Powerline called my attention to this site - HowObamaGotElected.com.
They found the most educated and informed Obama voters they could find, and asked them 12 questions to see how much they knew about Obama/Biden, and how much they knew about Sarah Palin.
512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points
97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates
Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions
57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).
And yet…..
Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes
Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her “house,” even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!
Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.
Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we “gave” one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)
They. Didn’t. Even. Know. Who. Controlled. Congress.
Folks, we’ve got a serious problem here. You need to watch the video on the site to see just how ignorant these voters are. It’s mind-boggling. We’re trying to win elections based on good philosophy, high principles, and careful argument. Our opponents are manipulating the low-information voter via slick packaging, TV media control, and comedy show cheap shots. We’re going to get murdered every time. It’s like trying to play modern NFL football without the forward pass. Doomed.
A great many Hollywood conservatives have outed themselves in this and past election cycles. Sure, some of them are permanent B-listers or worse, but some (e.g. Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck, Jon Voight) are not. Mel Gibson, while a liability in some ways, is still extremely rich and willing to make movies that liberal Hollywood studios won’t make. We’ve got enough of a crack to start breaking the monopoly.
We’ve got to burn the print media, use this recession to push the NY Times and as many of the other ODT lib-rags as we can over the cliff. It’s not enough, though. We also have to find some way to start hitting back in the popular culture. There’s got to be a market for comedy skewering liberals - and so many of them are such puffed-up, pretentious idiots, Joe Biden being Exhibit A. With the GOP out of power in Washington, there’s nobody left there to mock except Democrats. The Dems want “Fairness”? Equal-opportunity mockery sounds fair to me.
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martinra, maybe you’ll have better luck than I have convincing our esteemed host of three things:
1. the media environment is more toxic for Republican Presidents than any time since the Civil War.
2. The majority of the voting public will believe any BS they spout.
3. The blogosphere is not a sufficient counter.
SDN, my role here is not to convince Bill of anything. That said, I would tend to agree to your first two points, with the caveat that the GOP has brought quite a good share of the toxicity on itself through sheer communications incompetence and betrayal of its stated principles.
As to the blogosphere not being a sufficient counter, perhaps not at the moment. But the blogosphere is where we are, and where we have low bars to entry so that the statists can’t shut us out or shut us down. Also, recent history shows that the newspapers ignored and mocked the radio, the radio ignored television, and television ignored and mocked the Internet. Nothing is static.
You’d probably achieve more productive results if you didn’t go around setting up needless conflict between others, e.g. trying to get me to “convince” Bill. If you don’t think the blogosphere is sufficient, then start creating alternatives. Set up your own website and invite us to join in and make a difference, your way. Bill did. What are you waiting for?
SDN, the biggest difference between us is that you want to spend all your time conjuring excuses for lousy GOP leadership. I spend all my time concentrating on slamming the failures and idiocies of the lefties, and trying to fix the problems on the right so that we actually have a brand worth pushing. Pretending that Bush and the RINOs haven’t done at least as much, if not more, damage to that brand than the MSM is a loser’s game.
We need a new team. And the current GOP leadership doesn’t look like it has any intention of offering one.
Actually, the combination of spite and panic that led to five ostensible Republican’s pushing for a new Assault Weapons Ban is instructive. I think the left’s attempts to purge their party are good, and I support similar efforts on the right. What we really need are two parties true to their core values - socialism among the Democrats, and liberty-minded free-market conservatism in the GOP. Then let each party spread its consistent wares out for the mindless middle.
If we are going to win, let’s at least win with messages based on our core principles, not messages based on the socialist principles of our enemies.
The tide will not turn until the left (1) makes a mess of things and (2) firmly entrenches itself in government such that they cannot escape blame. Nothing short of this will work.
Much of the left knows damn well where their policies lead - that’s the entire point of what they’re doing. In the meantime they have no qualms about selling those policies with the pretty packaging rather than what is actually inside.
Buying votes with bread and circuses works, and will continue to work until they fall flat on their faces. The human race in general simply has not learned their lesson about socialism yet.
… which no doubt explains why circulation is rising.