May 24, 2012 3:59 PM The “Greater Appalachia” Issue By Ed Kilgore I wrote earlier today about the many people who are trying to string together scattered indicia of Democratic discontent with Barack Obama into a party “split” or some sort of dire threat to his re-election prospects—without any real data. But there are a few analysts trying to be a little more, well, analytical. One of them is Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, who is a Republican, but who does always look for empirical and historial evidence before reaching conclusions. Sean’s take on the “protest vote” again Obama in this year’s presidential primaries in the Appalachian territory where he’s never been popular as potentially significant for two reasons (he actually gives a third reason, which ... Continue reading →
Adam Serwer, writing at Mother Jones, rightly points out that the fact that Gallup is now finding that more Americans identify themselves as “pro-life,” and fewer as “pro-choice,” doesn’t mean that their underlying views about abortion policy have changed. On those underlying views, here’s his spin: [A] large majority—77 percent—of Americans support abortion being legal in all or “certain circumstances,” and just 20 percent of Americans are actually “pro-life” in the sense that opponents of legalized abortion understand the term. Here are the latest numbers: As of May 3-6, 20 percent of Americans think abortion should be “illegal in all circumstances,” 39 percent say it should be “legal only in a few circumstances,” 13 percent say it should be “legal under most circumstances,” and 25 ... Continue reading →
I had the same reaction to Maureen Dowd’s latest criticism of the Catholic church, noted in the Corner by Mike Potemra, as I usually do: a parochial regret that she couldn’t have been born into a nice Protestant family. Dowd writes: Speaking to the [Georgetown] graduates, Sebelius evoked J.F.K.’s speech asserting that religious bodies should not seek to impose their will through politics. She said that contentious debate is a strength of this country, adding that in some other places, “a leader delivers an edict and it goes into effect. There’s no debate, no criticism, no second-guessing.” Just like the Vatican. I suspect that there is at least as much debate, criticism, and second-guessing at the Vatican as there is at, say, the editorial offices ... Continue reading →
Michael O’Brien writes for msnbc.com: The most misunderstood voting bloc in the 2012 election is the Catholic vote. Why? Because there isn’t one. The religious assemblage, which has evolved over the past century from a strong Democratic constituency into a national election bellwether, is no longer discernible from most other voter groups. As the community has become less homogenous and more assimilated into mainstream culture, so has its voting habits – sending many politicians on a fool’s errand in pursuit of the “Catholic vote.” Of course it is true that there is no “Catholic vote” if that phrase is meant to connote a group that votes with the uniformity of black Americans. It’s true as well that other facets of a person’s identity–race, marital status, ... Continue reading →
Lungren's grade level during this session, we are told after hearing this sentence, is 20. Now, maybe I didn't go to school long enough, because I have no idea when one gets to the 20th grade. But I'm pretty sure that Lungren's sentence does not betray any particular linguistic sophistication. It's just a run-on, of the sort one often falls into when speaking, rather than writing. (If you look at it carefully, you'll see it doesn't even quite parse. What is the subject of the verb "tells"? "My years," I guess? But then what grammatical role does "This Justice Department" play?) Continue reading →
