Minnesota: 2008 Presidential Election: Clinton Leads GOP By Double Digits

In Minnesota, Senator Hillary Clinton (D) holds double digit leads over each of the top three Republican Presidential candidates. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found Clinton leading Fred Thompson by 11 (51% to 40%), Rudy Giuliani by 13 (50% to 37%), and Mitt Romney by 18 (52% to 34%).

Bill Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner’s husband, won the state’s 10 Electoral College votes twice by double digits in the 1990s.

In fact, Minnesota has voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate in eight straight elections. That’s a longer streak than any other state in the union because Minnesota was the only state to vote for Democrat Walter Mondale in Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election landslide. Still, the Democratic margin has been shrinking in recent years. George W. Bush came within three points of John Kerry in the state during Election 2004 and he lost Minnesota to Al Gore by just two points in Election 2000.

...In a pattern seen in many other states, Clinton does much better among women than men. In Minnesota, she leads the three Republicans among women by margins ranging from 23 to 27 percentage points. Among men, Thompson has a four-point edge over Clinton while the Democrat has a narrow lead over the other Republicans.

While there have always been progressives (liberals) in both political parties, the Minnesota Democrat Party did not identify itself as such until the 1960’s. I see the sequence and the results of liberalism as follows.

It began with the idea that thinking people (that is how they described themselves) determined their own person regardless, and in spite of, tradition.

Conventional and traditional views were to be avoided not because they were wrong (they were usually only assumed so) but because they were conventional, traditional views. The individual became an all powerful voice against tradition and traditional values. Each intellectual discipline and then each individual was to do similarly and then to live and advocate it.

This wholesale dumping of tradition as well as outright animosity for anything “conservative” had some unfortunate consequences: substance habituation, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, abortions and so on and so on. These outcomes then required a return to a quasi-bourgeois belief system. What was salvaged from tradition was the levers of power—entrance into the meritocracy and capitalistic success. This economic compromise tempered the fall from bourgeois status; indeed, it accentuated the idea that success in the workplace and in the professions was the only real measure of personal value and virtue.

Presently, those in Minnesota with postgraduate degrees vote 60/40 liberal RAT.

What is worse than the above, the progressives (60 liberals) also decided political power was the final arbiter of right and wrong. Winning elections meant right and losing elections meant wrong. The liberal belief system became a self-generating source of transcendental identity that demanded acquiescence, if not worship, by all.

So now, we have an agglutination of beliefs that claims individuality yet, on close inspection, are without any hint of individualism—they are lock step, superordinate beliefs that no one dare contest—environmentalism, political correctness, socialism with a small “s,” and so on and so forth.

Besides a new agglutination of liberal beliefs not based on empirical findings we also have a new denial—self-observation is a denied value since any question as to liberal understanding and belief is considered a heresy.

Rush Limbaugh may label “liberalism” a mental disorder. I choose to see it, as many others have, as a religion. This new religion is the dominant theme in our schools, universities, professions and in the fine and performing arts. If Russell Kirk were alive today he would relabel his classic work as “The Conservative Rout [not Mind]: From Burke to Eliot. “Rout” was his original choice but his editor demanded, and got, “mind.” Kirk was more prescient than even he imagined.

Some progress has been made over the last two Presidential elections--Thank you, President G. W. Bush. But the real change may be the increasing numbers--both absolutely and proportionately--of voters living in the suburbs. Living in the suburbs requires individual effort and the necessity of voluntary associations--churches, school advocacy groups and political activism. Hurray for our side!

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