The DRAMATIC shift of the US to the Right way of thinking!

[zbdent]

The American voting population is heading toward the Right.

Let's look at the evidence.

There's a crowded number of candidates for the Democratic nomination for President. At last count, there were 10, with three officially declared. Wow. That sure beats the 13 Republican candidates who announced their intentions between 1999 and 2000.

And then you have the House and the Senate. There was overwhelming support for the Republicans in 1994. Yippee! They won back control of the House AND the Senate for the first time since they lost it at the start of the Great Depression. Oh, wait, there was those two years in the fifties.

And then there was the election of 1996. If it wasn't for that goofy little millionaire (who caused George Bush I to lose in 1992), Bob Dole would have garnered enough electoral votes to have a landslide electoral victory by 2! And don't forget that the Republicans lost 3 seats in the House.

And then there was the firestorm of the Impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998. Yeah, the Republicans were all fired up, calling for his resignation because he lied. They were triumphant in their victory when the voting population overwhelmingly gave them -4 seats in the House and treaded water in the Senate. On that wave of accomplishment, they decided to hurry through the impeachment vote before all of their new members were sworn into the House.

And you had the GLORIOUS VICTORY of 2000, where George W. Bush (Bush II) earned his pResidency by an overwhelming vote of 5 to 4, er, overwhelming electoral victory of 271 to 268, where he only needed one state, any state (as long as it was Florida with his brother as Governor and his campaign manager as the Elections Superviser) to win. And you have the stunning accumulation of the House and Senate seats, leading to the historical majority of 50-50 in the Senate with the VP casting the tie votes. And don't forget the gain of -2 seats in the House.

Finally, in 2002. The Republicans did something that had not happened in a long time (well, 4 years can be a long time if you're used to not paying attention), which was pick up some seats for the sitting pResident's party in the House and Senate in a non-Presidential election year.

Well, with that overwhelming history of the country moving toward a Republican point of view, it's no wonder that they feel that everybody is supportive of doing a redistricting (in Texas) when one was already approved as constitutional, just because they feel like it, or recalling an election of a Governor which had been elected in the normal way, just because he, like several Republican governors (including Bob Taft in Ohio) is in office while the state is running a major deficit.

Yes, the voting population is amazingly moving to the Republican way of thinking.

[forgethell]

1. does it matter

how closely divided the voting populace is, if the Republcians have all 3 branches of government?

[zbdent]

2. Just reminding people how deeply rooted the "right movement" is

founded in cow manure.

[forgethell]

7. But deep enough

All it takes is a slim majority of the votes.

[ixion]

3. does it matter how many liberals there are, if BBV is allowed to proceed?

I mean, we could all vote Dem and the repug would still win, if Diebold has anything to say about it. And with no verifiable results, how could we question it?

[Caution]

4. The problem is the ignorance of the electorate

They arent changing to thinking like right-wing idealogues, they aren't changing at all. Poll numbers show that americans in general are overwhelmingly liberal. The problem is that the right-wing has latched onto divisive issues and claimed them as their own.

Tax Cuts - Only those who understand what taxes are actually used for would ever think tax cuts were a bad idea. The rich have been pushing the idea of supply-side economics for decades now. And why shouldnt they? The whole of that philosophy is "If you make me more rich, eventually it will make you more rich" From their point of view only the first half of the statement is important and from any sane person's point of view the statement is patently absurd.

Abortion - the country is evenly divided on this issue. By turning it into some kind of moral war the right wing is able to get a large portion of people to vote for them because these people are only concerned with this one issue

Guns - The NRA has a ton of money to spend on right wingers enabling them to push thier agenda

Religious fundamentalism cloaked as every day religion - people think "What is wrong with my kid wanting to pray in school?" Most of middle america is homogenized as small, overwhelmingly christian towns. When I went to college I met a lot of people who had never met a Jew, never mind an atheist.

The War on Drugs and Crime - Ask anyone what to do with a drug-dealer, they'll say throw him in jail and throw away the key...and this is what is happening now. People don't understand that this means their brother who sold a joint to his best friend. They don't understand that most users eventually sell drugs to support an addiction, then there is the idea of mandatory minimums. People get angry about a crime that happens without knowing the consequences for their own lives to simply locking people up.

Finally the right wing are masters of the isolated example proving the rule. 9/11, columbine two horrible incidents. These scared people and the right-wing takes them and convinces people that terrorists lurk around every corner, that every troubled child is a massacre waiting to happen. It's absurd. It is more likely that you will kill yourself than that you will die in one of these types of incidents.

People havent changes, the republican party and the right-wing have mastered propaganda techniques. Study up on the techniques used and perfected by the nazi party and you will be amazed at the parallels in use by republicans today (and many democrats as well).

Until the media wakes up, this country will be held hostage by these lunatics.

[Blue-Jay]

6. Well done, Caution.

You've laid it out beautifully. When I ask people why they vote Republican they state many of the same reasons, having no idea of the consequences of their short-sightedness. It's a matter of propoganda and not having the ability to see further than their own noses.

Oh yeah, and Clinton's penis also comes up in my conversations with the Republicans who aren't really sure why they're Republicans. Go figure.

[ElementaryPenguin]

5. He who controls TELEVISION, controls America - PERIOD!!!

The rest is just window dressing!

If Gore or someone else can't an alternative network up and running - we have virtually NO chance, in the long run - even if we were able to oust the fool War Chimp!