Independent Wingnuts
by digby
I think it's pretty clear that the "soccermom-nascardad" of this cycle is the "independent," the segment of the electorate which the Villagers deem to represent the real American who is, as always, imbued with all the attributes and concerns that are deemed to be important in the current political narrative. This designation rarely has any meaning, but simply serves as a vehicle for the gasbags to pontificate with authority about the this important voting bloc really wants, without having to actually back it up with any real analysis.
Fortunately, the "independent" vote is a real measurable bloc about which a lot of data has been gathered over the years, so this time we have some actual information to rebut their facile bloviations. Ed Kilgore does the honors:
The general consensus is that of the 30% to 40% or so of Americans who call themselves independents, no more than ten percent are independent voters in any meaningful sense of the term. And "pure independents" are also less likely to vote than partisans.
This is important for a whole lot of reasons. For one thing, the idea that "independents" are a third force in politics positioned in some moderate, bipartisan space equidistant from the two parties is entirely wrong. They are not a bloc of voters who think just like David Broder or David Brooks, spending their days pining for deficit reduction and "civility."
More immediately, the high percentage of Tea Party activists who call themselves "independents" obscures the fact that most of them are in fact highly partisan Republicans who are close ideologically to the right wing of the GOP. Here's how Blumenthal puts it:
Remember the 52 percent of Tea Party activists who [in a recent CNN poll] initially identify as independent? It turns out that virtually all of them lean Republican. According to CNN, 88 percent of the activists identify or lean Republican, 6 percent identify or lean Democratic and only 5 percent fall into the pure independent category.
Remember that CNN pollster Holland reported that 87 percent of the Tea Party activists would vote Republican if there were no Tea Party-endorsed third-party candidate running? That makes perfect sense for a group that is 88 percent Republican.
Why do functionally partisan, and sometimes quite ideological, people self-identify as independents in such large numbers? Some of it is just fashion: many folk conflate "independence" with "intelligence" or "thoughtfulness." Some of it reflects short-cuts by pollsters, who often give respondents the impression that voters who have ever split a ticket should call themselves "independents." In the case of the Tea Party activists, there is undoubtedly some mistrust of the godless moderate "GOP establishment" and its Beltway habits--mistrust that will not, however, keep them from voting uniformly for Republican candidates in any two-party contest, and which in any event may not last long given the rightwards trajectory of the party as a whole.
I would say that in the case of the tea partiers, many of them call themselves independent because they are embarrassed by George W. Bush's reputation as a failure and want to pretend that they weren't genuflecting to his picture for the first six years of his presidency.
And this rump Republican Party is happy to run right as quickly as possible. It's not like anyone's resisting. The tea partiers will vote for the veriest wingnut available and I doubt the GOP will resist this much, although it should be exciting to watch their primaries as they all race each other over the cliff.
The bigger question is whether or not average voters of every ilk will be paying enough attention to the details to see that voting for the Republicans to protest the lack of progress under Obama will usher in a bunch of radical lunatics.
.