Franco is still dead, and "Republicans continue to be more likely than average to be male, white, married, and religious, and to describe their political views as 'conservative.' "
That's one key finding from "a special Gallup analysis of the demographic and ideological composition [from 2008 to 2011] of the U.S. population," although how much of a real finding it is, fixed as it is within the study's general immutabilities, remains a real question.
By that I mean one might logically expect the U.S. population in general to have demonstrated a leftward shift in self-described ideology, given contemporary pseudoconservatism's destructive prominence and unremitting retreat from anything resembling actual, philosophical conservatism. But here, Gallup's findings are shockingly(?) constant.
Which is to suggest, very little has changed within the average American's philosophical consciousness, despite the right's ruthless bombardments of it, for what, three years? -- or rather thirty. One might think that the right's pitiless bankrupting of the public treasury, its wholesale transfer of national wealth to the already obscenely rich, its military belligerence and vastly ill-advised adventurism, its abject indifference to working-class Americans and its indescribable dynamiting of the American economy -- well, one might think that this collective depravity, or merely in part, would compel the average American to rethink his or her fundamental, politico-philosophical attitude.
But one would be wrong. In 2008, just as the right's "payoff" was beginning to show itself, Americans ideologically self-described, according to Gallup, as 40 percent conservative, 38 percent moderate and 22 percent liberal. And now, in 2011, after all the indisputable evidence has piled upon all the other indisputable evidence of the right's malignancy, Americans self-describe as conservative, moderate or liberal at the levels of 42, 37 and 21 percent respectively. Essentially, no change.
Issue-polling tinged by the ideological has changed somewhat dramatically, however. Ask the average American if taxes should be raised on the wealthy -- yes; if income inequality is far too imbalanced -- yes. Yet issue-polling saturated in self-interest remains, as some descriptively argue, consistently leftward: high levels of support for protecting Social Security and Medicare's integrity, for example.
So we're left with a miscellany of both statistical and philosophical constants and inconstants: A plurality of "conservatives" in support of higher taxes on the so-called accomplished class -- a surprisingly pronounced "redistributive" spike along the ideological spectrum -- thriving just as discontentedly among a decided minority of "liberals."
In short, the spread of Americans' self-described ideological bents doesn't seem to coincide with their more explicit, issue-oriented opinions. Some on the left argue -- self-servingly, it scarcely requires adding -- that Gallup's ideological surveys, therefore, don't mean squat. The argument comes twofold: the word "liberal" has merely been stigmatized by rightist, Orwellian-Luntzian efforts, so fewer surveyed respondents offer it up as a self-label; second, most Americans simply don't understand what "conservative" means.
I -- as a self-described democratic socialist, it absolutely requires adding -- protest, for probably the hundredth time.
In admittedly very broad terms, Americans do comprehend the meaning of conservatism; chiefly, its aversion to sudden, radical change. (Indeed, they more deeply and instinctively understand its meaning far better than "conservative" politicians, most of whom of course aren't conservatives at all; they're just spineless survivalists, scared to extremist lunacies by radical tea-partying hordes.)
And that's why twice as many Americans self-describe as conservative, even though they hold rather similar views to liberals. The "liberal" program of Social Security has been around so long, it's a conservative institution -- it's now a traditional part of our broadly accepted social contract. Same goes for Medicare and Medicaid. What's more, the same applies to the authentically conservative view that crushing, class inequalities in wealth will someday inspire violent revolution -- hence the former ain't too bright.
Hence, Gallup's findings are less shocking than they at first seem.