Conservatives Are Single-Largest Ideological Group
June 16, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.
Conservative Speakers Shunned At College Graduations
May 16, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
It’s not enough that Democrats have command of some key real estate in Washington. This month, they’ve also got the ear of just about every college student in the country.
Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White house chief of staff Rahm Emanuel all have multiple invites to be keynote speakers at graduations this spring.
And while President Obama is pulling a hat trick at Notre Dame, Arizona State and the U.S. Naval Academy, you won’t see one of that last institution’s most famous graduates on stage anywhere this year.
John McCain … Sarah Palin … Mitt Romney … Rudy Giuliani … they aren’t on anyone’s program in 2009. Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich? Persona non grata, thank you very much.
So whatever happened to conservatives?
Education watchdogs say it’s nothing strange for conservatives to be shunned from the academy, and that the one-sided invitations have become a permanent fixture of the ivory tower.
“The colleges have been transformed,” said David Horowitz, whose organization, Students for Academic Freedom, tracks ideological bias on campus. “They’re now these partisan institutions. They’re not going to change.”
Horowitz ran a study in 2003 that looked at commencement speakers at 32 top institutions in the U.S. for the previous 10 years. He found that liberals and Democrats were favored over conservatives by a ratio of 15-1. And then he stopped counting.
“It’s permanent. It’s not going to change, partly because there’s so little attention being paid to it,” he told FOXNews.com.
Strategist Warns GOP Risks Becoming Religious Party
John McCain’s top adviser from the presidential campaign urged fellow Republicans on Friday to warm up to gay rights and warned that the GOP risks becoming the “religious party” with its opposition to same-sex marriage.
Steve Schmidt, in his first political appearance since the election, spoke at the Washington, D.C., convention for the Log Cabin Republicans — a grassroots group for gay and lesbian Republicans.
He urged Republicans, in the near-term, to endorse civil unions and stop using the Bible as rationale for gay-marriage opposition.
“If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party,” he said. “And in a free country a political party cannot be viable in the long-term if it is seen as a sectarian party.”
Schmidt, whose sister is a lesbian and who supports same-sex marriage, said he understands the Republican Party probably won’t reverse its resistance to same-sex marriage anytime soon.
But he suggested that the party will be increasingly marginalized if it sustains that opposition long-term.
“If the party is seen as anti-gay, then that is injurious to its candidates” in Democrat-leaning and competitive states, he said.
President Obama also stops short of supporting gay marriage — he supports civil unions — but states across the country are moving toward extending such rights to gay couples.
