East-West, City-Country, Rich-Poor, Gay-Antigay

[Haruo]

Washington State was one of three states that passed gay marriage laws in the election just past. There are 39 counties in Washington, but only 8 of them voted in favor of the measure. I colorized a map from the State Secretary of State's website to illustrate how the fallout fell out:

Clearly the big difference is "which side of the mountains do you live on"; the answer will pretty well predict how strongly you feel, and in which direction, on the matter of gay marriage.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: Haruo I would be interested in seeing how the end of the day totals compared. In several states where I have lived the mid day tallies where set on their head quite often.

[Haruo]

Good point, Ed, but probably not much change will take place in this case, since most of the ballots were tallied by the day before. The trend will probably be a very slight reduction in the overall support for the measure, since Democratic voters tend to support gay marriage more than Republican voters, and the Democrats put more effort into encouraging early voting than did the Republicans... still, by the end of the day on the 8th the great preponderance of ballots had been counted.

If you want to follow it periodically,



and

(though not colorized in the great detail I provided)

[James]

Reinforces the new conventional wisdom that the "progressives rule the cities and the close in suburbs and the conservatives rule the rural areas. Therefore the GOP may rule the house for quite awhile, but will have a harder time winning the senate, especially in states with big cities with large non-white populations and will seldom ever win the presidency. This will enevitively swing the Court further to the pregressive side as the ages roll.

But guys we need at least a two party system where both parties have a chance. The GOP has to wake up and start nominating real people closer to the center instead of characatures of old white radicals. Will the "real" GOP wake up and help us get the country back on track.

[Tim Bonney]

James, actually the original Mitt Romney was a centrist. But the Tea Party didn't want a centrist.

I think that at some point the GOP has to decide how far to the right it is willing to go without dropping off the cliff of irrelevancy. No party can incluse everyone and there are some folks so far to the right they they can't really fit into any mainstream party. (BTW, I'm sure that is true on the far left too.)

Right now the GOP has been scared to death of losing their far right wing constituency. That constituency is mostly older white evangelical men. That is a shrinking demographic. If they can't court Latinos, or young people, other minorities, etc. they are going to be sunk long term. That isn't just ideology. It is the facts of the changing demographic of our country. They can learn from those demographics or they can keep losing.

[James]

Tim, I agree with what you said about everything except Romney himself.

I think Romney is a cypher who really does not know what he is. What I believe him to be is Stupid, Arrogant, and without a moral compass (or amoral perhaps).

[Tim Bonney]

I've read several articles by both Dems and Reps that Romney was surrounded a group of true believers who had convinced themselves that Romney couldn't lose. They believed their own propaganda. Several articles talked about a bubble of certainty around the campaign. I don't think Romney is stupid. But I do think he listened to his advisers that were so sure he was going to win that this made him arrogant about the outcome.

As to Romney's moral compass, I've said to that Romney is like an empty bottle. You can put any label on an empty bottle. Romney changed positions so often even Republicans who were trying to support him get uncomfortable with the changed.

But no matter who the Republicans ran, I think they were going to lose because they are appealing to a narrowing demographic. This means there has to be some adjustment in ideology if they want future wins. They need to tell the Tea Party to take a hike. For sure they need to tell all of their candidates that if they make any statements about women's bodies they'll be dropped like a hot potato to never be supported again.

If you look at the votes Romney lost big with single women and Latinos. The margins were huge. Yes, he took 56% of the Anglo vote. But that isn't enough anymore.

[James]

Tim, I think stupidity and arrogance stood up to be counted in the "self-deportation comment" and in the 47% video. The video especially showed us that. I thought every politician had been schooled about "saying something dumb." I read Romey's alledgedly prepared comments for his donor meeting. If he had stuck to that speech, I might have voted for him myself. For some reason, he choose to go hard ball on those less fortunate that he. He should have known someone would be there to record it.

[Tim Bonney]

[James]

Tim, once again we agree. We do have a problem with semantics. According to my father, dumb means a lack of basic intelligence as in intellectually challenged; Stupid means you have a brain, but, for whatever reason, you fail to use it. So call it stupidity or call it ignorance with no desire to educate himself, Romney does not have a clue about the underclass, which by dent of hard work, makes his priveledged world possible.

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

And if he really ever did need to eat, he could always go to the Bishop's Storehouse. So cutting benefits = evangelism, Mormon st yle?