New Polling Data from Gallup on Conservatives and Red State America

Gallup has released some new polling data which suggests that America is become more and more “conservative.” Political scientists and others have long discussed how the electorate is polarized and that voters are “sorting out” by party affiliation and ideology. The results of this are plain: the noxious tone of our political discourse; the naked appeals to eliminationism by the Right; and a sense that the other side isn’t just wrong, no, instead they are evil.

This is the formula for a reactionary politics that does not serve the collective good. Here, the tail wags the dog and the most frightened, least resourced, and most backward voices rise out of the polity. Elites who have long been disconnected from the masses manipulate this anxiety into a politics that serves to gut the social safety net and chase down the chosen bugaboos of the Right–the “evil” unions, “liberals,” “intellectuals,” teachers, Muslims, immigrants, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, “overpaid” public employees, and/or anyone who is not a “real American.”

In the end game, the authoritarianism infused White reactionary Tea Party AstroTurf politics of the New Right are the road to inverted totalitarianism–an order that rises out of a failure of democratic politics, a collapsed and exhausted economy, a triumphant corporatism, and the false promises of popular Conservatism.