Pat Caddell was a guest on a radio show last evening, and he was going absolutely ape-sh!t over the election results because of what he recognized as a thoroughly incompetent job by the Romney campaign.
He cited a remarkable statistic from some exit polling data, in which self-described "conservatives" outnumbered self-described "liberals" by a very wide margin. Remember -- these were people who had voted in the election, not just members of the general public.
Caddell's point was that Romney's loss can be mainly attributed to millions of people who went into the voting booths as "conservatives" and voted for Obama! That, he said, is the mark of a miserable sales job and a fatally flawed "brand" for Romney and the Republican Party.
There's nothing wrong with running a conservative candidate, folks. Most voters prefer it!
Be careful reading too deep into what people self-describe as. Many claim themselves “conservative” or “liberal” yet may have wildly different ideas as to what these labels mean… some of this is due to the fact that conservative/liberal are such semantically mutilated and confused terms in the context of American politics.
If you go back through history not too far, and look at the philosophies underpinning the founding of the United States, it began as a liberal country—when at the time liberal meant an ethos of individual liberty, self-determination, and minimal government. Or what is now termed Libertarian.
The Progressives/Socialists misappropriated “liberal” for themselves at some point; and defenders of classical liberalism proper or libertarianism, became the “conservatives”, a word which usually implied “reactionary and traditionalist”… and it gets even more convoluted from there…
Oh, and as another example of why it’s good idea to be skeptical of what people self-describe as—I read a Gallup poll yesterday which says that 53% of Americans self-describe as pro-life, yet only 20% of Americans say they want abortion banned. And many here would say then that the only that 20% are the real pro-lifers.
Be careful reading too deep into what people self-describe as. Many claim themselves “conservative” or “liberal” yet may have wildly different ideas as to what these labels mean… some of this is due to the fact that conservative/liberal are such semantically mutilated and confused terms in the context of American politics.
If you go back through history not too far, and look at the philosophies underpinning the founding of the United States, it began as a liberal country—when at the time liberal meant an ethos of individual liberty, self-determination, and minimal government. Or what is now termed Libertarian.
The Progressives/Socialists misappropriated “liberal” for themselves at some point; and defenders of classical liberalism proper or libertarianism, became the “conservatives”, a word which usually implied “reactionary and traditionalist”… and it gets even more convoluted from there…
Oh, and as another example of why it’s good idea to be skeptical of what people self-describe as—I read a Gallup poll yesterday which says that 53% of Americans self-describe as pro-life, yet only 20% of Americans say they want abortion banned. And many here would say then that only this 20% are the real pro-lifers.