Just like we're not "real" Americans. Different GOPer, same tune

Vance Day: “When you look at the average Oregonian, the average middle class person who works a long day and then ends up marking that ballot—they vote center right, typically.”

I wonder what hard work Day does in comparison to standing all day on a retail sales floor and required to be polite to everyone, work in child care (preschool or school age) work in the medical field or hospitality industry, work in construction, etc.

When I was a substitute teacher during the week and working retail on the weekend, the folks I knew were not ideologues. They were more likely to vote for people who inspired them with good manners, proposed solutions, common sense, some clue about their lives. Regardless of ideology.

They would be as likely as not to say "Let's see that guy survive a day in my job!" as to vote for whoever they were told to vote for. In some cases, it might be their impression of customers if they had ever dealt with Mannix, Kulongoski, or any other candidate as a customer. If someone was active in the Chamber of Commerce but refused to support any candidate who treated servers at an event as "the help" rather than as a potential voter, is that person an ideologue of "center right" or any other label?

What has Day ever been elected to that he understands voters?

"Is this Day's grand strategy to win more voters to the Republican Party...by insulting and degrading those of us who didn't vote Republican and tend to vote more to the left?"

No. The Republican leaders are so used to the concept of leaders making proclamations, and the people blindly following, that they actually believe that if they say it's so, then it will be so.

Vance Day is both correct and wrong. The average Oregonian does vote center-right. However, that would be the Democrat. When given a choice between the far-right and the center, Oregonians choose the center. The Republican Party of Oregon has chosen a lot of fringe candidates far to the right. However, Oregonians are actually moving to the center and center left. We can see that with the defeat of Smith.

Barack Obama was the center-right candidate for president. Going against conventional wisdom, McCain moved the right while taking a more authoritarian stance in the general election.

I'm less concerned right now with the wingnuts and cookie-cutter Republicans repeating the silly center-right nonsense than with the Democrats in Name Only who indulge in the politics of resentment and similar GOP themes.

Actually, Vance Day would have had that just about right in past years, in a bass-ackwards sort-of-way.

One of the key means by which the GOP held onto power was reducing the spending power of average Americans. That increases the number of hours of labor Americas had to work to maintain their standard of living. That dramatically decreased the ability of Americans to pay attention to news/current events to what the GOP was actually doing.

Day’s has to say things like that to have any hope of leading the battered, hard-core remnants of Oregon’s GOP. I mean, what’s he gonna say?

“Gee -- I guess we’re going to have to give up all this loony right-wing stuff to have any chance of willing the occasional election in Oregon, given its center-left politics.”

In other words, the truth is not an option if you’re a republican.

Center right? uh huh...

The Republican party is nothing but a social conservative movement right now. The anti-choice people and the racists get together and yell about taxes. That's their party. They have to change or they will relegate themselves more and more because Generation X, Y and the Millenials are not Center Right...they're anti-government leftists that don't care about abortion, gays, guns or any of the traditional Republican strongholds...they care about jobs, health care and not torturing people. That's the future...The Republicans are dwelling in the past.

A recent Pew Research Center report said that 38% of Americans identified themselves as conservatives and 21% said they were liberals. The rest were independents. This was a poll taken after the 2008 election. Those are scary numbers because it means that 40% of this country will always be conservative. It's easy to be a conservative, because you don't have to think too much,You just have to be able to react. Being liberal -- that takes guts. I guess my problem, at least according to Vance Day, is that I don't work a long enough day.

Could the rhetorical tropes the GOP uses get any weaker? It's like they want to call us back to a mythical past where the average voter is the worst Rust Belt "hard working American" stereotype. How many people came home late from the mill and sat down at the end of the day to tiredly mark a ballot in 2008? Not that many, I'd guess. Probably fewer than the people who simply voted for the best candidates and ideas on the table, tired or not. Oregon's got a diverse, modern economy with people working in all sorts of fields- and nobody's got to thump their chest about how much harder they work than those other people.

And what a weak result- "they vote center-right, typically." He can't even abuse language without a hedge- "typically." "Typically" is the one word hedge Vance Day uses to separate the GOP fantasy from every election in Oregon in recent memory.

Vance Day sure must like that wilderness the GOP will be wandering in for years to come. Lame pronouncements like this one will ensure that he and his will get more time there.

Dave G - That Pew Research Center report is just more BS GOP polltesting of people's opinion of the word "liberal"... nothing more. People surveyed by Pew Research in that study were not given the option to describe themselves as "progressive" or any other terms than liberal, moderate or conservative.

All this means is the GOP has spent billions attempting to destroy one label... "liberal" through the years has worked to a certain extent.

When the word progressive is an option or the option, the word "progressive" poll-tests higher than conservative.

When people are poll tested by issue position without associated liberal/conservative labels, people support progressive policy positions by 70+ % margins.

I saw Vance Day on the front page of the Oregnian today... DEFENDING THE OREGON GOP'S OWN WILLIAM AYERS... some sleazebag named Turnidge... who killed two cops and wanted to kill many more. Like my nephew.

The Oregon GOP spent months worrying about peacenik William Ayers... who never hurt a fly... while their own "McVeigh" was busy building bombs with his daddy in Salem.

And it was Vance's best friend who is in jail as a blood-thirsty terrorist.

So, Vance, the head o the state's GOP, what did you know and when did you know it?

Dave G. writes, "A recent Pew Research Center report said that 38% of Americans identified themselves as conservatives and 21% said they were liberals. The rest were independents. This was a poll taken after the 2008 election. Those are scary numbers because it means that 40% of this country will always be conservative. It's easy to be a conservative, because you don't have to think too much,You just have to be able to react. Being liberal -- that takes guts. I guess my problem, at least according to Vance Day, is that I don't work a long enough day."

There is such a thing as a conservative Democrat. Let me show you.

I'm a conservative in that I hold to the following, each of which are conservative views:

The government has no business interfering with my personal life so long as I don't have a negative affect upon my neighbors. Therefore, the government does not belong in my bedroom, listening to me unless a Judge can be convinced that I have probably committed a crime, or looking into my medical records. Therefore, abortion is none of the government's business and whether I am gay or straight is not the government's business.

Government should not interfere with the practice of religion in any way. Therefore, government should recognize civil unions for the purposes of contracts, inheritance, and joint assets; but get entirely out of the marriage business which is religious in nature. (This has the effect of putting all people on a level playing field.)

Government was created so that we as a nation could mutually do together those things that we cannot do alone. Our national defense, infrastructure such as roads, sewers, the electrical grid, etc. are examples. We now have ample evidence that the so-called private sector cannot effectively manage health care, so government should. Only in this way can all people have access to health care. Individual health care is the foundation of the health of our nation. It therefore benefits every American - whether ill or healthy - that health care is provided to all Americans.

The components of a capitalistic economy are labor, capital, resources, and management. Weakness in any component means weakness in the economy. Therefore, it should be our governments policy to promote living wages and full employment, regulate capital to the benefit of our nation, protect resources and manage them for the benefit of our nation, and invest in all levels of education so that our management is the best in the world. The providers of labor and capital need to be seen as equals.

I could go on, but as you can see, its not just a framing issue. There are conservative values found in the foundation of liberalism and progressive politics. It is time we embrace and are welcoming to these conservative values and those like them.

The so-called conservative values, that would destroy government, and leave everyone fending for themselves are in fact not conservative at all. They are nihilistic and in fact ... un-American.

This isn't even playing throughout the GOP anymore. We can all say with Colin Powell, "There's nothing wrong with my values or character", that you have just marginalized!

News flash: on any global political scale, Obama is center-right on pretty much everything. Even in the face of the greatest opening for progressive economics since the Great Depression, he's sticking to the market-oriented Chicago School.

(But I don't think that's the point Day was trying to make.)

The Woodburn bombing, and the connections of the alleged perpetrators, could end up being a very big deal.

We must also remember, though, that law enforcement sometimes gets these things wrong--remember Richard Jewell.

I'm also thinking of the case of Randy Adams, who was wrongly convicted, and a big part of that was because law enforcement wanted to convict someone who could be sentenced to death, and the real perpetrator, Davis Harris, was a minor who was nor eligible for the death penalty.

Do GOPers ever have another strategy?

Posted by: Pat Ryan | Dec 17, 2008 9:28:37 AM Ah yes. Christian Republican Terrorism. Nothing to see here folks. No dots to be connected.

Move along.........

We created Homeland Security to connect the dots for us! Seriously, the timing is very disturbing given baby Bush's using the D word about the economy and the fact that he can still, under last May's NSPD 51/HSPD-20, decide we have a national economic crisis and not turn over power. Not saying, but it don't help the digestion.

Why do we have an EO that would give the US chief executive direct control over the Warm Springs Tribal council anyway?

Ah yes. Christian Republican Terrorism. Nothing to see here folks. No dots to be connected.

It seems a bit... thick to post this sort of nonsense on a website full of people who can't stop clucking about Republican attempts to link Obama to some non-existent "terrorist" agenda, don't you agree?

'Center-right America' is the new code phrase for 'the GOP lost and can't believe it.'

* According to Vance Day, the "average" Oregonian votes center-right.

* 57% of Oregonians voted for Obama.

Therefore, according to Vance Day, Obama is center-right.

Well, in fact there is a component of the left blogosphere that would maintain the "Obama is center-right" conclusion is precisely correct. There are occasionally commenters here at Blue Oregon who maintain precisely this.

So, you're saying there are no homegrown terrorists, or they are randomly distributed with respect to politics?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ah yes. Christian Republican Terrorism. Nothing to see here folks. No dots to be connected.

It seems a bit... thick to post this sort of nonsense on a website full of people who can't stop clucking about Republican attempts to link Obama to some non-existent "terrorist" agenda, don't you agree?

Carla: I think Day would argue that the key word in his quote is "typically."

The narrative, which Day didn't originate, looks like this.

1. 2008 was an aberration, not part of a trend. The economy is in a cyclical hole but won't stay there forever.

2. Bush, astonishingly, was a crummy President because he didn't execute well and he wasn't conservative enough (too much spending, etc.).

3. Despite all these problems, plus Sarah Palin, McCain still won 46% of the electorate and only lost by 6.5%. Voters will regress to the mean in 2010 and 2012, and they don't have to regress very far.

You heard all of this during the campaign and after the election.

The flaws with this narrative are many, but at the moment, it's an easy story for Republican loyalists to swallow. In Day's mind, his take was a love coo, not an insult.

That was pretty much the narrative that led to four years of holding up the nation's business while they tried everything they could to impeach the aberration.

<h2>To be taken seriously. By the time you read this it will be 10 years to the day that they accomplished it.</h2>