Hardcore Politically Stupid People

By Alan Caruba

If you harbor the suspicion that a lot of voters are not bright enough to understand the issues, the candidates, or anything about those who hold public office, you are right.

Considering the critical issues affecting the security, economy, and the future of the nation, it is clear that we are being ruled by a cabal in Congress who vote the Democrat Party line without regard for anything other than political self-interest.

They got there, however, because of a solid core of voters who consistently demonstrate what dim bulbs they are.

Assuming some of these morons read the newspaper or got their news from the Internet sites of what is called the mainstream media, a 2004 Pew Research Center poll found that five times more journalists described themselves as politically “liberal” than those who said they were conservative.

That same year, a poll by the University of Connecticut found that journalists backed John Kerry over George W. Bush by a margin of two-to-one. Not much has changed since, except that daily newspapers keep going out of business; more than 120 dailies shut down in 2009.

Journalists keep asking themselves why???

Perhaps slobbering over Barack Obama and getting him elected might have contributed to a general sense of dissatisfaction among people whose I.Q. is higher than room temperature.

For many years there has been an annual Battleground Poll conducted by a bipartisan polling organization known for its rigorous methodology. It seeks to determine how Americans self-identify themselves politically. One of its questions asks, “When thinking about politics and government, do you consider yourself to be…” Then the respondent can choose from “very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, very liberal, or unsure/refused.”

The April 2010 poll results revealed that Americans overwhelmingly describe themselves as conservative. Over the years the percentage has never been less than 58% and, over the course of the years, 60.2% on average call themselves conservative.

This raises the question, of course, why the Congress is filled with so many “progressives” or “liberals”, depending what they call themselves or why Ronald Reagan’s two terms and George H.W. Bush’s single term was followed by William Jefferson Clinton? He, in turn, was followed by George Walker Bush. Voters then turned to a completely unknown candidate with no experience beyond having been a “community organizer”, Barack Hussein Obama.

Nothing resembling logic explains this, but there is a factor that stands out in poll after poll and that is raging stupidity.

A casual look at poll results in just the past month gives evidence of this. For example, despite the greatest man-made disaster of recent times, the BP oil spill, Rasmussen Reports revealed that 25% of adults nationwide had a favorable opinion of BP. Indeed, 6% had a “very favorable” opinion of BP.

Rasmussen polls asking for opinions of Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, revealed that 32% had a “somewhat favorable” opinion of this pinhead and 21% had no opinion regarding her performance in office.

Asked about Attorney General Eric Holder, one in four voters (26%) “still don’t know enough about Holder to venture any kind of opinion about him” and 35% professed to hold a favorable view. This is the AG who criticized the Arizona illegal immigration statute without having read it.

Ignorant of U.S. history and our Constitution, 28% of those polled said that civilian control of the military is bad for the U.S. The Founding Fathers, including James Madison, the chief author of the U.S. Constitution, advocated civilian control to ensure a stable democracy.

Finally, for my purposes, there are the polling results regarding whether the nation is on the right or wrong track these days. As recently as late June 28% of likely voters said that the country is heading in the right direction!

We have a Congress voting on bills, often in excess of two thousand pages, without knowing what they entail or the changes they will impose.

We have a President who has taken barely a year and a half to double the national debt, crisscrossed the world to apologize for protecting huge portions of it from despotism, has nationalized one sixth of the economy with a hated healthcare act and is pushing for a Cap-and-Trade bill that will impose crushing taxes on all energy use. He also intends to raise our income taxes in the midst of a raging Recession.

You don’t have to be a statistician to figure out that somewhere between 25% and 30% of the voters are stupid beyond redemption, oblivious to events and trends that show a nation in deep trouble.

I suggest this is the core constituency of the Democrat Party that has been pandered to from the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The remainder, the 60.2% who identify themselves as conservatives had better get to the polls in November to save this nation from utter ruin.

© Alan Caruba, 2010