Independents? You never know about. Bush was a Republican Presiddnt as the economy was heading downhill. So, independents may have done what so many Americans do and blame a bad economy on the President.
I think the GOP (currently at least) has trouble when their generic GOP candidate is polled tied with the President among independents in an economy of over
9 percent unemployment. How do you fuck that up?
Medved is more practical minded than most conservative talk show hosts.
I remember him arguing to disgruntled GOPers after the last national election as to why most American Jews (outside the Orthodox) are still loyal to the Democratic Party in spite of the supposed Israel-friendly and religious flavored Neocon foreign policy: they don't trust the Evangelicals. And he's right.
Though to be blunt, Medved's opinion angled from the idea that the moderate/Reform Jews (i.e. liberals) in America are intolerant against Christians, which of course I consider to be repugnant Neocon porn. But none the less, he has some brains and unlike most in the mindless right-wing landscape, he dares to deploy critical thinking in public.
(Of course critical thinking isn't profitable. You don't see guys like him or David Brooks or George Will hosting shows on Fox News.)
But he may recognize (but won't admit) what I posted years ago. Americans' life experiences have become so homogenized, that many of us feel vulnerable. So many of us have fallen on hard or harder financial times, have diseases of all types, unwanted pregnancies, divorces, drug and alcohol problems, and criminals in our families and among our friends and relatives that it's become more difficult to spout turn our backs on those in the same boat. Staunch conservatives refuse to recognize such.
Me the political science major would bring up how supposedly if American politics have generational swings between the ideologies, then we're seeing it right before our eyes. The liberals in the 1970s in rhetoric were still running against Herbert Hoover, now the conservatives in 2011 are still running against Walter Mondale. Times change, stale rhetoric and discredited ideology adapt to survive or they crawl off into the corner of irrelevancy and die.
Perfect example: Consider how the American public has really shifted positively towards gay rights in recent years compared.. Hell just a decade ago, most Americans weren't just against gay marriage or civil unions, they didn't find homosexuality "morally acceptable." You remember President Dubya pushing for that constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and all those state ballot initiatives as part of Karl Rove's strategy to drive up the base vote. (And it worked.)
Now the last Gallup poll has the majority finding it not just tolerable, but also broad support for legalized domestic partnerships (marriage or civil unions.) I like that argument that the public is way ahead of the government in this policy. What happened?
Most experts claim it's because of recent pop culture, whether Lady Gaga or
Glee or
Ellen or Neil Patrick Harris or
Modern Family or
Torchwood convinced people that those gay people out to corrupt your kids aren't evil, they're just normal people who're just as miserable as the rest of us. They're not a threat. I do agree it played a significant part, for breaking down the polls have the youth have no problem, their parents are getting over it, but their grandparents still rant about the evils of Sodom at their retirement home inbetween medication. Thankfully God invented death.
But I argue that was allowed to happen in the same timespan after
the religious right in America absolutely shredded their legitimacy as the moral authority. From countless Republican "family values" politicians busted for immarital affairs or being hypocritical closet gays to the Vatican's complete unashamed complicity in committing pedophilia and aiding/abetting child rapists. Or that divorce rate average in the Evangelical Christian community is equal to the national average. Or that the daughter of Sarah Palin, the Evangelical champion, bore a child out of wedlock and became a national public spokeswoman for abstinence. Or blasting Iran (rightly) for persecuting Homosexuals, yet screamed of the impending apocalypse if gays openly served in the military. And yada yada.
Long term the GOP still vehimently against the Gays on that issue is a loser. Obama will be the last Democratic presidential nominee that is publicly against gay "marriage," yet he's made his incremental steps towards civil rights equality with repealing DADT (with 80% public support), refusing to defend DOMA in federal court, allowing AIDS victims to have travel visas or appointing a (alleged) lesbian to the SCOTUS, etc. The GOP long term will either have to abandon it as a relic well of the past that won't hold mainstream water anymore, or subtly oppose it in stealth or coded speech like conservatives did after the Civil Rights victory back in the 1960s.
