Opinion Forum

Liberal Hypocrisy and the New Voter Base

April 29th, 2010

Once upon a time, a friend of mine wrote a very nice poem about how liberals and conservatives worked together and complemented each other in the process of keeping the country strong. Less than a year later, she’s writing that although she “doesn’t think all conservatives are evil,” she “find many of its beliefs repugnant,” and thinks that “their actions are leading to many evil effects.”

What happened to all the pretty language about how conservatives were “our beacons, our lighthouses, our anchors”? What happened to all the nice compliments about conservatives being the “teachers of the traditions that define us all”? I thought it was “our differences as well as our similarities that make us cleave together instead of apart,” that it was “the divergence of our worldviews that gives greatness to our vision.”

So much for ideological diversity and toleration of differences.

I speak of my friend in particular not to single her out, but because I consider her movement from the “let’s all be friends” stance to the “conservatives are evil,” or at least so close to evil that there is no discernible difference, to be nearly a textbook description of what has happened to the left since Obama was elected. Honest disagreement over the responsibilities of government? Heck no, they just hate the poor. Honest dislike of the idea of national health care? Heck no, they just hate Obama because he’s black. Arizona is simply trying to cut down on illegal immigration (from the NYT, of all places) — which, by the way, is called illegal for a reason? Heck no, conservatives just hate brown people. And if opposition to Obamacare in 2009 was just as strong as opposition to Hillarycare in 1994, and white voters turned out just as strongly for BO in 2008 as they did for Kerry in 2004 … well, they just weren’t going to dwell on that. After all, why let the facts ruin a good theory?

Back in November 2008, liberals could afford to be magnanimous. Obama had taken the White House. We were a post-racial country. The evil Shrub was out of office and Obama would usher in a new era of bipartisanship where we would reduce the deficit, reduce the debt, reduce unemployment, make peace in the Middle East, provide affordable health care for all, make our country energy independent, heal the planet, disarm the globe, and get all the delegates in the UN to hold hands and sing Kumbaya … well, okay, he probably didn’t promise that last one. But he did promise all of those others to one degree or another.

Well, April Fools, America.

The nation is more ideologically divided than ever. The media have turned into liberal shills. The bipartisan vote on health care was no — and Obama shoved it through anyway. The stimulus was a bust; Obama is now telling us to expect prolonged periods of deficits and unemployment, and his movements to reduce the debt are a joke. Iran is posing more of a problem than ever and we have been blatantly snubbing Israel, who is our only real ally in the Middle East. ClimateGate broke the back of the liberal myth of global warming, as well as freed the skeptics to prove that the IPCC information is basically scientific fraud … and as a result, the left is pushing things like cap-and-trade harder than ever.

But do conservatives care? Do they know the issues? Do they maybe, just possibly have legitimate reason to be concerned about the direction their country seems to be taking?

Heck no, they’re just racist, fascist bigots. So much for bipartisanship.

Well, now that the idea of actually trying to win over the American people (especially all of those independent voters currently deserting the Dems in droves) is no longer a serious option, it’s time to try a new tack. Get the victim groups.

Y’know, the women, the blacks, the latinos — basically everybody the right is supposed to hate with a burning passion. Not to mention the felons, the illegals (from the NYT,of all places), Senators and Representatives for D.C., which among other things, would likely break the Republicans’ ability to filibuster leftist proposals like cap-and-trade or amnesty for illegals (which I frankly believe violates ex post facto, but that’s for another post), and now votes for Puerto Rico.

Whoa, slow down! What was that last one again?

Yes, votes for Puerto Rico. As in, admitting Puerto Rico to the United States as the 51st state.

But wait, hasn’t Puerto Rico already rejected the possibility of statehood? Yes, three times now: in 1967, 1993, and 1998. In 1998, there were 5 options on the ballot asking the Puerto Ricans if they wanted to become the 51st state:

Petition 1, “Territorial” Commonwealth, 993 (0.1%)
Petition 2, Free Association, 4,536 (0.3%)
Petition 3, Statehood, 728,157 (46.5%)
Petition 4, Independence, 39,838 (2.5%)
None of the above, 787,900 (50.3%)

The results were quite clear. Even with five separate options on the ballot, the majority of the populace wanted something other than statehood (“none of the above” was a sort of informal stand-in for “enhanced commonwealth,” which I assume means “territorial commonwealth, but with special privileges.”) However, with the new bill HR 2499 that the House is going to vote on tomorrow (good God, you’d think that after the epic battle of health care they’d at least give America a break before making them vote for something like this), pretty soon that’s not going to matter anymore.

Here’s how it works. Instead of putting all of the choices on one ballot as they did in 1998, including the choice of “none of the above,” the vote will instead be carried out in two stages, asking two separate questions.

Question 1: Do you want to keep the status quo?
Question 2: Now that we’ve decided you don’t want the status quo, what do you want?

The catch? The current “status quo” is “territorial commonwealth.”

The majority of the people do not want statehood. They have made that quite clear. But when the option of “territorial commonwealth” was mixed in with the other options on the ballot, it won a mere 0.1% of the vote. Which means that if the only question on the table is, “Do you want to remain a territorial commonwealth?” then unless the Puerto Ricans catch on to the trick, the option will probably get less than 1% of the vote. Then, the government offers the Puerto Ricans a new ballot saying, “Well, now that we’ve decided we don’t want the status quo, would you prefer independence, a free association, or statehood?” Given two options that in the previous ballot won less than 5% of the vote combined and one that won over 40% of the vote, the choice is obvious. The Heritage Foundation has the details here.

But wait, it gets better. The New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico, which is the party that has been pushing for statehood since its foundation in 1968, has declared that they want to adopt the Tennessee Plan approach for pursuing statehood. And what is the Tennessee Plan, you ask? Well, it’s how Tennessee became a state back in 1796. Normally, the final step of becoming a state is Congress accepting the prospective state’s petition to join the Union. But Congress rejected Tennessee’s application the first time around, because of problems with the state’s constitution and census. But instead of accepting this verdict and fixing the problems, Tennessee simply decided to elect representatives and senators, send them to Washington, and demand admission to the Union. Congress, presented with this fait accompli, immediately caved.

I have no intrinsic problem with the idea of Puerto Rico becoming a state. But not now. Not like this. And not for the reason I suspect the Dems are pushing it, which is to gain another 4,000,000 voters through the use of a sham election and a thoroughly rejected referendum.

But remember, if you voice these objections, these details, these facts, then you’re just a right-wing hatemonger trying to tell Puerto Ricans that they’re second-class citizens. After all, why let the facts ruin a good theory?

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: conservative, evil, immigration, liberal, partisan, Puerto Rico, statehood
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “Liberal Hypocrisy and the New Voter Base”

larry | April 29th, 2010 at 10:55 am

Dear Brianna
My Goodness!
Facts only cloud the issue.
Obama people only want facts if they re-enforce the Obama point of view.

Clarissa | April 29th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

Yes, I wonder where she could have learned this language of calling things you don’t like “evil” and “repugnant.” Wait, could it have been President George W. Bush? 🙂

Tom | April 29th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

The sad truth is most verbal bombs thrown from one side of the political spectrum at those on the other side could be (and are) easily thrown back without much modification. A good example is a TPM post linked to in your friend’s article about conservatives being evil. It’s nothing more than a very long laundry list of bad things about conservatives, so long and boring that I just skimmed most of it. I (or most anyone else) could turn it around and write the same long (and boring) list of things that are evil about liberals.

The whole business is tiresome, and the level of partisanship among politicians and in the general public has become so counterproductive that there’s not much chance of getting anything worthwhile done. We’re at a point in American history when we desperately need to work out solutions to very difficult problems, and I don’t have a lot of confidence that we can get it done.