24% of conservatives Democratic in midterms

I’m glad that failure, hubris, and contempt for the rule of law carry some kind of price. In this post, Sullivan quotes an AP-Ipsos survey saying that 24% of self-identified conservatives plan to vote Democratic in the fall midterm. I glad that for 24% of conservatives, that word still has some shred of its old meaning. This administration is quite radical in its policies: government torture, pre-emptive war, the “unitary executive”, secrecy, executive power, etc. It’s the very opposite of conservative, if “conservative” includes any kind of wariness of radical change. Of course, goodness knows what the word “conservative” actually means anymore. I just wish that the strangeness, the un-Americaness of what the Bush administration thinks of itself was portrayed more starkly. Just because Republicans and right-wing pundits are saying something in unison (“9/11 made the Constitution obsolete!”) doesn’t make it true.

One of the most frustrating things about this whole Bush presidency is that Republicans haven’t seemed to pay much of a political price for their disasters. There’s part of the Republican base that seems to be impervious to facts. But I must blame the Democrats a bit here, too. The Democrats have tried to appease the Republican bully, instead of kicking it in the nuts. I hope the blogosphere can help change that, but it’s still a pretty small player in the grand scheme of things. Still, the fact that 24% of self-identified conservatives have peeled away from the Republican party is shows that consequences and accountability did not pass away at the turn of the millennium.

I’m glad reality is starting to hammer at the bubble. Maybe the idol will crack and let the world in. This has been the mission, the hope, and the challenge of the reality-based community for years now. We must keep hammering away.