Both the mainstream media and the conservative hierarchy made big news out of a Gallup poll in which 40 percent of Americans describe themselves as "conservative." The drum-beating on this continued even though no other poll has shown this high a number, and--more importantly--no one is saying what "conservative" means in this context.
And that's a big problem.
For the last 30 years, the word "liberal" and the very concept of liberalism has been thoroughly trashed in virtually all media channels--including the so-called "liberal" mainstream media.
Liberals share a big part of the blame for this because collectively they rarely stood up for their principles and willingly accepted their banishment to the wilderness during those years from 1980 to 1994 which saw the rise of Reaganism and the ultimate seizure of congressional control by the Republicans.
Talk radio and its hate agenda put liberals alongside minorities, feminists, immigrants, gays, and other "undesirables" in American culture. Even though conservatism is anything but inclusive, and it really is the ultimate elitist movement, it managed to use the culture wars to cast liberals in the worst possible light.
So, 2008 arrives and after 28 years of disastrous economic, environmental, and foreign policies, the conservatives finally lose an election with directional significance. And we wind up with a liberal in the White House. But none of this means that suddenly all the pejoratives associated with liberalism for the last 30 years have evaporated. Plus, a close reading of other great liberal uprisings--notably the New Deal--shows that those were nonetheless tinged with vociferous and vocal conservative opposition. Even the great FDR had to wheel and deal to bring about the change he wanted, and often had to retreat because of the conservative aura that preceded his dominance. It really took until the mid-1960s before being a liberal in this country was widely accepted.
Even then, the acceptance didn't last long because the passage of landmark civil rights legislation led to the conversion of a major wing of the Democratic party (its southern coalition) into the Republican party, which used race as its secret weapon for more than 40 years.
Liberalism stands for change, experimentation, egalitarianism--and these are often threatening, disturbing ideas. Conservatism has, for so long, played to a white-picket fence image of America (sprinkled in with lots and lots of fear-mongering and race-baiting) that it has been able to control a big part of the country's narrative.
But this is what I find interesting. The conservatism of this country is much more symbolic than it is real or pragmatic. People will call themselves conservative but seldom do they want to roll back any of the major programs and services that liberals gave them--Social Security, Medicare, even the wide expansion of civil liberties. If you're a true conservative, you don't want Social Security the way it exists; you oppose the socialized medicine we have for the elderly. And, like Anton Scalia, you would have maybe even voted against school desegregation in the Brown case.
Regrettably for conservatives, the real votes aren't there to bring about those changes. Look--it took the conservatives 14 year to get control of the House of Representatives after the nation elected Reagan. And they proceeded to botch up their majority position relatively quickly. Even when conservatives were winning elections, they weren't winning near as many as liberal Democrats did in their heyday.
My sense is that this Gallup poll means nothing, because the term "conservative" is essentially meaningless. Sure, it means something to true conservatives--the 15 or 20 percent who are dyed-in-the- wool wing nuts. For the most part, those folks are doing the liberals' work for them. They are making such idiots of themselves (see the 23rd congressional district of New York) that the liberal agenda will move along just fine.
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