That people will be conservative in general questions, but answer more liberally to specific ones (eg civil unions an marriages for gays, public option for healthcare). I wonder if this is because the right has done such a good job making "liberal" a pejorative.

There are a litany of problems with Wingnut's statistics and how he defines hard work and family values (if someone denies funds to help feed children, does that person really value families?). I'm sure Salon's readers will point out many of the other logical and statistical problems with his article as they seem to be several steps ahead of Wingnut at all times. However, I would like to briefly discuss the use of the recent Gallup poll that suggests 51% of the country is pro-life.

Many people have noted that the poll poses the pro-choice and pro-life question very poorly. The question is not phrased in a way that would suggest the answer should reflect political views, but rather the question can be taken for one's personal views. Therefore, a respondent can state that he or she is pro-life as a personal choice but still believe the government should take a pro-choice stance. Others have noted that abortion is becoming more and more of a personal choice rather than a political belief (this falls in line with a pro-life philosophy).

The problem with Wingnut is not that he espouses a conservative viewpoint, but that he regurgitates Republican talking points and his analysis is either lazy or disingenuous. If this is the best conservatives can do, then they can expect to continue losing elections well into the near future.

I trust your data as far as I could throw a freight train uphill in a high wind.

Isn't there a bathroom wall you can write on somewhere?

Wingnut, you completely ignored the entire substance of Joe V.'s question. Well, half of it, anyway; you did mention many policies (although if America's "center-rightness" means we're opposed to big government and find big government usually wasteful, it's a wonder that President Bush didn't save the country 10 trillion needed dollars from an already huge deficit, by doing away with Social Security and Medicare, post-haste).

However, Joe explicitly questioned your equation of "Center-Right" status with values of "family, honesty and hard work." He wanted to know, wait a minute, who died, made the Right Wing God, and decided that esteem for family, honesty and hard work equals being Center-Right? You dodged it!

You say:

--More than a few of you were outraged by the idea that values like family and work should be considered center-right values when you yourselves believe in them and you consider yourselves liberal.

--But consider "family." Is it conservatives or liberals who are engaged in an effort to expand or even rewrite the definition of what constitutes a family?

So apparently, liberal acceptance of gay marriage means liberals are anti-family? This argument was made elsewhere, in The Economist, but since gays constitute a significant minority in this country and in the world, and aren't going anywhere, isn't denying them the right to have a family (i.e. marriage and couplehood) reducing the number of familial relationships, and arguably promoting rootless promiscuity by government or majority fiat? Therefore, isn't it the conservatives who are anti-family in this case?

Nor did you properly address his question, are Honesty and Hard Work really to be considered "center-right"? Then the trades unions, and all the working-class socialist and communist movements throughout the years, were apparently either "center-right"? Or perhaps they weren't really hard workers, then; simply lazy members of the working-class?

"Auto manufacturer talks broke down today; conservatives say the Center-right unions are at fault." I like that! Rolls off the tongue very nicely.

Should read: The Economist made the following argument...

I'm leaning toward Wingnut being David Frum, if only because he so blithely repeats the tired truism of America as a "center-right nation." When I saw that bit in last week's column, I immediately took it as a telltale sign. Frum is also a very outspoken guy who doesn't mind appearing in liberal venues (he was on Bill Maher not too long ago) so a column like this would be right up his alley.

Any other guesses at who this guy is?

Q: How many wingnuts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: There will be no screwing by any wingnuts unless their name is Craig, Vitter, Sanford, Foley or Ensign.

Okay I have nothing but perhaps the wingnuts should try being human first. That's the core issue here, conservative policies are inhumane, war (2), plundered economy, plundered constitutional rights, laws that let corporate scam artists run amok...and on and on.

If the question was asked of people what kind of policy do Americans support without context to politics, the majority of people's answers would be "liberal" and "moderate" on issues such as job security, regulations of financial institutions, universal health coverage, education and social security.

Fuck the conservatives and wingnuts...and I don't mean screw or sex.

It can't be Karl Rove because he isn't screwing around with our heads well enough.

It can't be Dana Perino because the paragraphs are longer thank a minimum three sentences.

I vote Bill Kristol. Because he's always wrong.

Part of it is probably linguistic. The demons of talk radio have turned the term "liberal" into a pejorative, which people, unless they think, would not want to be associated with. If the surveys were to replace "liberal" with "progressive" and/or "conservative" with "unchanging" then the results might be totally different.

Language, after all, is very critical, which is why both sides of the abortion debate refuse to use the word "abortion." They are either pro (or anti) life or pro (or anti) choice.

...is probably that Wingnut wants to claim that only conservatives are honest, hard-working, and family-loving, and smear liberals as (presumably) dishonest, lazy, and family-hating.

I'm so eager to hear how the working class is either a center-right working class, despite socialism and communism being a working class movement, or how the working class is actually a misnomer, because the leftists of the working class didn't really esteem hard work. It will make Western Civ classes more confusing, though:

"In the Weimar Republic, right-wing Germans had armed clashes in the streets with center-rightists, but the center-right parties couldn't decide whether to ally with the center-right parties or with the rightist parties, while the center-right parties couldn't ally with each other, and so both they and the center-right parties were rendered politically ineffectual..."