Rural Voters Stray the GOP

I just posted this at BlueOregon, and at the same time, we had another guest post on the same topic. So I deleted it. An item for the Zombie Blog, I imagined ...

For those of us who read polls like tea leaves, hoping to discern a pattern that will give us insight into what Americans will do in the next election, the recent Rural America poll sponsored by NPR was a shocker. Generally, reading polls is like reading tea leaves--and about as accurate. You may be able to perceive opinion trends, but how these correlate to what people do in the election booth, that's an iffier prospect. But this latest poll is dramatically at odds with conventional wisdom that it looks like it may actually mean something.

Forty-six percent of the survey respondents indicated they'd vote for an un-named Democratic candidate for president if the election were held today; 43 percent favored a Republican.... The numbers reflect a plunge in Republican support among rural voters. Exit polls from the 2000 presidential election had Republican George Bush beating Democrat Al Gore by 22 per cent in rural areas. In 2004, the actual vote tally showed President Bush outpolling his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, by 19 percent among rural voters.

NPR credits the war in Iraq as the main cause for the shift, and it's clearly a factor; they note that "three-fourths of those surveyed know someone who is serving or has served in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan." But digging a little deeper, I notice a trend that should be a lot more alarming for Republicans. When compared with average Americans, rural voters feel far less prosperous and see themselves as having far worse prospects in the future.

Pollsters asked respondents to describe whether certain words applied to rural America and then whether it applied to the country as a whole. Seventy percent believed "prosperous" applied to the country, but only 42% thought it applied to rural America. Similarly, 64% thought "increasing opportunity" applied to the country, but only 39% to rural America.

More predictably, they believed rural America was more strongly oriented toward "traditional values" (80%-56%) and "strong family values" (85%-62%) than the country as a whole. These are the elements the GOP has highlighted for decades, but it apparently they are no longer enough to keep rural voters reliably loyal.

There are three statewide races in '08 (attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer), in addition to Gordon Smith's Senate seat. Conventional wisdom holds that it's the swing districts in Clackamas and Washington County where the real race is. But this assumes that Republicans have the rural districts sewn up. Perhaps that assumption isn't accurate.

Historically, Democrats did a lot better in rural America exactly because they focused on economic fairness issues. We don't know whether these results would be mirrored in Oregon. (Western politics tend not to line up like rural/urban politics of the South and NE.) And yet, the economic concerns are surely as dire in rural Oregon. So, could we be at one of those historic moments when traditional political coalitions collapse and regroup? Maybe the polls are telling us something. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on in 2008.

On Belief

[Note: keep reading, this post doesn't go where you think it does.]

Sam Brownback has an editorial in the Times today wherein he attempts to back off his position on evolution. In the first GOP debate, you may recall, candidates were asked to raise their hand if they didn't believe in evolution--he was one of three who did. It today's column, he rather remarkably asks that we regard the question as a nuanced and irreduceable one that requires a complex response. This is a courtesy Christian fundamentalist pols have spent a generation trying to stifle, and I'm afraid he just broke my hypocrisy meter. But never mind, it is worth parsing. Here's how Brownback does it:

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.

He thereafter beats a hasty retreat from science and returns to language he understands better--"meaning." As in, "It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science." And finally he undoes the argument completely, admitting that the whole discussion is rigged in any case.

While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order.

This is a return to the original logic of a priori knowledge--that we know of God because His absence makes the universe impossible. Some things are too grand to be conceived, and these things must be God.

It is the moment at which Christians, by necessity, jump into the deep waters of belief. Since the enlightenment, the concept of belief has taken a beating. Beliefs are things we don't know, while facts are things we do know. Belief has become an antonym for knowledge. Beliefs are at best rudimentary lower rungs on the ladder to truth, at worst, they lead us away from truth and into the darkness of confusion.

But here's an important point: the vast majority of our operating assumptions are beliefs. We just don't see them that way. We live in a world of technology and medical science, to take two examples, that very few of us understand. We know that smoking causes cancer, for example. But for the vast majority of us, this is clearly nothing more than a belief. We haven't the dimmest comprehension of how one relates to the other, save that we have confidence in the countless studies that say there is a relationship.

The definition of belief is "a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing." We do this all the time; our minds are like a team of bookies calculating odds about various things based on our levels of confidence. The bookies have told us that our information on cavities is sound, so we brush our teeth in the morning. We take a mornng vitamin because they say it will make us healthy. When make our toast, we're pretty sure electricity will somehow power the toaster.

This is not to say we shouldn't challenge our assumptions or engage in rational thought. Debating the nature and existence of God is a worthwhile exercise, and we'll ultimately make calls individually when our mind-bookies do the math. There's a current raft of athiest literature coming out, and it's very good for the country to consider where God fits in to our society and government.

But it's worth noting that no one is exempt from the exact same habits of mind that led Brownback to raise his hand in the GOP debate. We need to be reflective about all our beliefs.

Context

"Thanks to you, I die like a martyr of Islam to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people."

Had that been the quote of a Muslim who slaughtered three dozen in an American city, we'd invade Iran. Of course, it was Cho, who actually said "die like Jesus Christ." The phrase "nappy-headed hos" got a man fired in one instance, but the subsequent 11,000 times (according to Google News), it was considered journalism or commentary. In a time increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalism, when submission is favored above reason, we ignore the context of things. "Moral clarity" is favored above anything that looks relativistic, even when the nuanced view is the only way to gain actual insight into a situation.

We're lucky Cho wasn't a Saudi, or this week's news would have an entirely different spin.