is to know what its values are, and keep articulating them simply and clearly (and living them out in its actions) until the other side can understand them. Then we won't be seen as the dangerous "others."

Don't really care how crazy they are, as long as they are few in number, and their numbers shrinking. The good news is that it looks like the Indys think they're crazy, too.

Its true, its not about race with these unhinged crazy people. Its just his politics that they disagree with. The nutters are completely OK with the radical muslim manchurian madrassa-educated birthcerthiding angryblackman notblackenough halfrican racist mercahating guntaking reparationsist obamabucks watermellononthewhitehouselawn friedchicken witchdoctor joker hehateswhitepeople terroristfistjab ObamasBabyMama president on a personal level. Race is certainly not a factor.