You just keep whistling past that graveyard, Mark. That's what you're good at. In the meantime, Tucker Carlson, talking on Matthews' show, says what the lefties have known for a loooong time. That the GOP is using the Evangelicals as a tool.

"CARLSON: It goes deeper than that though. The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in...

MATTHEWS: How do you know that? How do you know that?

CARLSON: Because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Because I live with them. They live on my street. Because I live in Washington, and I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they're beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don't share their values.

MATTHEWS: So this gay marriage issue and other issues related to the gay lifestyle are simply tools to get elected?

CARLSON: That's exactly right. It's pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out."

Bout time!

By the way, in case you missed it, the key word in that entire exchange was "elites." Not on our side. On YOURS.

Mark,

You really are slipping. Did you just miss the Rasmussen poll showing Casey up by 13, or are you not reporting it on purpose? And for CO-7, there was an outlier that had Perlmutter up by 17 (!!!) And Musgrave (CO-4) is losing support every election cycle, and is only up by a few points (according to the average of recent polls) in what should be a sure red district.

Just quoting the one poll that has the most extreme swing in your favor is a sure indicator of spin, Mark. Serving up softballs like this should be beneath you.

As long as Diebold is in bidness, it will be premature to talk about any clobbering the Republicans will suffer.

Democracy Inaction. sad.

Sorry, polls have carry no weight here, Mark. Remember?

Check out what the dems will do to get power. Watch the local CBS (yes CBS!) report on Senator Menendez's attempt to setup Kean Jr. during their NJ senate debate.

http://wcbstv.com/video/?id=92341@wcbs.dayport.com

Gee, that's just awful. Poor Tommy Kean can't handle the rough and tumble of politics, eh? Wants to stay safely tucked away in his glass house. Poor boo-boo kitty.

Cyber -

You got that right! The evangelicals have long been seen by the Repubs as useful idiots.

You're probably familiar with Thomas Frank's very insightful work "What the Matter With Kansas?". His basic thesis is that the Repubs have no interest in actually delivering on any of the evangelicals' hot-button issues, such as overturning Roe, amending the constitution to ban gay marriage, etc. On the contrary, the Repubs want these issues to stay perpetually unresolved. The Repubs wish to have a perpetual "culture war" - even going so far as to invent "War on Christmas", etc. That way they can get the Fundies all riled up every election day, so that the Repubs can get back to their *real* priorities: turning over our federal treasury to corporate welfare.

The Repubs' actual goals are economic plunder - they only pay lip service to evangelicals. Indeed, the majority of religious conservatives from the midwest and deep south are the very last ones who would benefit from Republican policies. In the rural south, for instance, it is likely that many of these folks have no access to health care, or are working at WalMart for sub-living wages, or their sons and daughters are dying in Iraq for no good reason, or they are getting nickel and dimed to death by rising living expenses (child care, gasoline, utilities, etc) in an environment of stagnant lower-income wages. But, they will go and vote for Republicans to keep gays from getting married.

Maybe evangelicals will finally wake up to the fact that they are just being used.

Cyber and Aaron,

You two are quite amusing...with Roe likely to get so mangled that it becomes in-effective, you're going to come here and say that all that GOP support for Christian ideals is so much fluff designed to garner votes?

The GOP is doing what we elect them to do on the matter of social issues...and while it might make you and Tucker Carlson feel good to think that the GOP is just pandering, we Christians know better.

Jim,

Just pointing out to the left, which lives and dies by polls, that if we're about to get clobbered, then such poll results shouldn't happen.

If you've been paying close attention you've noted that I've never predicated my belief in GOP victory on polls but on the solid, indisputable facts of political life - such things as big ticket purchases, people joining the military, the GOP's GOTV program...

Mark,

I would consider myself as part of "the base." Funny... but I don't suddenly feel "unmotivated" to vote because of ONE STINKIN' CONGRESSMAN!

The MSM's a pathetic joke.

Mark,

In fact, check this link out.... this is just the kind of crap I was trying to hint to the trolls recently...

http://newsbusters.org/node/8221

Mark,

I do agree that the left (especially in '04) has been way to attentive to polls. I assume that this is because they knew they had weak candidates, and they were desperately hoping for a miracle (especially with Kerry.)

Also, You are correct that you won't get clobbered in November. I was just surprised that you brought polling up at all, especially when your post is essentially "we're not loosing too badly, so there"

I'm sure you've been to Election Projection, where Scott throws out the oddballs and adds honest judgement to his predictions. He currently shows significant gains for the Dems this fall, including the Senate, though no "tidal wave" a la 1994.

One thing you conservatives seem to forget is that it was the independents that gave you your victories, not the base. You almost lost a presidential election to John Kerry, of all people. The Indies just couldn't stand Kerry, and they elected Bush. Some of the polls we see are weighted to try to balance the respondents. If they aren't correctly rebalancing the Indy vote this year (who claim to be voting for the Dems big time this year) the count could be way off, either way. In any event If the Dems can't win in this environment I'll tip my hat to you and acknowledge your majority. But until then I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you.

See you in November.

"Maybe evangelicals will finally wake up to the fact that they are just being used."

So, Aaron... what exactly would you expect them to do if they "woke up" to that "fact"?

What other option, politically, do evangelicals have to promote things that are important to them? The democrats certainly aren't going to help them along in that regard, so expecting them to vote democrat if they were disillusioned by attitudes of Republican elite is no more than wishful thinking. The best you could hope for is that they would just stay home in frustration... which also would NOT help them advance their issues.

However, even if it's true that the Republican elite are just using the evangelicals to get into powere, that would mean that evangelicals are equally using the Republican elite to promote their causes, which (in the scenario you've put forth) otherwise no one would in office would put forth.

So, really, it doesn't matter what the Republican elite think of them... they're still going to vote for Republicans over democrats, and waking them up to any such attitude will still not be a boon to democrats at the polls.

Polls have been skewed about 9 to 16% Dems the last few months. The liberal media is doing everything they can to suppress the vote of conservatives.

It might work.

True conservatives are in a bind. Most of us are not happy at all about the current Congress which has abandoned many conservative principles. That being said, the liberal alternative is a complete joke and much worse.

Noonan -

Whether it's Roe, gays, Mexican immigrants, or perpetual "wars on terror", all of these issues are of interest to the corporate Republican machine only in so far as they illicit strong emotional responses. While the policies implemented by Repubs in Washington are focused on rewarding the wealthy corporate elites that subsidize their campaigns, these culture war faux issues are great tools for emotional manipulation.

The only way this corporate machine can get regular working people to consistently vote against their own economic interests is to instill fear: fear of rampant "gayness", fear of brown hordes, fear of raging terrorists in your home town, etc etc. The Republican appeal is to our basest, most reptilian emotional instincts.

You all are fond of making WWII analogies, no matter how preposterous (no doubt another part of that emotional manipulation you're so addicted to). Well then, lets contrast Bush to FDR. Roosevelt's message: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself". Bush's message: be afraid, be afraid, be very very afraid (but keep shopping).

Just like the 'slanted polls' that are always out
there telling us how the Dems will 'take over',
this is another myth perpetuated by the MSM and the Dems trying to show a positive spin on their hateful, sick party. It is fact, that they think
by 'saying something against the GOP, it is the gospel truth, as if bloggers, etc. will not show them up, on their continued lies and attacks.
I think this hateful tactic they have used on a constant basis, "IS GOING TO BRING OUT REPUBLICANS
IN BIGGER AND BETTER NUMBERS TO VOTE, AS NEVER BEFORE IN OUR HISTORY"

LNC -

You are certainly correct that dems and evangelicals are at odds in many areas. But at least it is quite clear where progressive ideals and the more extreme evangelical positions diverge.

And while evangelicals and progressives may be far apart on issues such as reproductive rights and gay marriage, they also share many areas of common ground - and those common areas are the more substantive ones.

In my opinion, the message of Christ is a profoundly un-Republican one. Jesus does not stand for the culture of obscene greed and authoritarianism that is the real heart and soul of today's Republican party. "Compassion" is certainly at the core of the Christian ethos - but to Republicans it is merely a code word calculated by the Frank Luntzes to make Christians think Republicans "speak their language". Republicans use the word compassion in order to enact its opposite: a souless culture in relentless pursuit of personal wealth at the expense of the common good.

Aaron, I'm a middle class guy and I've suffered far less under a GOP majority than a tax heavy Democratic admin.

It's not even close. That means money for MY FAMILY to do with as I choose. We are as middle class as we get and if the tax cuts are rolled back, it will hurt our family some to the point that the dollars I have to spend on taxes won't be spent on the economy or on my family.

Get it?

I just dont understand how the dems think that evangelical christians are going to abandon the GOP out of disgust for Foleys behavior - then turn around and vote for the party that more or less approves of everything that Foley did.

Hmmm, Im so ticked off about that foley guy being gay and liking young guys. I think Ill go vote for the party that wants foley to be able to marry young guys. Thatll teach 'em!

Seriously though, if things were as good for us as is commonly claimed on here we wouldn't be behind at all. Unfortunately millions of people don't know what we know and it will thus not affect there voting decisions in the least.

Then you have some conservatives choosing to opt out of the elections this November.

Then our people shoot themselves in the foot just as things are looking up with this sex scandal, serious or not it still looks serious to the common person and therefore does us no favors.

In the end you can wear your rose colored glasses all you want by clinging to this or that poll which goes against the norms, but as I see it the best thing to do is be prepared for the absolute worst.

This is our reward for letting it slip away, a vicious cycle where we get ahead and they drag us back.

I just hate it that our great nation's fate on so many important fronts is tied up in all this politcal foolishness.

Warriornation:

Polls have been skewed about 9 to 16% Dems the last few months.

Jim, I got those numbers from Scott Rasmussen who made that claim over the weekend on a Fox News program. He said the internals on many of these polls have been heavily skewed to Democrats by a range of 9 to 16%.

"Maybe evangelicals will finally wake up to the fact that they are just being used."

Maybe blacks, unions, and others will wake up too...eh Aaron?

Aaron,

You do realise, don't you, that most of the rich vote Democrat, right? And when you break it down by earned and inherited wealth, the Democratic Party is the Party of aristocracy.

Once again - when your Democrats talk about "taxing the rich", that it just a phrase to elicit an emotional response from you...they aren't actually going to tax the rich; not the real rich. Not the Kerry rich, or the Kennedy rich, or the Rockefeller rich...no, the rich they go after are those people who do, indeed, have millions in cash and assets, but all of that was earned by the person in question, or by their parents...you come back to me with your class warfare rhetoric just as soon as Kennedy proposes a surtax on everyone who owns property at Martha's Vineyard...

Jim,

Well, we'll both know in less than a month, won't we?

I dispute your notion that independents re-elected President Bush - my contention, and the basic reason I'm confident about next mont, is that we won in 2004 by energising GOPers and strong GOP leaners. What the GOP is doing - under the expert "nuts and bolts" political orchestration of Karl Rove, is completing the re-alignment which actually started in 1968, but was hamstrung by the psuedo-conservative Nixon (tagged as a conservative while he was actually an old-fashioned liberal, Nixon's fall dragged conservatism down with it, thus delaying the re-alignment by 20 years).

We are building a majority coalition - its base is conservative Christians, while it finds room for homeless liberals and libertarians (they used to reside in the Democratic Party, but since 1968 the left has de-facto prevented liberalism or libertarianism from having any say in the Democratic Party). It isn't monolithic, and it won't command 60% of the vote except at odd times, but it will command a working majority for a generation or two.

I know the polling alleges a 33% equality between Democrats and Republicans with the other third being independent - but that is bogus, in my view. When you take the actual voting population (people who show up for at least 2 out of 3 elections) and place the strong leaners where they belong (ie, indepenents who vote 75% or more of the time for one particular Party), then you get about 45% of voters being inherently Republican, and only about 30% being Democrat.

If you take a look at Rasmussen's surveys over the past couple years measuring President Bush's approval, you'll see that its been hovering in the low 40's most of the time - and Rasmussen is the first to tell you that this poll is of adults, and thus likely understates GOP strength by some percentage points (most polls of adults, in my rule of thumb, underestimate the GOP by 10 percentage points....thus a poll of adults showing 39% support for President Bush would actually be in the 45-50% range of support...Rasmussen is better, and I only add 5 percentage points to his GOP total): so, President Bush's real if-there-were-a-vote-today support has consistently been at least 45%...that percentage of voters I consider rock-solid for the GOP except in the most extraordinary circumstances, and Mark Foley ain't that extraordinary.

Now, these GOPers aren't entirely happy with President Bush - you can find that nearly all GOPers will take exception to at least one thing President Bush has done...and thus it is tremendously easy to get a poll result which alleges a fractured, dispirited GOP heading for crushing defeat next month. But happy with GW or not, these GOPers aren't about to allow there to be a Speaker Pelosi...and they will be mobilised and motivated and show up to vote in November...in an election where independents usually don't show up much anyways (ie, mid-term elections), and will show up even less because they are simply disgusted with politics (5 years of relentless negativity has dragged down GW...but it hasn't actually helped the Democrats in the popularity stakes).

Given the state of the economy, given falling oil prices, given the continuing desire for victory in the war, given the increasingly conservative nature of the American electorate, given the increasing GOP self-identification of the electorate - given all this, I just don't see a Democratic wave coming up...

The Unprincipled Hypocrats

Mark,

What I question in that analysis is the assertion that self-identified "strong leaners" among the independents are somehow committed to the Republican party in a structural sense. I beleive that these leaners only remain committed to a point; and that if the Republicans veer to the right they will jump ship. Alternatively, if the Dems move to the center these same voters will switch.

If true, the efforts to "realign" the electorate are completely illusory; what is being "realigned" are the parties themselves, and as the Dems under Carter, Dukakis, Kerry, etc simply pushed this electorate away. How else would you explain Slick Willie? The so-called "moderate independents", at 15% of the electorate favoried Clinton over Dole by 50% to 30%. Even adding Perot's 17% only gives the republicans 47% (all this from wikipedia). Certainly this is no triumph for the Dems, but it does show that the independents are a fickle bunch who are quite adequate to sway an election.

This implies to me that a sizeable chunk of independents (even if only 10% or so) will forever keep the Republicans in check, and that explains the glacier-slow progress the Republicans are making on abortion and other so-called "important" issues with the base, as they are (rightfully) afraid of being the 49% party. And even if they get 45% through die hard voters, that is no guarantee that they will be able to find 5% more among the "true" independents.

All this is a moot point if the Dems keep nominating Dukakis clones for president and congress; the Republicans will be free to do absolutely anything and still win elections. But if the Dems ever DO run viable candidates the Rebpuclians will have to respond. In the upcoming election we will see how this will play out, as the Rebpuclians will no doubt be fighting absolutely as hard as they can. If they lose, I really think they will make moves to the center, such as allowing a minimum wage hike and allowing the "rollback" on tax cuts for the rich, as well as the abandonment and the pro-life movement within their base.