Since Honesty is an intrinsically conservative and right-wing trait, children, who are now taught:

"George Washington, according to legend, said 'I cannot tell a lie; I did it with my little hatchet,' when confronted about the cherry tree. Although the story is (new word) a-po-cry-phal, which means it may not be true, he was almost certainly a scrupulously honest person."

Should really be taught, "...and therefore, Washington was really a right-winger and a conservative, since he was honest. Washington would therefore never have agreed with President Obama or other liberals, who are intrinsically dishonest unless they are actually conservative but are labelling themselves incorrectly."

Child: "But... I thought that Obama came from hard-scrabble, and therefore right-wing, beginnings?"

The short answer is that everyone wants a government that spends money wisely, is as efficient as possible, and helps those who through no fault of their own need help.

Eight of ten poorest states in the US are Republican.

Eight of ten states with worst education are Republican.

40% of bankruptcies in the US are due to health care costs.

Almost nobody believes that getting an abortion should be like going through a drive-thru window, available any time during a pregnancy. Personally, I prefer the first trimester limitation.

Nobody believes that institutionalized, multi-generation welfare is desirable. Liberals don't think putting a mother on a bus to be away from her family for 14 hours per day is good either. Liberals believe that education, daycare and limited continued income support while a person upgrades their education is more valuable in the long run. A more educated person pays dividends for decades to all of us.

YOU SAID: "In California, which Barack Obama carried in 2008 with 61 percent of the vote, a recent statewide ballot measure to raise taxes to balance the budget was defeated with 64 percent of the vote".

----you might have also mentioned that California is bankrupt because of flawed filibuster-like budgetary policies implemented by your hero - Ronald Reagan, when California didn't have 1/3 residents who speak no or limited English, educates them, and sends them to work in the fields to pick your tomatoes.

America doesn't skew to the right. It skews to common sense. Common sense means not spending 1/3 of the federal budget on the military. It is Republicans who insist on supporting that sector of the economy that is only a one-time investment, rather than what made America great in the first place, a GI Bill to educate every veteran, low cost mortgages to house them, reasonably priced and sensible health policies (Get rid of medicare and medicaid if you want to save money - but that would hit the Republican constituency harder...so preserve it).

Look what happened. Millions were educated and the US prospered for 40 years. Those laurels are about to turn brown.

Republican commitment to family, when compared with liberals', is--

Oh, forget it--too easy.

evidently Salon now accepts any lie, so long as it insinuates balance, or might draw in any sort of idiot.

When I signed up to pay for Salon (3-4 years ago) it was because I believed the whole bit about how if we were going to get thoughtful dscourse, we would have to pay for it.

Now I find Salon publishes crappy points from the right side of Wignuttia. Why, nobody can guess (unless Joan Walsh has a personal connection with the anonymous writer of this blog).

This crap, and paying C Paglia for the most trite and banal of observations, makes it obvious where the money for Salon is being wasted.

Won't be paying again for Salon subscription. Will be giving the money for Glenn Greenwald to hire some research help, let him take a vacation, etc.

Why are you hiding this guy's identity?

Why won't you answer this question, Salon?

He blithely dismisses Joe V.'s contention that "family, hard work and honesty" are not exclusive to the right wing by saying that liberals want to redefine the family. And then he dumped a lot of dubious statistics on us without explaining why he thinks these things are true.

Notice that he didn't really answer Joe V.'s question; he just accused liberals of wanting to change the definition of "family." But this doesn't mean that liberals are against families; it's that we have a somewhat different concept of it than conservatives do.

He also said nothing about hard work and honesty being conservative values. Zero, zip, nada.

America already knows that honesty isn't a conservative strong point, and our dear Wingnut is living proof. Salon editors, I ask you again: GET A BETTER WINGNUT. One that actually practices the "conservative" values of honesty and hard work, instead of obfuscation and laziness. Because his column is sheer mental laziness.

Thanks for answering my question for me about why this guy is anonymous. I wouldn't take credit for this crap either.

And if I were Salon, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with this mess. I guess clicks are clicks to them, even even if they're dishonestly gotten.

Hello again. This week the editors at Salon have asked me to address how it can be [...] that conservatives continue to believe America is a center-right country. I have to confess it was a little surprising that this idea made so many of you so angry.

All my friends agree with me, and I have a gut feeling about it. I'm gonna go with my gut.

-- but I won't be surprised to see that anger repeated in my response to this week's column.

You hippies are always pissy about something.

Conservatives do not believe this is a right-wing country; only that it is governed by center-right values, not center-left or liberal ones -- at least not "liberal" in the Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi sense of the word.

Psssst... they're communists!

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.

Details, details. Why are you sweatin' the small stuff?

But consider "family."

Not in the context of your own family, of course, but according to my BS. You gotta look at the big picture!

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

Ahem*cough*Homo says what? Hehehe, liberals love queers.

When it comes to work, who was it who opposed the Clinton-era "Welfare to Work" law as being unfair and punitive by requiring able-bodied men and women on welfare to get a job? It wasn't conservatives. And, as we can see from recent as well as historical polling data, these are positions supported by a majority of the country.

Real men don't care about poor people. Who cares if we end up spending a ton of money on child care while we send mom off to Mcdonald's for the day? At least her black ass is on the clock! I want my fries!

Conservatives, despite the results of the last two national elections, outnumber liberals by 2-to-1. If you add the moderates into one of the two camps by the same 2-to-1 ratio, the conservative position is easily the majority.

Even Archie Bunker voted for Obama. You think he's a liberal?

"Two-in-three actual voters in 2008 would prefer that the president nominate judges and justices who believe that their roles as judges 'is solely to evaluate whether a law or lower court ruling is in line with the constitution' rather than those who believe that 'their roles as judges is not simply to review the law as it is written and not take into account their own viewpoints and experiences,'" the firm found.

90% of liberals would appoint Dr. Phil as chief justice. They think he's just dreamy.

They also discovered that 87 percent of American adults believe it is appropriate for government to make sure U.S. healthcare providers are not forced to participate in "procedures and practices to which they have moral objections."

Who cares if you have to fly to San Francisco to get birth control pills? It's a terrible hardship for Mrs. Grundy behind the counter to have to fill a prescription from your commie hippy doctors. Just eats her up inside. Don't you have any compassion?

In April the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of American adults believe that "when something is run by government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful," and that 55 percent of Americans believe that "the federal government controls too much of our daily lives."

All we want to do is wiretap the Quakers, those dangerous, dangerous Quakers. We're not trying to control the Quakers, just spying on them for your freedom. That's why it's not even called a wiretap anymore, it's a Patriot-assisted free and open conversation.

surveys show substantial support for such "conservative ideas" as English as the official language of government, ending government preferences based on race, and reasonable limits on abortion.

Hablas espanol? Then GTFO baby killers!

This includes the 93 percent who, in one recent poll, rejected the idea that abortions should be permitted "at any time during a woman's pregnancy and for any reason."

Whereas all liberals favor infanticide.

In fact Gallup now shows that, for the first time, 51 percent of Americans -- do I need to say this constitutes a majority? --

Unlike liberals, conservatives paid attention in the third grade, so I have to make sure.

said they were "pro-life" rather than "pro-choice."

Liberals want all the little babies to die. We want them to live, so that we can deny them services.

These are all dominant issues in America's political life, issues that command national attention with some intensity. Admittedly, polls are snapshots of opinions in time. It's certainly possible to find equally reputable pollsters who can produce data that shows something else, but what about when people vote, "the only poll that counts," as someone once said.

Except for that last one, it doesn't count.

Looking at it this way, where issues are on the ballot rather than candidates -- when actual positions on policy are not obscured by political personalities and partisan preference -- there is still plenty of evidence the center-right position usually prevails.

No weasel-words here, wikipedia Nazis.

When government spending and revenues are out of balance the liberal position is almost always to increase revenues by raising taxes. In California, which Barack Obama carried in 2008 with 61 percent of the vote, a recent statewide ballot measure to raise taxes to balance the budget was defeated with 64 percent of the vote.

Liberals just looooovvvve taxes. Why don't they just hand their paychecks over to Obama and be done with it?

I hope that helps.

With liberty and justice for all! Wingnut teleport ring ACTIVATE!