GOP Base in Another World

Eric Kleefield reports for Talking Points Memo on a study of political perceptions in the GOP base by Democracy Corps that shows this group holding fundamentally different beliefs than either independents or Democrats.

A new focus-group of Republican base voters by the Democracy Corps (D), the consulting and polling outfit headed up by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, presents a picture of the GOP base as being motivated by a fundamentally different worldview than folks in the middle or on the Dem side -- and they see the country as being under a dire threat.

"They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism," the analysis said." While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country's founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail."

This view of Obama as a secret socialist flies in the face of his consistently centrist policy positions. Obama resisted pressure from his left to nationalize the banks during the bailout at the start of his term. He was criticized by the same progressives for not making the stimulus package bigger and for including a percentage of tax cuts favored by Republicans. Obama has never supported a single-payor health care reform package that one would expect from a socialist.

The survey notes that the media champion of this faction is Glenn Beck of Fox News. As a quick perusal of non-partisan fact-check website Politifact.com shows, Beck is an appropriate spokesman for this group's fact-challenged world view.

The reality here is that the GOP base has moved so far to the right that a centrist Democrat might only appear to be socialist by comparison. By any measure, this is a remarkably myopic view.

--Ballard Burgher