Mature GOP Voters vs. Hate-Motivated Dem Voters 2006

I don't have as much experience as a witness to the same in GOP voters mainly because most GOP voters don't muse and machinate as much. (We in the chattering class are an exception to this rule!) They just show up on Election Day and vote. GOP voters have been battle-hardened by the struggle that achieved their rise to majority status and they are not about to abandon the field with the job of renewing America not yet done.

Dem voter turnout has always been largely driven by passion, emotion if you will. The problem with that is that emotion can be its own reward, especially the emotion of hate. The Dems have won on rare occasions of late, and even then with pluralities, not majorities, when their better natures were appealed to. Bill Clinton was an optimist, and while he always engaged in some class envy and is on the stump this season demonizing Christian conservatives, he won the presidency by appealing to our better natures.

Their better natures are not being appealed to in 2006. The Dem party today bears no resemblance to the Bill Clinton of the 90s.

When consumed by hate, they suffer landslide defeats.

I would remind you that Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry led in the polls that don't choose the wielders of power.

One of the paradoxes with hate driven voting is that one risks losing the object of their emotion rush if they remove the hated object form the TV show called news and the flip side of that major paradox for the Dem's Bush hatred this year is that no matter what they do, they can't vote against Bush.

How is one's hate to be satisfied?

In short, many Dem voters behave like children. I used to herd these children to the polls losing only a few to pubs and ice cream shops along the way.

I can't tell you how many times during my 20 years in the Dem Party that I was working the grassroots for the party and listening to probable Dem voters and hearing not one word about an issue, but rather having to endure demonization of Republicans on a personal level and the kind of emotion justifications for voting that can easily fade away if one has to choose between missing one's favorite sitcom or standing in line to vote when one's self absorbed life will change not a whit the next day no matter what.

Except that if they miss the sitcom they won't have a witty retort at the water cooler on Wednesday.

The average GOP voter on the other hand is a much more serious person. Many are converts, and so are especially zealous to defeat the known evil that is their former party. But the main things about the GOP is that it has a coherent world view that is important to its voters in a serious way. Moreover, GOP voters are reliable to exercise their right and are much more cognizant of the policy consequences of who holds power.

For so long the Dems have spread fear that old folks and children would be starved to death if the GOP got power. But what they see since 1994 is increasing obesity in the 'hood and at the social security check day mailbox discussions.

GOP voters don't vote on emotion, primarily. They vote values, and they have 2 years more worth of then 16 and 17 year olds than they did in 2004. The Dems have two more years worth of aborted potential voters and more 60s hippies dead from hard livin'.

I noticed that this was all true when I was a Democrat. I watched the GOP grow into the dominant party, and saw it even at the time as a naturally occurring phenomenon that simply could not be stopped.

The reliability of GOP voter turnout since 1994, but especially since 2002 and 2004, is quite impressive. GOP voters will turn out no matter what the MSM does. They like low taxes. They love America and want it defended. And they want to finish fixing the courts. They will turn out.

They are not fickle, passion of the moment actors.

A high percentage of Democrats are.

One reason they are is actually quite rational. While they may hate what the GOP stands for in a vague sense, at least the demonic version their "leaders" define, they fear the incompetence of their own people more based on experience in the 70s and 90s as compared to Reagan, and so many just stay home.

This is a fact. I know these people. They can't look each other in the eye when they get two sentences into a discussion about what Dems stand for. They know its an empty suit or a ruined suit.

Now comes 2006. After decades of being told that the GOP would usher in a return to Hoovervilles and Jim Crow, and after 5 years of relentless Bushlied and Bush is the cause of all that is wrong in the world, and I mean ALL, they still get their checks in the mail.

Oh well, its late. Look at all those cars. The line must be long and Bush ain't on the ballot anyway. Let's get a pizza and watch TV.

Pizza beats hate when the line is more than two persons deep and the carb addiction kicks in.

A civil/criminal trial lawyer for two decades in federal and state courts throughout the South and presently Vice-President of a multi-state real estate investment firm headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., DeVine-Gamecock, aka Mike DeVine, was a long-time SC Democrat Party official until his June 2001 conservative epiphany.

originally posted at redstate.com

DeVine-Gamecock also blogs at race 4 2008 as Gamecock

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan