Mormon supression

Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC had an absolute hatchet job on Mormonism, explaining the
religion as nothing more than the founder getting caught in an affair with the
maid. Then Jake Tapper of ABC played up
a big interview question with Rick Warren in which Warren pointed out an obvious
thing. Some Christians have a concern
about Mormonism because it is not strictly Trinitarian. Of course, it’s not that O’Donnell or Tapper are pietistic systematic theologians. I’d bet you never heard either of them
give any kind of testimony of their faith --on or off the air. But by raising big warning flags about
Mormonism, they can attack Romney quite cleverly and obliquely. Chris Matthews of MSNBC was absolutely gleeful. No, that’s too weak a
word. Matthews was Ecstatic about the
possibility that Evangelical turnout might be reduced this fall. He even chortled that Evangelicals “would all
stay home.” Matthews is no dummy. He has been in many campaigns for Democrats
and he understands that turnout is a far larger effect than the often-repeated
foolishness of appealing to the independents.
Suppressing conservative turnout is the name of the game among
Dems.

Here’s why. In any given general election 58-69% of registered
voters do. And you have probably heard
that R’s and D’s have something like 40 and 42% of those registered. Lets make it 40-40 just for discussion
purposes. That means 20% are
Independents. (Fewer I’s in
midcontinent—about 10%-- and larger on the coasts—about 30%) But Independents
as a group are only half as likely to vote as partisans who vote 75% of the
time. So in our election we would have
30 % R’s + 30% D’s + 7% I’s = 67% turnout.

Then they
poll asking if someone is liberal, moderate, or conservative. Among registered
voters, they are 20% liberal, 30% moderate and 40% conservative (last 10% are
“none-of-the-above”). Republicans are
80% conservative and about 15% moderate (plus 5% ‘none-of-the-above’). That means that of the 40 percentage points
that R’s comprise, 32 are conservative and 6% moderate. But 40% of the registered say they are
conservative, so the other 8 points of conservatives are about 4% in the
independent column and 4% in the Dems.
In an election, if the R’s run a conservative, almost all their base
will vote for the conservative. This is
not the case with Dems and liberals.
Remember D’s comprise 40% but liberals only account for 20% of voters. So the 40% D’s break down as about 18%
liberal (2% goes to Independents) and 18% moderate and 4% conservative. (Leaving Independents at 4% conservative, 2%
liberal, 6% moderate and 8% none of the above) Thus Dems must play a game of
pretending to be centrist and moderate while being liberal in order to attract
base votes, or they must be indeed be somewhat centrist like Bill Clinton and
rely on libs having nowhere else to go—which is not a good turnout situation. Instead of ideology, Dems often play group
politics demonizing R’s as anti-black or anti-hispanic or anti-women or
whatever group they are trying to target.
Thus they get the base to turn out based on an emotional group-think
rather than a political philosophy. And
that is why media pundits—who are shown to vote 89% Democrat—always talk about
being centrist, appealing to moderates and independents, and homophobia and
racism. From their perspective, that is
how to win. And usually with a media barrage, this occurs every October when
polls show a phenomena of “Democrats coming home”.

The great
fear of Dems is when R’s go conservative and not only get their own conservs to
vote but win the independents and even steal the conservative D’s (“Reagan
Democrats”). Work the math to see how
this happens. You only need about 35% of
registered voters to get a majority of the 67% who actually vote. So if you turn out ¾ of 32 Republican
Conservative points (24) plus 3/8 of 4 points conservative independents (almost
2) plus ¾ of 4 points of crossover Dem conservatives (3) plus the remaining ¾
of 8 points of moderate and other R’s, then that candidate has won with a
substantial margin. And that is why Rush Limbaugh points out that whenever a
conservative is running they almost always win.
And that is why Jimmy Carter won with 51% and Obama won with 53%, a
paltry “best” of Democrats since LBJ. Furthermore,
if the conservative R candidate merely splits the independent moderate vote
(3/8 of 6) and gets a couple more points from crossover Dem moderate voters,
he/she has won by a landslide.

Where does
that leave the 20% Independent voters? Independents
are not a very pure philosophy group. 1/5 of them are closet partisans who vote
always for a particular party but want to keep their identity secret. 1/5 are careful-consideration moderates. 1/5 are turned off at politics in general and
tend to vote by lashing out. 1/5 are not
into politics at all and likely to vote for some sideline issue. 1/5 are out-of-sync with the parties—perhaps
a guy with Playboy Philosophy but fiscally conservative. They are hard to lump into a particular
scheme and you can see why they vote less often. Hence swing (partisan) voters are often
considered more important and targetable than independents. Pundits who say
that Indies are the key to the election, are either not being truthful or
clueless. Turnout of base is far more important.

A big part
of Democrat strategy has to be to suppress the conservative Republicans lest
they vote. And my guess is that they are
going to try to do that with attacks on Mormonism. Look for more Lawrence O’Donnell pulpit
talk. Like Greg Gutfield noted
sarcastically, “Isn’t not voting for a guy because his Mormon founder had questionable
sins like not voting for an Episcopalian because of the sins of Henry VIII?”