Back to Politics. . .

Today, Carville's polling group released an interesting report from one of their focus groups.  You can find the link to the poll here:

Link to Poll

Now generally, one has to consider the source when it comes to polling, but generally these post-election focus groups are pretty spot-on.  Luntz conducted a focus group in 2006/2007 about potential Democratic Presidential candidates and pretty much nailed Clinton - liked a lot at first, but the more the focus group looked, the less they liked. 

Anyway, this focus group looked at the conservative base of the Republican Party (or a portion thereof).  What Carville found was a deep fear that Obama was going to destroy the country with a socialist agenda.  This is completely nuts of course.  Obama can't even pass a friggin' health care bill (something Democrats have been working on since FUCKING TRUMAN) right. 

Now some of you are saying, "Duh."  Okay, that's a fair point.  But what's interesting is that race/perceived religion isn't a factor here.  I figured that the perceived religion thing would be bigger than it was.  No, instead, the vitriol is based purely on Obama being a Democrat.  That, and a total ignorance of what's happening as being fed by Glenn Beck (who the focus group members feared would be killed by Obama or something). 

So, with that cleared up, I think we can split the opposition to Obama into basically four camps

1. The Normals (example - Bogart in Town) - Conservatives who live in the real world and whose differences with Democrats are philosophical.  Tax cuts good, government efficiency good, too much spending bad.
2. The Tea Baggers - Populist-Conservatives who live in an alternate reality wherein Obama and his evil forces seek to undermine the Republic and install socialism.  William Ayers is believed to have written Obama's book.  Glenn Beck is the savior.  Rush is good, but has problems (primarily with race).
3. The Birthers - Could be conservative, could be something else.  Freaked out about Obama's name, believing he is a secret Muslim or the like. Total nutjobs.
   
4. The Racists - pretty obvious, but are probably a smaller group than most think. 

Now, there's really nothing that can be said about the Birthers and Racists - they're the lunatic fringe, and there's not much you can do about them (See LaRouche, Lyndon) - but the Tea Baggers are something else entirely.  If anything, they're the creation of men like Roger Ailes - people who live within their own echo chamber of conservative ideals.

And that, to be honest, scares me because I can very well see Democrats going the same way in 5-10 years.  That's why I'm thankful for Mike taking part in these discussions.  Sure he's almost always wrong, but he punctures the cocoon of my blog-fulled media world.  And that's a good thing.