Of ButtWankers, SuperEagles, and ideological myths
Later, in conversation with your wonky uncle, you find out that ButtWanker is a term, used mostly among opinion leaders and political elites, that describes someone who believes in expanding (or maintaining) the social safety net, and who believes in keeping the government out of the bedroom. Whereas, a SuperHawk believes in drastically cutting the federal government and legislating morality.
One of the mistakes I see strategists make here and elsewhere is that they fail to understand that the above scenario plays out for a majority of poll respondents every time they are asked whether they consider themselves to be "liberal" or "conservative." Here's the argument and its implications:
As far back as the 60s, scholars (Phil Converse) showed that only a tiny proportion of the population understands that lib and con are two ends of a spectrum, or that they are meant to constrain a diverse array of issues into a common organizing principle. So how does the rest of the public understand the labels? Conover and Feldman demonstrate that most Americans react symbolically/affectively to the labels. In other words, they pick up a positive or negative valence from them, despite having little to no idea of what they actually mean.
Add to this an important fact of contemporary politics: The labels are discussed asymmetrically in elite discourse, meaning only conservatives use them. At some point (the 1980s?), Republicans made a concerted effort to stigmatize the word "liberal." Instead of fighting back, liberals/Dems ceded the label to them, with their rallying cry becoming "I'm not THAT liberal" (see esp. Dukakis, 1988). So, in typical campaigns from coast to coast, the Rep says "I'm conservative, my opponent is liberal," while the Dem either says absolutely nothing, or says "I'm not liberal, I have Ohio values" or whatever.
The net result of this asymmetry is the ButtWanker/SuperEagle effect: liberal is a bad word, while conservative carries positive affect. But, to tie it all together, the crucial point is that the conservative advantage in ideological self-identification is NOT necessarily a reflection of actual conservatism in the electorate.
So how liberal or conservative is the electorate in reality? This is harder to measure, and subject to dispute. Jim Stimson, one of the most accomplished contemporary political scientists, has accumulated a wealth of evidence that a majority of the electorate is operationally liberal, at least on issues of government spending and priorities. Many critiques have been leveled at this (we've had some good debates about it in other threads here), but it's hard to push aside altogether.
At the very least, we know this: the public MUST be more liberal than the ideological labels indicate. This inference is a necessary logical outgrowth of the ButtWanker/SuperEagle principle -- that is, 1) most people don't know what the labels mean, but 2) they know that liberal is bad.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a reference here to the fact that conservatives dominate liberals in ideological self-identification, usually with the implication that the party needs to embrace conservative principles, or at least find a way to appeal to people who take that label.
But I would argue that this logic is flawed, in that ideological self-identification is of very limited use in understanding the electorate's actual ideology. So unless we plan to make a serious attempt to reclaim the label or to move toward being known as the "conservative" party, it would behoove the strategists here, both professional and amateur, to stop crafting plans of action around a meaningless poll result.
The net result of this asymmetry is the ButtWanker/SuperEagle effect: liberal is a bad word, while conservative carries positive affect. But, to tie it all together, the crucial point is that the conservative advantage in ideological self-identification is NOT necessarily a reflection of actual conservatism in the electorate.
So how liberal or conservative is the electorate in reality? This is harder to measure, and subject to dispute. Jim Stimson, one of the most accomplished contemporary political scientists, has accumulated a wealth of evidence that a majority of the electorate is operationally liberal, at least on issues of government spending and priorities. Many critiques have been leveled at this (we've had some good debates about it in other threads here), but it's hard to push aside altogether.
At the very least, we know this: the public MUST be more liberal than the ideological labels indicate. This inference is a necessary logical outgrowth of the ButtWanker/SuperEagle principle -- that is, 1) most people don't know what the labels mean, but 2) they know that liberal is bad.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a reference here to the fact that conservatives dominate liberals in ideological self-identification, usually with the implication that the party needs to embrace conservative principles, or at least find a way to appeal to people who take that label.
But I would argue that this logic is flawed, in that ideological self-identification is of very limited use in understanding the electorate's actual ideology. So unless we plan to make a serious attempt to reclaim the label or to move toward being known as the "conservative" party, it would behoove the strategists here, both professional and amateur, to stop crafting plans of action around a meaningless poll result.
