Via Nick Baumann, an
extraordinary post by
Erick Erickson of RedState, warning of the “revolutionary conduct amongst middle class
conservative and independent voters” on account of the Democrats’
imposition of socialism on an unwanting electorate. Maybe this is a typical
Erickson post, or indicative of what gets published at RedState. I don’t
know. But what I find fascinating is the juxtaposition of the belief —
that “middle class conservative and independent voters” are some
ideologically coherent cohort with their finger on the pulse of America — with an array
of evidence, in the form of a Rasmussen poll.
The quality, or relevance, of the poll in a moment. Erickson is working under the assumption that Democrats — the reigning political class — are “[c]onvinced beyond reason and data that the American people find delicious the sandwich of socialism being force fed down their throats.” And, that the American people, most of them anyway, are preparing for revolution. “[N]ot revolution with bayonet, but revolution with ballot and advocacy,” Erickson clarifies, although he says in the very next sentence that “if left unsatiated by November’s elections, something worse will come.” So, he’s absolving himself of responsibility for what might come if the socialists overwhelmingly voted into office in 2008 are not checked by raw popular will this year. (Erickson also warns that a Republican Congress will be equally susceptible if they fail to legislate The People’s will.)
Erickson’s evidence is based on a recent Rasmussen poll, or at least portions of it. I’m not much interested in the house effect of
Scott Rasmussen‘s polls or how he weighs them. What
I am interested in is the wording of the questions he uses. To wit: “86% of
voters believe there should b [sic] ‘limits on what the federal government
can do.'” Is that really an astounding finding? Or, in Erickson’s interpretation, “75% of mainstream voters
believe the free market works better than government at regulating the
economy.” Since when did the free market “regulate” the economy? Then
there’s questions that reveal ignorance, but which Erickson holds up as
wisdom: “52% of mainstream voters believe increased government spending is
bad for the economy.” I’m actually surprised that such a slim majority
holds this view.
This is all a précis for Erickson’s populist solution: a constitutional convention. Substantively, he only mentions one specific amendment, banning gay marriage, because “one judge in California has, through his own ‘fact finding’ decided gender no longer, after 5000 years, plays any role in marriage.” So in sum, we have a conservative organizer who believes his beliefs are reflective of a wide majority who are on the verge of revolution, who understands the importance of evidence to sway reason but cannot discriminate between good and bad evidence, and who believes that the culmination of two years of Democratic rule will be a revolution of right-thinking Americans who will use the plain text of the Bible Constitution to set things right again. It’s quite a pithy look at where the conservative base is at this point, if you can call them “conservative” in any meaningful sense.
–Mori Dinauer
