When I hear anyone framing a policy debate by speculating about popular culture in the preposterous terms of left/right I realize that whom so ever is prognosticating with this particular bullhorn in hand has most certainly had their thinking done for them by someone else. Left/right is a false dichotomy drawn from the rhetoric of ideology. Ideology typicaly is a strategy for mobilizing public opinion against its own interests. The GOP has proven thru corporate funding and GOP freindly coorporate domination of popular media, to be adept at promoting itself via a politics of fear, resentment and division. This explains their ascention to a virtualy uncontested bully-pulpit today.

Republicans have been most successful in beguiling themselves into espousing the blindly violent and self destructive doctrines of class division and racial stereotyping as "patriotism" and imperial militarism as "defense". To preclude foreign policy "debate" by distorting language in these ways is a product of cynical repetition. Succeeding with this subterfuge is not to win a "debate" at all, rather it is a short term strategy devised to side step debate all together and thereby advance directly to the manufacture of electoral consent. The inane notion being advanced by our mystery man here is that the catastrophic results of these politics are somehow an expression of the popular will. I submit this dissonate populism is in truth more baloney than conviction. Any "debate" being framed in terms of left and right today is predicated on the bogus assertion that the source of opposition to the GOP's bankrupt and widely discredited theory of government, society, politics and economics originates from a non-existent "left wing". Such are the seeds from which political ideologies are cultivated. Anyone who is familiar with the history of these terms knows very well that no detectable "left wing" movement has existed in the US since the 1930's.

Conversely the term "conservative" is as far removed historicaly from the cynical reality of these Machiavellian GOP politics 2009, as Barack Obama is from the text of Leon Trotsky in 1909. The core constituency for the Republican program when its disasterous historical consequences are taken into consideration at home and abroad is about 15-20 percentage points and these people identify themselves as "cultural conservatives". The polls showing Bush's approval rating of well under 30% at the end of his second term in office are compelling indicators of the true statistical significance of this ideologicaly fabulous "center right nation" baloney.

Three quarters of Americans want public option health insurance. The majority of Americans want to ensure that all families have adequate housing, food and health care and good educations. The majority of Americans believe workers should be guaranteed safe workplaces, that food should be inspected, that clothing and toys and consumer goods should be inspected and safe. The majority support efforts to reduce environmental pollution and clean up the environment.

Yes, most support heterosexual marriage, but already there are more people who support civil unions and full benefits for gay couples than those who oppose them. They may have the conservative value but they support the liberal policy. Yes, most people are against abortion and certainly most oppose it as described in the poll question designed to elicit a conservative response even from NARAL members (those questions are so written to produce an desired result) but the majority oppose overturning Roe v Wade - against conservative value, but liberal policy is the national preference.

Yes, many Americans hold some conservative values, but they reject the Republican policy of ramming those values down people's throats and codifying them into law. Most Americans actually realize that they are not the state and they don't feel diminished in anyway if their personal grudges, values and foibles are not codified as the LAW OF THE LAND for all people. That's the key difference that you just don't understand.

I am as liberal as they come, but I hold some conservative values. I just have enough self-respect and self=confidence that I don't feel diminished or damaged if someone doesn't adjust their life eto suit my values.

OK, so opinion polls will tell you this and that.

But, when people vote it is, thankfully, still a private thing. And conservatives have been trounced rather roundly and will continue to be trounced, barring rapid inflation.

The conservatives need to get back to their roots and focus on their core values ... less government intervention, lower taxes, et al. Instead, they have married a rather harsh wife in the guise of morality.

Separate yourselves from moral and religious issues and win back your base and all those independents who think you have some good ideas. But, stay out of the bedroom and the classroom, and don't wage senseless wars any more.

The US is a centrist nation and has been for most of it's history. American conservatives, however, are not centrists. They are a right wing fringe, getting farther to the right.

They support people who work hard, as long as they don't belong to trade unions. Then they become "lazy bums" and "thugs." They are convinced that saying "Happy holidays" is not just a courtesy to Jews and other non-Christians, but is part of a war on Christmas. They decry any form of gun control as an attack on their fundamental rights and the first step to dictatorship. They even force their views on the people of Washington DC, who disagree with them. They believe in a small government that has the right to arrest people without a charge, hold them indefinitely without a trial, and torture them if they feel like it.

When asked about gay marriage, they start talking about how children should have two parents. I agree, but it has nothing to do with the issue. It reminds me of a cartoon in the New Yorker. A woman is walking out the door with a suitcase, and says to her husband, "It's been a good 20 years, but now, with the specter of gay marriage, it just has to end." The biggest cause of marriages breaking up is financial, and the biggest cause of bankruptcy are medical costs. What is the conservative response? To decry any meaningful reform as "socialism" and point with horror to France and Canada, with their longer life spans and lower infant mortality.

And then they wonder why they lose elections.

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

A: None, they leave it to the invisible hand of the free market.