SHOOT! Just spent all evening trying to find some record of that article, Pach. Not on any disks I’ve got, & couldn’t spot it via google. Slim chance it’s so old I’ve got a printed copy from back when I wasn’t as well wired as now.
I KNOW it existed, it made sense at the time, and I’ve seen the phenomenon in action.
My lousy book-keeping shouldn’t keep us from taking this into account, right?
I know the concept is dead-on correct, because I see it all around me even in better-educated, but – shall we be kind and call them “distracted” folks of all sorts, these days?!

Regardless, I’m convinced the problem is real. As long as minds such as rove’s are at work out there, candidates have to be ready to tackle smears effectively because, alas, they work much of the time, & voters have to be diligent about doing their homework(!)

Thanks, everyone. This blog itself is a HUGE weapon against the sleaze merchants out there!

Night for now . . . I rest easier knowing you all are out there ;->

I’m honored you’d take the time to answer.
Seriously, I mean it. I come & go from lurking & finally posting – sometimes too much.
I was fascinated by that article, so maybe I saved some ref. I’ll check back & see, & let the crew know if I find it.

We have good friends who never cross paths with eachother and yet who, nevertheless, represent very well the categories of choice-methods measured in that study.

The ‘gut-feeling’ friends now are totally savvy & totally disgusted by rover’s MO. But they have many relatives and acquaintances who trouble them greatly by continuing to be suckered by same. How to reach the others, without only generating strife within their family, & nothing positive??? I’m not that one who can do it. But I could try to serve as an enabler, if I could just figure out how.

Delicate situation and, I suspect, with widespread significance.
Jr’s reliance on being the macho-honcho just got blown out the window during this past year, tw’ Katrina & the latest G8 fiasco, not to mention the carnage in the ME & beyond.

Think basic wonderful blue-collar values: lotta pride involved, toes to be re-oriented w/o being unnecessarily stepped-on? This is a HUGE disappointment for a lotta folk who followed Jr. lock-step, without knowing they should have a 2nd thot about whether he was qualified.

Someone like rover pushed all the right buttons to make this happen. If you want all their hearts & minds, and votes, it’s gonna take some careful work in the middle, so to speak, to ALLOW these people to cross over, and not just stay home on election day.

Thanks again. Will stay tuned as much as I can &, will keep checking in daily at the very least, if only to lurk. ;->

If you haven’t done so already, could you please add Angie Paccione
http://www.angie2006.com/
to the list of Congressional candidates that you cover? She is fabulous (dynamic, liberal, intelligent, informed, etc.) and she is running for the Colorado District 4 seat that homosexual-hating, pro-CAFTA (anti-farmer), pro-War, Dubya puppet Marilynn Musgrave currently occupies.

From what I have heard and read recently, Paccione and Musgrave are equal in the polls, but Paccione needs more publicity and more financial support.
Thanks!

Another reason why so many still vote Republican around here is because the current Republican Party is partly derived from the Granger Movement of the mid 1800’s. Local legend has it that the Grangers started in Crawfordsville, Iowa.

Iowa is disproportionally rural and ‘elderly’.
The vast majority of city dwelling Iowans are no more than one or two generations off the farm. While I may be the 2nd generation off the farm, one of my 1st cousins is planning on a farming career at this time. (She’s 16 and already has a small herd of sheep.)

I’ve been out today and just read your comment. Sorry: I’m stumped on that one. I’m not familiar with it, and sadly don’t recall it. I may never have seen it.

Actually, I was pretty politically unengaged until a few years ago.

Although Chet Culver, the dem candidate for governor has been leading in polls, I wouldn’t count out Nussle. He’s a smooth operator with lots of support from the outside the state. I do think Iowa will lean more democratic this time around but it is always a closely divided state.

The opportunity to pick a seat by Mr. Braley is great but we are also in danger of losing a seat in Iowa. Leonard Boswell is far from being what I would call a progressive, but he is a dem who is in a very close race this time around. Anyone who can afford send a little assistance his direction should consider it.

You write: “Bruce — what issue in Iowa is keeping the good people of Iowa voting Republican? Religous issues? Tax issues?”

I think there are religious issues, cultural issues more broadly, but it’s not what we think of as the Religious Right. There is still a large population of descendants of the old Abolitionists, who were of course die-hard Republicans. The problem is that many of them have followed Republicanism instead of the religious tradition that spurred Abolition. The Right has been very careful in steering them away, linking abortion to Abolition and co-opting Christian terminology, and perverting the Scopes decision to the service of Intelligent Design (that’s not what it was about). It’s hardly an overstatement to say that Republicanism is a cultural identity for a lot of Western Iowans in particular. (This may also be part of what’s the matter with Kansas, and also Idaho.) It won’t be shed much more easily than any other cultural totem is; which is not to say that it’s impossible, only difficult. Fortunately, the Republicans have done about 99% of the necessary work for us. The remainder consists of getting this information to these folk through avenues that they trust.

For the rest, I think any talk of regulation and taxation will get the backs of rural folk up fast, and I think liberals do bear some blame for that—not because of the regulation per se, because of the way we’ve handled the cultural issues. Some kid freshly educated in Communist Iowa City gets his Iowa DNR job and comes out to Oakland (Iowa) and tells people whose families have farmed the same land since 1850 that they can’t do this and they can’t do that and they’re going about this all wrong. If there’s any attempt to connect with the people being regulated or taxed, it’s an initiative on the part of the individual. Farmers, who have too much to worry about in the best case, resent this. I think this is why someone like Jon Tester is doing so well: There’s a real sense among the people who ordinarily don’t trust liberals that he’s actually done the time behind a plow, so to speak, and so he’s not just imposing some burden on them that he dreamed up in an ivory tower. He’s one of them, and he can actually walk his own talk on a farm.

But then, I’m a computer programmer who grew up in Massachusetts, so caveat lector.