Center-What?

I'm not terribly surprised that Republican leaders and pundits are trying to salvage any shred of hope from the drubbing they took on November 4th. Karl Rove, John Boehnner and others are claiming that we're still a "center-right" nation, firmly anchored on conservative social values and small government.

Even the media has gotten into the mix. Frank Rich's column in the NY Times adds:


Still, change may come slowly to the undying myths bequeathed to us by the Bush decade. “Don’t think for a minute that power concedes,” Obama is fond of saying. Neither does groupthink. We now keep hearing, for instance, that America is “a center-right nation” — apparently because the percentages of Americans who call themselves conservative (34), moderate (44) and liberal (22) remain virtually unchanged from four years ago. But if we’ve learned anything this year, surely it’s that labels are overrated. Those same polls find that more and more self-described conservatives no longer consider themselves Republicans. Americans now say they favor government doing more (51 percent), not less (43) — an 11-point swing since 2004 — and they still overwhelmingly reject the Iraq war. That’s a centrist country tilting center-left, and that’s the majority who voted for Obama.

There's no doubt that we saw a significant pendulum swing to the left. But for the life of me, I don't subscribe to the view that the country is ideologically anchored to the left or the right. I submit that the majority of Americans (sans the Evangelical right or the militant left - that means you, PETA) are more pragmatic than that. Overwhelmingly, they vote their wallets and their families' immediate interests - health care, education, the interminable wars.

This election was a perfect example of that. Bludgeoned by the economic meltdown and the comitant loss of jobs and financial security (just look at your 401(k) statement), Americans were disgusted and tired of the current administration's policies and philosophy. "Throw the bums out!"

Still, to suggest that Americans naturally lean one way or the other from centrist, moderate philosophies is a spurious argument. If a lean was present, we would see much stronger evidence of this in the polls. Instead of 51-49 or 52-48 spread either way, we would more frequently see 55-45 or 58-42 spreads. We wouldn't see candidates courting independent voters as aggressively. But they do. And the reason is that independents who make up the largest percentage of voters in the United States aren't willing to be suckered into religiously adhering to liberal or conservative ideology. They're interested in what's best for them and their families, and by virtue of that, their country.

The last 8 years have pelted us with one-sided propagandistic spew that drowned out alternative competing ideas for the sake of ideological orthodoxy. It's no wonder the American people lurched so far in the opposite direction. In many regards, it was a natural correction for straying too far from the center.

So let's stop the meaningless blathering about where Americans lean ideologically. We, as a nation, are smack dab in the middle, and we're willing to follow the best ideas from both the right and the left. We welcome rigorous discourse from both sides and are willing to engage in comprimise when it makes sense. Hopefully the pundits and political leaders will finally wake up to this fact and stop patronizing Americans. We're not that stupid.