The Workday Liberal

One of the enduring mysteries in modern politics is how President Bush, with approval ratings in the low 20 percentile range, is able to have any effectiveness in forwarding his agenda.

I believe this is the answer: Republicans know for a certainty that the rabid supporters who make up the right wing of their party can be counted to show up on election day. If only half the populace votes, suddenly the 24% of rabid koolaid drinkers who make a point of showing up at the polls is about half of the electorate that matters on election day.

If the right wingers can carve off a percentile here or there by vote caging, under servicing left leaning geographical areas on election day, and making hundreds of thousands of voters in those same areas cast provisional ballots that most likely will not be counted... suddenly 24% of the general populace is a slim majority on election day.

If worse comes to worse and the election is razor edge close, even if the Democrat holds a slight lead... the Supremes have proven willing to narrowly decide that the Republican should be declared the winner.

I am convinced that Bush would hold a pittance of the influence he wields in Washington if the bloc of the electorate who disagreed with Bush's policies, otherwise known as the 70%'ers, were as motivated to vote as the 24%'ers.

In fact Paul Weyrich, a founding member of modern day conservatism, and co founder of the Heritage foundation expressed it this way, from a decidedly right wing point of view: (here's video @ Crooks and Liars):

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome — good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

This may be one reason there is growing panic from the right about their field of candidates this year. A large segment of the die hard righties are evangelicals. If they are not as motivated to turn out in the coming election as they were in 2004 the Republicans are looking at impending electoral disaster. The Republicans may be about to ask their fundamentalist brethren in politics to cast their votes for a candidate who is a cross dressing, thrice married, serial cheating, flip flopping former proud social liberal. Giuliani actually makes Clinton family values look traditional by comparison. If the fundamentalist right loses motivation to vote for the Republican candidate, suddenly 24% of the general population is going to start looking like 24% of the voting electorate.

That will be the end of the majority of the 24%'ers, and good riddance to them.

Then again, I admit that I've always been a dud when it comes to math... so maybe I need to stop crunching numbers and just chalk up the continued legislative successes of Mr. 24% to gutless pols who won't take a stand.