OH BOY!!! hear's a Gallup BS poll

Why oh why would you post a link to that POS site and not even put a warning or a snippet of information about what kind of idiotic bullshit we might be exposed to?

I do agree that on some level a lot of people will call themselves 'conservative' even if they aren't (one way or the other), but...

Also, the comments section. Wow. What a bunch of idiots. I can't believe people actually believe the ACORN smears.

There's a big surprise from one of our top ten PUMA Obama-hating dickheads.

while people in the middle and on the left call themselves more moderate then liberal. I know I did in the past. Liberal became a dirty word for a long time. However, there are still more people in the middle (35%) and left (21%) combined and that is what gave Obama his victory. The middle is left-leaning right now.

more a function of geography then ideology.

Take a Maine Republican - in Alabama they'd have a hard time winning as a Democrat because they are, generally speaking, too liberal. Take an Alabama Democrat and put them in Maine, they'd be too right wing to win.

All the poll results show is that most people see themselves as moderate to conservative in the context of their own LOCAL politics.

A more interesting study would be one that attempts to normalize for regional differences.

The Republicans have to be the most right wing of any major national party in the west and they get 45%+ of the vote at all times. A lot of people discount the level of extremism in the GOP, they'd never control any majority anywhere else.

When you account for that and the relative conservativeness of the Democratic Party, it is no stretch at all to say that 40% of the populace is solidly conservative. Where I think there is some label flight is on our end with "liberal" becoming one of the dirtiest words in the American lexicon. I suspect liberals make up larger segment than is being stated but there is a real problem that the conservatives are much more monolithic than we can ever be and that mass also keeps us tacked to the middle in order to pick up as many of the middle as we can.

Denying that there are too many Right to Reich Wingers isn't constructive. Look at the GOP, they scarcely have any moderates at all and still have easily enough of a block to obstruct effectively not only nationally but in more liberal states as well. Democrats need such wide segments of the population that we have quite a few that would be as closer to the right than the center much less the left but they have to try to sell Tom Ridge and McCain as lefties and would just as well run them out of the party as elect them.

I'd also say in most of the country that anyone reading these words is in the liberal 10% of all they know, and that number is being conservative. The good thing is it is starting to get better, in 1992 Clinton could pretty much only win by having the good fortune to have a lot of the Libertarian types split off to Perot because it was probably like 55-60 percent conservative versus 35-40 now. Reaganisim is being defeated but we must be relentless.

but are more left leaning then right leaning.

lost 40 of those 52 House seats, Pelosi would not be Speaker and Obama's health-care plan would be dead.

You can shout BS all you want but those facts are inescapable.