Nathan Moore's Thoughts
Tuesday Morning Thoughts
I was initially going to write something cogent, pointed and uni-topical, but I had too much I wanted to get down and couldn’t decide. So, here we go.
1. If my staffer did this, I would have fired her without discussion. Period. Verbal reprimands are for forgetting to send out the mail.
2. On a somewhat related note, the Tennessee General Assembly needs to go home, really. Please. Now.
3. The Gallup poll showing voter ideological self-identification broken down as 40% conservative, 35% moderate, and 21% liberal
4. The White House is now blocking access to its visitors list? That’s rather transparent. No, wait … I’ll go check on some new pending legislation instead, because it’s made easily accessible 5 days before…oh, darn. I want my change back.
5. I’m glad that ABC has finally caved, and is going to anchor news from within the White House. They can move in right next to the MSNBC set.
June 16th, 2009 at 8:19 am
especially since there wasn’t a conservative on the ballot in 2008
Heh, so Conservative voters chose Obama in lieu of a real Conservative? 22% of self-identified Democrats consider themselves “conservative,” but you add that modifier “Democrat” to the end of that, and the word has a different meaning than it would for a self-identified “conservative republican”.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Bah. This poll does not get at the popularity of “liberal ideas.” For that you’d have to ask about actual issues. This poll gets at the popularity of political labels. As you note, the label “liberal” has been consistently unpopular ever since conservatives launched a full-scale campaign against the word.
That campaign worked, of course, and I think it even had a significant beneficial (for Republicans) impact on elections for a while. But it is fundamentally shallow. And it does not reflect actual attitudes on the important societal issues of the day.
It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which the Republican party focuses on labelling rather than on substance. E.g., during the republican primary a key litmus test was whether the candidate’s immigration policy was properly called “amnesty” or not. Never mind whether the policy made sense or whether it works or whether it was actually more or less stringent on the human trafficking; no the important part is whether I can call you an “amnesty” proponent. Other examples abound, such as “socialist,” they are “terrorists,” not “violent extremists”
is someone a “liberal” or are they a true-blooded American.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Yes, government spending is immensely popular, as is a weaker national defense and tax increases. That poll is TOTALLY wrong.
“Labels” are descriptors, and without them communication becomes nearly impossible. If labels weren’t relevant, the Left wouldn’t be so adamant about being called “progressive”, or concocting such absurdities as “man made disasters”. Labels are fine. If you don’t like what you’re called, believe in something else.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:21 am
[...] Nathan Moore: 1. If my staffer did this, I would have fired her without discussion. Period. Verbal reprimands are for forgetting to send out the mail. [...]
June 16th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Yes, absolutely, go home. It should not take 180 days to do 90 days worth of ‘work’. But that’s what you get when you have a newbie House Speaker trying to be ‘fair’.
I’m thinking that email should have been a firing offense too. Yeah, maybe you snicker about it in private but when you’re a 20 year employee of state government…you should know better than to forward it on to anyone–personal or private.
Regarding ABC…Already Been Co-opted.