Classical Values :: The scolded squishy independents will soon have their turn

October 11, 2010

The scolded squishy independents will soon have their turn

Nolan Finley (editorial page editor of The Detroit News) is warning the Republican Party about the inherently fragile (and often seemingly fickle) nature of independent voters:

The country is tilting more conservative, in reaction to the extreme liberalism in Washington, just as it leaned more liberal in 2008 in a rebuke of Bush. But there's hardly a far-right revival under way.

It's the middle that's moving, the independent voters that now decide most elections. Those voters can switch loyalties in a heartbeat, as we've seen over the past two years.

What they're looking for is a government that works for the people who pay the taxes and not for the special interests who pay the politicians. They don't want to be jerked too hard left or too hard right.

And they're sending a message this year that they don't want a government that dominates their lives and usurps their individual freedoms. They seem to be looking for a blend of fiscal conservatism and social moderation.

Republicans would do well to remember that if they're tempted to stray from attacking spending and the deficit and start dabbling in the divisive social issues.

It would be a mistake for hard core activists to conclude that these independent voters are simply "squishy." It is true that most of them are not activists, but there are plenty of people who are deeply distrustful of political activists, yet who nonetheless vote. They're the kind of people who don't wear their politics on their sleeve, don't put bumperstickers on their cars, and probably don't want to talk about their preferences at work. Nor do they particularly want to answer the door to strangers with placards and leaflets. But it would be a big mistake to call these people apathetic. Many of them not only fear the government, but they also fear the activists at their door (for they know these people have barely disguised contempt for their non-activism), and above all they fear too much power of any sort in the wrong hands. And right now, they think the Democrats have too much power, and have abused their trust. As Nolan puts it,

Learning nothing from the Republican pummeling, Democrats stopped listening to voters as soon as the ballots were counted, reading their victory as a mandate to march to the left and impose one-party rule. They acted against the will of the people and ignored their aversion to massive spending and deficits.

It's not so much that they're for the GOP as that they want to apply the brakes:

The GOP is benefiting from the self-destruction of Democrats more than it is from the strength of their own platform.

Their own platform? I'd rather not know they had a platform (or platforms), and I would rather keep my blinders on and not have to read the details. Can I please not be subjected to such an ordeal and just be against the Democrats? I mean, considering some of the stuff that activist crackpots put into party platforms, the GOP ought to be trying to get it classified, to ensure that ordinary people never find out about it. I'd hate to see buyer's remorse creeping into the minds of independent voters.

The country remains deeply divided on social issues, but right now there is a huge wave of concern over economic issues, and over the fact that the Democrats have behaved tyrannically. They want to tell the American people what to do with their lives in so many ways that it is mind-boggling. As I keep saying, for the first time in many years, the Republicans and conservatives are sitting pretty. They are in the position to give back to people something that the authoritarian hair shirt Democrats want to take away.

So it's probably not the greatest time to be screaming about homosexual depravity or waving bloody fetus placards at people.

Let the authoritarians on the left do the screaming.

posted by Eric on 10.11.10 at 09:56 AM

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Comments

This should be required reading for the political class.

As a libertarian (little l), I'll vote Republican most of the time. But the hard-right SocCons make me nervous. I do believe they'd like to empower their own Ministry of Virtue and Vice to go around slapping the makeoff off teen girls and making those hoodlums on the subway pull up their pants -- not to mention policing abortion out of existence and stuffing teh gheys back in the closet.

Do not want.

Auspex · October 11, 2010 10:22 AM

I'm one of those so called squishy independents... except my views are not so squishy. I've held the same views for a number of years. I'm a social libertarian, fiscal conservative. Stay out of my bedroom. Stay out of my pocketbook.

Personally I've been advocating voting gridlock for years and years. Neither party does well when it has all the power... though the R's do marginally better than the D's. But only marginally.

As to the social issues, they've been a huge distraction to the republican party. More of a way for the republican political class to point at this or that and say "See, I'm for something", "I am on the right road", while they stuff their pockets and lie.

I do hope the Tea Party movement is not taken over by social cons.

sookie · October 17, 2010 09:08 AM