The Values-Vote Myth

Caonservative writer.

The Values-Vote Myth
By DAVID BROOKS

Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.

Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues.

Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/06brooks.html

Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.

and we here on the "liberal coasts" are being snobs and being cruel and whiney to the 51% who voted for Bush. We here in commie land who WERE hit with terrorism are not thinking lies about an occupation is a war on terror. How is that?

let me tell you Brooks, and get it straight. If people approved of that decision, then sorry Brooks, they ARE stupid for approving of a slaughter that was based totally on lies. If they had made an effort to read and find out the facts, stupid, they would not have approved of the decision, that is if they had any sense of justice at all. Maybe they can't read. They ARE stupid, excessively nationalistic, ignorant boobs . Let them trot themselves out to the tarmac in the middle of the night and lay wreaths upon the flag draped caskets and cry crocodile tears for the men and women whose next stop for that casket is somewhere in California, or Maine, or New York. Trying to smear liberals in the NE or the left coast, is your goal here and I personally think you stink.

They crack me up.

from his biography at the NYT. OK, thats all I needed to know.