PrintAugust 3, 2009
Brown Nose Democrats
During the 1980s, when conservative Democrats from the South and West united with Republicans in the House of Representatives to form a coalition adequate to pass most of President Reagan's agenda, the term "Blue Dog Democrats" was applied to these congressmen. There were a few liberal Republicans from the North, called "Gypsy Moths," who sometimes sided with the majority Democrats against Reagan, but this was a much smaller group.
A majority of the members of the House of Representatives today come from congressional districts which are conservative. This is in perfect accord with the latest Battleground Poll data, which seems to be totally ignored by the vast majority of Americans, including a distressing number of conservatives. Here are the percentages of Americans who, out of the six different and mutually exclusive ideological categories that respondents were given to describe their own ideology, described themselves in the July 16 - July 23 Battleground Poll:
"Very Conservative - 19%""Somewhat Conservative" - 40%"Moderate" - 4%"Somewhat Liberal" - 26%"Very Liberal" - 10%"Unsure/Refused" - 2%
The remarkable characteristic of these results is how consistent the percentages have been over the last decade of Battleground Polling data: In poll after poll for more than a decade the numbers have been very close to the same. In every single Battleground Poll, conservatives are a strong majority even when all the other groups - moderates, unsure/refused, somewhat liberal, and very liberal - are added together.
The Battleground Poll is bipartisan. It is the most accurate poll in predicting actual election results. After the November 2008 Battleground Poll, Ed Goeas published an analysis in which he broke those numbers down: Were Americans "social conservatives"? Were they "fiscal conservatives"? The answer was Americans, in both senses of the word, were conservative. In fact, 69% of all Americans considered themselves "fiscal conservatives," and 27% of all Americans considered themselves "fiscal liberals." A whopping 47% of all Democrats call themselves "fiscal conservatives." Only 5% of Americans consider themselves "very liberal" on fiscal issues.
So how can Obama successfully push an agenda which can only be called "very liberal" on fiscal issues? He and his paladins in Congress and in the Executive Branch simply lie. They say what polls tell them Americans want to hear, the reassuring promises, the untenable budgetary projections -- whatever it takes to convince the 70% plus of Americans who do not want the radical leftist fiscal agenda that is actually being passed.
There is no excuse, however, for the Blue Dog Democrats -- we should call them the "Brown Nose" Democrats -- who have stopped representing the overwhelming wishes of their constituents for a mess of pottage. These politicians appear utterly devoid of any political philosophy or ideological agenda beyond power.
There was a time, a few decades ago, when Americans looked hopefully to "moderate" Democrats. Bill Clinton, recall, was considered a leader of this group. Al Gore was a member too. It is now obvious that these "New Democrats" were nothing more than a noxious wad of infantile ambitions, unsated and probably insatiable egos, permanent campaigners whose purposes for victory were simply the perpetuation of power.
The far-left Democrats and the "Brown Nose" Democrats stand in stark contrast to what Democrats used to be not too long ago. Zell Miller, for example, was a loyal Democrat, a keynote speaker at a Democrat Convention, a popular governor and senator. Governor Casey of Pennsylvania was a pro-life Democrat who supported the party on almost everything else. Joe Lieberman was the 2000 Democrat Vice Presidential nominee, who could not even win re-nomination to his own state's Democrat Party in 2006.
What Democrats have descended into is a whole political party that stands, really, for nothing. It seeks power to have power. It is a political party, nominally for the "working poor," whose real backers are billionaires and Hollywood multi-millionaires. Once principled politicians, who chose to call themselves Democrats, tried to protect the folks back home, because they perceived a moral duty to their constituents.
Now these Brown Nose Democrats, seeing the vast powers Obama has collected, the monolithic power of the leftist media and academia, and the lure of becoming nabob in the new regime, seek only to stay in power, growing rich (in that inexplicable way that congressmen always seem to do), and have a real home not in some city of Flyover Country, but rather in the Imperial City, Washington. Blue Dog Democrats are a dying breed. Brown Nose Democrats are the wave of the future.
