We Live in a Rage-ocracy, Not a Democracy [View all]

[phantom power]

...what decides the viability of a political stance isn't the raw percentage of people who support it, but the percentage of people whose blood boils at the mere thought of anyone opposing it. The GOP has done a terrific job of ginning up right-wing outrage at filthy hippies who don't support star-spangled patriotic wars -- and while anti-war voters were stirred up in 2006 and 2008, that wasn't the same as a sense of permanent outrage at what's perceived as sandal-wearing hippie peacenik thinking. It doesn't matter that this particular outrage is now felt by less than a third of the public: that minority sliver of the population insists on bellicosity far more than the vast majority of us now insist on the opposite. Please note that 71 percent of the public doesn't oppose the Republican presidential candidates who object to withdrawal from Iraq -- they're indifferent to that. Only the hawks are passionate.

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The GOP is excellent, of course, at turning its voters into people who never, ever move on on a wide range of issues: guns, abortion, tax increases, and so on. On the subject of tax increases (and economic policies in general), I think Kevin Drum is basically correct when he takes a jaundiced view of that new Pew poll. It's true that the poll says

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I wouldn't say the problem is that "support drops dramatically" for actual remedies -- people support a lot of progressive remedies. But there just isn't enough outrage to get them passed. There is, however, plenty of outrage (ginned up by the right-wing noise machine) in favor of not doing these things -- and that simply trumps the opinion of progressive-leaning majority on these issues.

Minority rage wins every time.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/12/15/172651/23