Conservative World

As you may know, I am the self-proclaimed expert on contemporary conservative politics in America, so I want to take a brief break from the local campaign politics to comment on the Democracy Corps study on conservative Republicans. The bottom line is that what they found in their focus groups rings absolutely true to everything I've been finding: that a good chunk of America -- and an increasingly dominant portion of the Republican base -- views contemporary America much the way end-times believers view the world at large. That is, they believe we are in an apocolyptic moment; that evil forces keep most people ignorant of this obvious truth; and that those who do understand this truth are part of a movement that will be proven right in the long run.

I'll let you see the Democracy Corps findings for yourself, but here are a few additional thoughts from me:

--I often see my journalistic and punditocracy brethren debating the responsibility that the media and serious politicians have, to counteract the lies and nonsense of the right. It's a legitimate discussion, but it's important to bear in mind that this will have absolutely no effect on what the conservatives themselves believe. They have a total disdain for the news media; their only interaction with "mainstream" news is when they are given