A new CNN poll shows that Republicans seem to favor ideological purity over actually winning elections:
Washington (CNN) – A new national poll suggests that the Democrats may be the party of pragmatism and Republicans may be the party of ideological purity.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey’s release on Tuesday comes just two weeks after internal party divisions led to the GOP loss of a seat in the House of Representatives that it had held since the 19th century.
The poll indicates that a slight majority, 51 percent, of Republicans would prefer to see the GOP in their area nominate candidates who agree with them on all the major the issues even if they have a poor chance of beating the Democratic candidate. Forty-three percent of Republicans say they would rather have candidates with whom they don’t agree on all the important issues but who can beat the Democrats.
Democrats polled seemed to place a slightly higher priority on electoral victory: 58 percent say that they would like their party to nominate candidates who can beat Republicans, even if they don’t agree with those candidates on all the issues. Fewer than 4 in 10 Democrats say they would rather see their party nominate candidates who agree with them on all major issues, but have a poor chance of beating the Republican candidate.
“One reason for the difference between the parties: the Democrats have a relatively even split on ideological grounds. Thirty-four percent of Democrats are liberal, 40 percent are moderates and less than one in four call themselves conservatives,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
By contrast, 73 percent of Republicans questioned in the poll say they are conservatives, with only 26 percent describing themselves as liberal or moderate Republicans.
Now, as a libertarian, I understand the desire for ideological purity, but when you’re looking at this from the level of practical politics it’s a truly insane attitude if taken to it’s logical extreme.
I dont think it’s so much as idology purity as much as it is trying to take back control of the party..
NY-23 is a prime example of that.
The D was endorsed by SEIU and the R was endorsed by ACORN..
And Dede was even endorsed by Kos himself.
Dede was pro choice, pro union.. There wasn’t much difference between her and Owens.. It wasn’t even a choice of the LOTE.. both sucked ass… What’s the point of voting for a party when both are offering a shit sandwich? One happened to be Brand D and the other was Brand R.
I think it’s a myth to suggest that it’s taken to its logical extreme, one promoted by the so-called “mainstream” media and self-serving Democrats who rarely — i.e., Scozzafava — find ANY Republican they don’t attempt to smear as “far Right” or “right wing.” A good example is the Right to Work principle, regularly dismissed by Dems as “right wing,” even though the principle that no one should be forced to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of getting or keeping a job regularly polls above 65-70%. Dismissing such a principle says less about the “right wing” credentials of its adherent than it does about the far-Left credentials of the person making the charge.
Ahahah, James, you should have a comedy show somewhere! Oh, wait a minute, you’re serious? The media can’t dismiss people as far-right but you can dismiss the media as far-left?! You’re a genius, kid!
The MSM of course would love to move the Republicans towards the so-called center. See what happened with the leadership of the compassionate conservative. So why not?
As for the left leaning of the MSM, I can vouch for having watched NBC news for close to fifty years. I stopped two or three years back. They changed. I didn’t.
And now I see that NBC is pushing CNBC to the left. They clamped down on Cramer. They got Erin Burnett to sell out by giving her broadcast network exposure and they’ve back benched conservatives like Michelle Cabrera. Thankfully, I’ve changed to Verizon FIOS which has Bloomberg and Fox Business. I don’t have to listen to John Harwood’s smug socialist diatribes any more than I absolute want to.