Gallup has a poll out today, showing once again, that self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals by a margin of two-to-one.
Color me skeptical...cynical even...For over forty years conservatives have outnumbered liberals by roughly two-to-one in annual surveys such as these, and yet, somehow, in spite of this whopping ideological advantage, the federal government has swollen in size and power to elephantine proportions...
Psychologists would politely call this "cognitive dissonance." In a generous moment, George Will described it as "rhetorical Jeffersonianism, operational Hamiltonianism." His more accurate and acerbic assessment was "rampaging infantilism."
I just think it's a fusion of hypocrisy and ignorance. Forty percent of Americans call themselves conservative, and eighty percent of those want to conserve The New Deal, The Great Society, and all the subsequent expansions of the welfare state that transpired under ostensibly conservative Republican presidents (Nixon, Reagan, and Dubya).
