And how the hell do you believe someone is a socialist when you don't even know what the word means?For a while there, it did look like Obama was interested in having the state at least partially own the means of production (of financial mayhem and substandard automobiles).
I like how nearly a third of them WANT TO OUTLAW CONCEPTION.Pretty sure it's that other thing they want to outlaw. Like conception, but totally the opposite.
Thank you! I'm sick and tired of Neocons who believe there's no difference between socialized healthcare and communist Russia.Was this supposed to be ironic? Neocons have no particular objection to socialized healthcare.
Maybe the conservatives I know are fucking nuts but the majority I've met tell me that I have to be either capitalist or socialist but if I choose to be socialist I can look forward to spending the rest of my life sitting in a mud pit with no personal property of my own.I believe you. The neoconservative movement started with liberals who swung right, though, and was always more tolerant of social welfare programs than mainstream conservativism. Staunch opposition to socialized medicine strikes me more as a small-government conservative position.
You do realize that one of the primary reasons the Federal government exists is to fund centralized armed services? And "education" is not mentioned at all in the Federal constitution and is generally considered a matter reserved to the states?You are correct that it is misleading to compare federal expenditures on the military to federal expenditures on education (because the states pick up most of the tab).
The vast majority of education funding in the United States comes from state and local governments.
Education is most effective when it is funded and managed at local level, while the exact opposite is true for military forces, where centralized control is ideal.Tell that to all of the other industrialized nations who are ahead of us in terms of the quality of education, k-12.
One last question:I think you might be missing something about this. It is not merely equivalent to something like "Is Christianity true".
Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?
Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18
Wait what? Talk about begging the question. Since "heaven" is a concept tied up very closely with basically only with two of the three Abrahamic religions, this is a loaded thing to ask. Totally was put into this poll just for the lolwut nature of the responses, and should have been left out.
Conceptives.Pretty sure it's that other thing they want to outlaw. Like conception, but totally the opposite.Proception?
I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic world. But I found myself making certain claims about Republicans that I didn't know if they could be backed up. So I thought, "why don't we ask them directly?" And so, this massive poll, by non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000 of over 2,000 self-identified Republicans, was born.Kos desired a poll which would confirm things he had already written, and he got exactly that. There was no real poll-taking science used in formulating these questions. There were no (as they've been called earlier) palate-cleansing questions, there was no attempt at framing the questions in a way which would not push the responses toward confirmation of what Kos needed to have confirm. I don't think this is a "pull poll" per se, but it is pretty much a borderline case, with poorly framed questions, answer selections designed to lump together a variety of possible motivations for choosing that answer, etc.
You could -- and conservative organizations frequently do -- conduct a similar poll on self-described Democrats or Liberals, and make them out to be Marxists (or, more damagingly, soft on terrorists or pedophiles), if you phrased the questions in just the right way, and threw in ambiguous answers with the desired ones.I'm not sure I understand how, for example, "Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election" or "Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not" are "phrased in just the right way"; how would you suggest that they could be phrased better, in order to make the results more accurate?
If you determine the 'Bin Laden determined to attack' memo as a strong warning that Bush did nothing about, than Bush 'let it happen".
This poll is awful at doing what it purports to do but great at making liberals feel pissed off and superior and frightened. So I suppose it's a success.Can you please explain why it's awful at doing what it purports to do?
Oh please. No one has ever carried 70% of the popular vote in a modern U.S. election.No one, previous to Obama, ran against John McCain and Sarah Palin, after eight years of George W. Bush.
I'm not really sure exactly what you're arguing.No one, previous to Obama, ran against John McCain and Sarah Palin, after eight years of George W. Bush.I also think that Dubya was the greatest U.S. presidential disaster in the history of ever, and I agree that Sarah Palin is basically a narcissistic proto-fascist with great hair, but this is an overly simplistic formula by which to try to measure the infinitely more complex socio-political, economic, and cultural phenomena we find ourselves in the midst of.
Sheesh, I never said I didn't find it worrisome, but it's cool (if odd) to be painted (I think?) as an unreasonable quasi-apologist for the McCain/Palin ticket.I didn't intentionally paint you as such, and I apologize for having seemed to do so.
There is a case to be made that the interests of evangelical voters are more closely aligned with the progressive agenda than with the GOP, especially on issues of poverty, environmentalism, and social justice.
Unfortunately, the time to make that case was two generations ago, and because progressives and liberals would rather point and laugh at the fundies instead of seeking common ground and engaging in the kind of church-based base-building that the GOP does so well, we lost that fight without ever knowing we were in it in the first place.
Republicans are rooting for the Colts, while Democrats and Independents favor the Saints.
Where the whole pro-life thing breaks down in my mind is how they frequently offer legal exceptions for cases like rape...The fact that they are against better and more available sex education is another puzzler.
...the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And those same leaders routinely endorse policies that make a lot of sense if their goal is to penalize women who have sex - to, as I’ve heard many of them put it, make sure women “face the consequences” of having sex.posted by kirkaracha at 4:08 PM on February 4, 2010
ts true that Repubs are more an ideology, the Dems are more an interest group. Thats why you see more conformity in belief from Repubs.I've seen this reaction before when social science reseach comes up, which is odd, because Mefi is usually all scientific and rational-like. Can any of you objectors be more specific about why you rejected this information practically out-of-hand? Why don't you want to believe that identified Republicans are really this ideological? And where have you been for the past year?
Liberals are a smaller base than conservatives so many Dems are Dems just for their own self interest....not a inner belief system.
But it wasn't a poll designed to elicit any real clear worldview. It was designed, from moment one, to confirm the biases of Kos as put into the book he is writing, and as such stands as a monument to the liberal desire to stand and point and laugh at all the poor, misguided, uneducated people who oppose them at the polls.So you doubt the reputability of Research2000 and don't value informed opinion like Nate Silver's or the ISS? And you don't like Kos, because its all out of a "liberal desire to stand and point and laugh" at all the ideological Republicans?
It was designed, from moment one, to confirm the biases of KosCan you please explain how it was designed to confirm his biases?
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