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If you take all the polls, add the percentages of respondents who call themselves conservative, and divide by the number of polls taken, that percentage is 60%. If you look at the polls over these years individually, the number of Americans in any particular poll who have called themselves conservatives has been as high as 63% in May 2008, and it has been as low as and see the highest percentage of people who call themselves conservative has been as low as 58% in December 2007, but 12 out of the 15 Battleground Polls had the percentage of conservatives at 59%, 60%, or 61%.
Conservatives, doubting how they could be majority, and liberals, certain that they are America, posted at blogs and comment sections many "problems" with my article. Some assumed that the Battleground Poll has an "agenda" - indeed it does. It has a high reputation for precision without any partisan leaning. That is the Battleground Poll agenda and that agenda reinforces, rather than weakens, my argument.
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And why would Americans from different polling groups answer that question, and that question alone, so consistently? In every other area, public responses to questions jump all over the place. Responses are moved by events or by unpopular political leaders. The only response that never varies much is the question on political ideology. In statistical analysis, when a percentage that could vary never does, that means something.
But a couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with Daniel Pipes and a group of collegiate conservatives at the University of Tulsa. Professor Pipes asked me a question that is harder to answer: Why does it feel like we are so much less than sixty percent of the population? If three fifths of our countrymen are conservatives, why do we conservatives feel like a minority?
In answering that, we should consider the "Limbaugh Effect." Remember when Rush Limbaugh first began to be an unapologetic national voice for conservatives? What did callers say first? They thanked him for speaking for them. More than that, they thanked him for showing that they were not some "nutty right-wing loner," as the media, Hollywood, academia and other organs of information, entertainment, and communication had portrayed conservatives.
The Left long ago stopped trying to win arguments. The Left long ago adopted the Alinsky school of political warfare: Destroy your opponent. Portray conservatives as racist, homophobes, wife-battering moronic paranoids and that campaign of political annihilation is largely won. The political movement which sanctimoniously prides itself on rejecting stereotypes smeared sixty percent of America with a savage, humorless defamation. And, as long as no one raised the banner of conservatism for others to join, sixty percent of America sat quietly in their living rooms, wondering if anyone else really believed what they believed.
After Rush, people realized that they were not alone. No: We are not alone at all. We are the majority, really the overwhelming majority, in America. Consider other evidence. How does the Left win many of its policy battles? Through unelected federal judges who are appointed for life. How does the Right win many of its policy battles? By referenda and similar votes of the people.
When did McCain get a bump? When he picked an unapologetic conservative running mate. How is Obama winning this election now? By never calling himself a liberal at all, by never mentioning his true allies and mentors, and by pretending not to be a radical Leftist. Conservatives lose when they deny that they are conservatives: When they seek that two percent of America that calls itself moderate at the cost of that sixty percent of America that calls itself conservative. When was the last time an unapologetic conservative ran against a nice, old-fashioned liberal? Twenty-four years ago. The result? The conservative got about sixty percent of the vote.
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Now all we need is candidate and president who understands this.
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