A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Ballot Box

Wow! It's been a busy week. My last post tore the lid off my inbox with new fans of the site, and a couple of Euro-dweebs that are perplexed that some blogger up in the cold white north isn't so enthusiastic about President-elect Obama's re-heated Swedish style socialism, the type of government that Alexis De Tocqueville once said endeavours to;



"keep them in perpetual childhood. . . . For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of poverty and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"

As the voting tallies begin to be broken down, dissected and disseminated by beltway bean counters with giant computer-ma-jiggies, some curious data is rising to the surface confirming my previous assertion that many "new voter" demographic groups show a strange disconnect between who they voted for and what they actually believe in. National Review's Johah Goldberg points out a few telling trends;

"Something interesting happened on Election Day that didn’t get much attention. Bans on gay marriage were on ballots in several states, and they all won. In fact, gay marriage bans have ultimately passed in all 30 of the states in which they were on the ballot.

The ban in California was particularly intriguing. Proposition 8 would have failed in the Golden State if it were up to white voters, who opposed it by a 51-49 ratio. What carried it over the top was enormous support from black voters, with about 70 percent of them backing it. Hispanics also supported the ban by significant, though smaller, margins. In Florida, where a similar ban required a 60 percent margin, Amendment 2 just barely passed, getting 60 percent of the white vote. The cushion came from blacks, who voted 71 percent in favor, and Latinos, who voted 64 percent in favor.

In other words, Obama had some major un-progressive coattails. The tidal wave of black and Hispanic voters who came out to support Obama voted in enormous numbers against what most white liberals consider to be the foremost civil rights issue of the day.

Put aside the substance of the gay marriage debate; what’s fascinating is how these returns expose the underlying weakness, or at least vulnerability, of progressivism."

The media has been prattling on about how the GOP has to do some ideological soul searching, implying that the defeat of Republicans was somehow a repudiation of conservatism and a vote of approval for the progressives. As the data pours in, it is clear it was not. Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned that the hard way two years ago.

Anyway, 1st citizen Obama is ready to take center stage - let our long national nightmare begin.

Cordially

Joe