Until Conservatives Can Influence Upper-Middle Class Opinion...

During the Vietnam War, relates James Q. Wilson, the sea-change in public opinion from support for the war in 1964 to opposition in 1968 occurred mainly among upper-middle class readers of news and opinion.

Strikingly, opinion did not shift much among working-class voters, no matter whether they read these press accounts or not. Affluent people who read the press apparently have more changeable opinions than ordinary folks. Public opinion may not have changed much, but elite opinion changed greatly.

This finding came from a study by sociologist James D. Wright. It is important because Wilson did a similar study of opinion during the Iraq War.

Using 2004 poll data, I found a similar effect: Americans who rarely watched television news about the 2004 political campaign were much more supportive of the war in Iraq than were those who watched a great deal of TV news. And the falloff in support was greatest for those with a college education.

Wilson’s findings point up the central political problem for conservatives and Republicans. During the period between election times we do not get enough access to elite minds. That means that at election time we are always playing catch-up with voters who are well-disposed towards us, because we have to use paid media to get our interpretation of events and ideas out to them

An example of this is shown in the internals(pdf) of the current Pew Center poll on the mid-term election. It shows that in the month since early October “whites” have flipped from 44% Republican/leaning Republican and 49% Democrat/leaning Democrat to 48% to 43%. Let’s put that in a table to make it clear.

“White” Voters Rep/lean Rep Dem/lean Dem Early October 2006 44% 49% Early November 2006 48% 43%

Over roughly the same period President Bush’s approval rating among independents has risen from 27% to 35%

It is obvious why this is so. Up until a month ago, all that most Americans heard or read about politics came from the mainstream media. In the last month paid media has flipped the biggest democraphic in the nation.

It is intolerable for conservatives and Republicans to be operating at such a disadvantage. It is just not good enough.

And the big problem is public opinion among upper-middle class Americans, for they are the people whose opinions are easily swayed. Another way of saying this is that they are the Americans who are rated “proficient” in literacy, and able to divine the meaning of an editorial or opinion piece.

Let that be our goal. To reach the minds of the literate, opinion forming upper-middle class, so we don’t have to spend good money playing catch-up at election time.

Saddam Gets The Death Penalty

You can say that Bush’s War is a disaster. You can say that it has roiled the Middle East into a cauldron. OK, things are a mess.

But the image of Saddam Hussein being tried and convicted in an Iraqi court means something.

That’s what political philosopher Michael Novak opines.

In what other Arab or Persian nation of the region would a former leader be so well treated in prison, appear in court looking so dapper, and sit through a fair trial -- a trial no doubt a bit ragged around the edges at times, a trial held under extreme conditions, and requiring immense fortitude on the part of the judiciary, the prosecution, and the lawyers for the defense.
...
The trial of Saddam Hussein deserves to go down in the history of democracy in the Middle East as a milestone event. The achievement of this important and highly symbolic step in establishing the rule of law, for the mightiest as well as the lowest, is the single most crucial step in the building of a democratic way of life.

But now it is up to the Iraqis to find a way to flesh out the institutions of democracy. It is, he reminds us, more than a matter of ballot boxes, but development of the three sectors of democratic capitalism, developed in his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.

It is a way of organizing free and diverse and distinctive associations in all sectors of social life. It is expressed through a new set, and a constantly evolving set, of distinctive democratic institutions, political institutions first of all, but also economic institutions, and cultural/scientific/artistic/religious institutions.

It may all dissolve into chaos, of course. But it is a noble quest for the United States to dedicate itself to helping Iraqis struggle towards some sort of government less tyrannical and cruel than the regime of Saddam Hussein and his sons.

Who Knew Rick Santorum Was a Nice Guy?

Why do I get a feeling of déjà vu about Peggy Noonan’s appreciation of Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), now in a fight for his political life?

Noonan wheels out an unnamed moderate Republican senator to give us a look at his character.

The other day I called a former senator, a crusty old moderate Republican, and asked him if he liked Mr. Santorum. "No," he said, "I love him."

...

The former senator: "The political scientists all say to be honest and stand for principle, that's what people want. And he was exactly that, and he's about to get his head handed to him."

The guy thought for a moment and then said it was sad.

Then Noonan tells a story about the Santorums, Rick and Karen, praying every night for their opponents, the Careys, in the Pennsylvania race for the Senate. They knew how hard the campaign was for them, so they assumed it must be just has hard for their opponents.

It made me think of another man who for his entire political career was defined by his enemies, just as Santorum is hated by liberals of all stripes, as a hard-right ideologue.

Yes, of course. Ronald Reagan.

If you are a liberal comer, like, oh let’s say Barack Obama, you get fawning profiles in the MSM about what a wonderful person you are way back when you are just an asterisk, an inexperienced politician still wet behind the ears.

But if you are a conservative comer you run the gauntlet of liberal rabbit punchers your entire political career.

We only know the real Ronald Reagan, extraordinary man and great president, years after his departure from the arena of high politics as the men and women that worked for him tell their stories.

And so it seems it must be also for Rick Santorum.

Oh, he’s such a great guy, we learn, only after a long decade of liberal langrel.

If you want to know what people are really like, never, never, never listen to a liberal.

I’m sick of it.

Get Real, America

Mad at the Republicans because they haven’t “done enough during their 12 years in control of the House and Senate,” asks Cal Thomas? There’s a simple solution. Elect more conservatives.

OK, so all we conservative Republicans who were so bright eyed and bushy tailed back in 1994 are disappointed. But what do you expect? That liberals would lie down and let us take their privileges and sinecures away from them without a fight?

The whole concept of the welfare state is a contract between liberals and bump-on-a-log America. Liberals get to order everyone around and occupy the high offices of state and education. Democratic voters get to check out of life. They get jobs with tenure, or lifetime pensions, or just measly benefits. The rest of us get to pay for it.

You think that in 50-50 America we can just wave a wand and it will all go away?

If the GOP loses the Senate then

Republicans will be unable to stop a filibuster of a next Supreme Court nominee and countless circuit court picks.

If the GOP loses control of Congress then

Democrats speak only of withdrawing American troops and of how our presence inflames the enemy... [But] This isn't Vietnam. This is a religious-philosophical war for control of the planet.

Thomas spoke to Vice-President Cheney. What do you want, said the VP. First we had a recession. Then

9/11. ... We had Katrina, a war... And so a series of repeated shocks... to the economy and here we are, we've got 4.6 unemployment. We added 6.6 million new jobs in the last three years. Productivity is running at an all-time high.

Yeah. What do you want? Then Thomas gets to his peroration.

Is there anyone who believes government doesn't have enough of our money? Then vote for Democrats. Is there anyone who thinks withdrawing from Iraq before the country can stand on its own against terrorism means there won't be more terrorism? Then vote for Democrats. Do you prefer liberal judges reading their prejudices into the Constitution and increasingly depriving us of our right to decide our own future? Then vote for Democrats.

Otherwise, get real and vote for Republicans.

Liberals Like Race-based Politics

In the State of Michigan Jennifer Gratz and “wealthy black Republican” Ward Connerly are campaigning to pass the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 2 on the ballot. They are just two people. Against them, says Tamar Lewin in The New York Times is the whole elite class of Michigan.

Opposition to the measure is led by One United Michigan, an unusually broad coalition that includes Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, and her Republican challenger, Dick DeVos, as well as unions, churches, businesses and higher education and civil rights groups. It has raised and spent $3.3 million.

What does it mean when the whole governmental and educated elite comes out against color-blindness in government?

There is no doubt that the end of affirmative action means fewer blacks and Hispanics at elite universities.

In California, where a similar proposition passed in 1996, the number of black students at the elite public universities has dropped. This fall, 96 of 4,800 freshmen at the University of California, Los Angeles — 2 percent — are black, a 30-year low.

Well, it would, wouldn’t it. The whole point of affirmative action is to hand out desirable public goods by race. But what The New York Times does not show us is the credit side of the ledger.

But that is OK, because the editors of National Review will tell both sides of the story. Certainly, they write, black and Hispanic enrollment has declined at UCLA and Berkeley.

But instead of denying these students an education they deserve, it has simply reapportioned them throughout the UC’s ten-campus system, which serves more than 200,000 students. UC-Riverside and UC-Santa Cruz, for example, have seen large increases in black enrollment.

...

The graduation rate for black UC students has doubled over the last decade. That’s because when students are matched to universities without reference to their race, they wind up at schools suited to their educational backgrounds and abilities, and are therefore more likely to succeed. In the UC system today, black-graduation rates are approaching those for whites. At the University of Michigan, however, they lag far behind.

The reason that the nation’s liberal elite remains wedded to affirmative action and quotas is because it likes the power. And in the public sector outcomes really don’t matter.

If a whole generation of black students fails at the University of Michigan, who cares? It won’t hurt liberals. They will continue to feel good about themselves and how their commitment to diversity.

"Call For Action" or "Dodgy Numbers" on Climate Change?

Reading the British papers you’d think that it was all over bar shouting. The Stern Review conducted for the British government by Sir Nicholas Stern recommends that the British spend 1 percent of GDP on climate change policies. The cost of inaction, the report advises, could reach as high as 20 percent of global GDP.

Prime Minister Tony Blair hailed the report as a call to action saying the document "demolished the last remaining argument for inaction in the face of climate change."

But Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, is skeptical. Writing in OpinionJournal.com he accuses Stern of “dodgy numbers.”

The review correctly points out that climate change is a real problem, and that it is caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions. Little else is right, however, and the report seems hastily put-together, with many sloppy errors. As an example, the cost of hurricanes in the U.S. is said to be both 0.13% of U.S. GDP and 10 times that figure.

The report attempts to quantify the social damage cost of carbon dioxide.

The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review. Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton. Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton.

But of course, the facts aren’t really all that important. Climate change politics is all about testing to see whether people are willing to countenance an increase in government influence and control. In Britain, it seems that they are, as both major parties compete to see who is the greenest.

There was another report issued recently about climate change. It was Lomborg’s own Copenhagen Consensus 2006.

Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors--from nations including China, India and the U.S.--to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.

You can get information on Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus here.

SUV Sales Up at Ford

Earlier this year the media reported that sales of the big truck-based SUVs were going into a nose dive. With sky-high gas prices, Americans were finally jumping off their humungous land yachts in fuel-efficient dinghies.

But now Ford Motor Corporation is reporting overall sales increases and sharply higher sales of its mega-SUV Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator (curb weight over 7,000 lbs).

Here are the sobering results.

• Midsize Ford Fusion (up 143 percent), Mercury Milan (up 67 percent), Lincoln MKZ (up 90 percent).
  
• Ford Escape surpasses 1 million sales milestone in October
  
• New Ford Expedition (up 41 percent) and Lincoln Navigator (up 44 percent)
  

The reports of the death of the SUV have been much exaggerated.