Even after watching Bill Kristol’s act for all these many years, it’s still a bit hard to take his effort to ridicule Republican elites and espouse their marginalization in favor of Palinites, Huckabeeans, Dittoheads, Beckists, and Teabaggers. Born to Jewish intellectuals in Manhattan, educated at a Manhattan boy’s prep school, B.A. and Ph.D from Harvard, Kristol’s only cultural connections to the Christian Right are from attending the Republican Party’s nominating conventions and serving as vice-president Dan Quayle’s chief of staff. Bill Kristol has no personal use for religion, but he does want blind support for an aggressive, imperial foreign policy.
He seems to believe that the post-election ramp-up of craziness in the GOP’s base has helped to make more Americans self-identify as conservatives. He also thinks this craziness has chipped away at support for the president and the Democratic Party. He can only come to that conclusion by the selective reading of polls. Americans may be about twice as likely to call themselves ‘conservative’ as ‘liberal,’ but that doesn’t mean much. A CNN/Opinion Research Poll finds that 60% of the country supports Cap & Trade. The public option?
…last week, new polls, one from The Washington Post and ABC News and the other from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, found clear majority support (57 percent) for a public option. The Post-ABC News poll showed support had risen five percentage points since August.
As for Kristol’s special concern, CNN/Opinion Research finds that 59% of Americans oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan and 52% agree that the war there ‘has turned into a situation like the United States faced in the Vietnam War.’
The most recent Research 2000 poll shows that the Republican Party has a net negative approval rating of forty-seven percent (20%-67%). Their approval rating in the northeast is five percent, which is the same as their national approval rating in the 18-29 demographic.
Kristol may believe that the only short-term way for the neo-conservatives to return to power is through a riled-up GOP base winning the turnout battle in the midterms. I am frankly surprised he is so short-sighted. Winning a few seats in the midterms won’t do much if the GOP gets absolutely pummeled in the 2012 presidential elections.
