Republicans Consistently More Knowledgable Than Democrats

Earlier this month, I had a blogosphere argument with a liberal, who said:

I think I said it best in my post about the inferiority complex of right wingers…

As I wrote about before, much of the problem with right-wingers is an inferiority complex. They believe in the superiority of their party, but every time Republicans gain power, they make a mess of everything.

It goes beyond that, though. Most (though not all) right-wingers have achieved little in life. Few of them have a four year college degree and many have no higher education at all. When you talk about education to a right-winger, they think of grade school and high school. Talk about education to a liberal and they think about college.

It is a comment typical of elitist liberals: a worship of their own opinions, based entirely on lies.

The facts are otherwise.  But when the facts get in the way of liberals’ theories, so much the worse for the facts.

Pew Political IQ Poll: Republicans Consistently More Knowledgeable

You likely won’t see this poll result elsewhere, so I thought I’d highlight it here. This is a Pew Political IQ test conducted over the phone with 1,002 adults from Oct. 1-4. They were asked 12 questions, and answered an average of 5.3 questions correctly, according to Pew.

But here’s the part you likely haven’t heard about:

Under a section called “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” we find Republicans were more knowledgeable by a double-digit factor on four issues. Although the Glenn Beck question is naturally easier for Republicans, the other three issues are basic political knowledge— what “cap-and-trade” means, who’s in control of the House, and who the new Supreme Court Justice is (a question that should perhaps be easier for Democrats). Republicans also led Democrats on identifying the unemployment rate, Fed chairman, Dow level, Max Baucus’ position. Republicans correctly answered an Iran/Israel question and an Afghanistan question more often than Dems. Republicans and Democrats were even on identifying the “public option” as a health-care plan.

But take heart, Democrats: You lead Republicans by five points on a whopping one question.

The result is a repeat of a Pew Political IQ test conducted in March, which asked 12 slightly different questions and found Republicans more knowledgeable on 10 questions, even with Democrats on one, and lagging Democrats on just one (number of troops killed in Iraq). Those results are available under the helpful subhead, “Republicans more knowledegable,” but I don’t remember too many articles using that as a lede.

By contrast, you’ll remember copious coverage of the Democracy Corps’ focus groups under the title, “The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans”— another in a long line of “conservatives are crazy” pseudo-scientific studies that are giddily regurgitated by mainstream media every year with very serious eyebrow furrows of faux objectivity.

An April 2007 Pew Quiz showed this about partisan difference: “Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high-knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least.”

A September 2007 quiz showed more Republicans than Democrats could identify even the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

It looks like conservatives do indeed live in a separate world from liberals— one occupied by 40 percent of the American electorate, where most people know what Tim Geithner’s job is.

That’s my Stuart Smalley affirmation for our readers. After all, if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops. I figure since you get told by the media you’re crazy all the time, it’s worth telling you polling confirms you are crazy— crazy like a fox.

Posted by Mary Katharine Ham on October 28, 2009

So it’s not enough just to say that Republicans are more knowledgeable than Democrats; rather, Republicans are consistently more knowledgeable than Democrats.

Another smarmy liberal theory of innate superiority blown to smithereens.

My liberal pest confidently asserted the following as his own version of gospel truth:

It goes beyond that, though.  Most (though not all) right-wingers have achieved little in life

I responded with the following facts:

What does Ben mean when he says, “Most (though not all) right-wingers have achieved little in life”? He clearly doesn’t mean success in an actual career. A Pew Research Center study from 2005 points out the following:

“It remains true now, as it was in 1992, that the more income a person has, the more likely he or she is to be a Republican, and the less income a person has, the more likely he or she is to be a Democrat.”

Well, maybe Ben was referring to characteristics of personal virtue when he talked about “accomplishment”; qualities like honesty, generosity, and morality.

Well, conservatives are more honest than liberals. And it turns out that they are more generous and more moral, too. The research is in:

Some recent surveys suggest a striking gap between liberals and conservatives on the issue of honesty.  Polling by an organization called The World Values Survey posed the question, “Is it OK to cheat on your taxes?”

Fifty-seven percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said “yes”, compared with only 20 percent of those calling themselves “very conservative.” That same survey in the Washington Examiner found those on the left were more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that one knows are stolen.

Another questionnaire done by the Culture and Media Institute’s National Cultural Values Survey posed a scenario in which an employer would be willing to pay someone in cash in order to avoid taxes and allow a worker to collect unemployment benefits. Forty-nine percent of self-described progressives said they would go along with the plan, while only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.

Conservatives are also more generous, and give of their time and their money more cheerfully than liberals. The fact is that Republicans give away a bigger share of their wealth than liberals. The studies are quite clear on that one.

So if I’m going to argue that one group of people by political affiliation “have accomplished little in life” on the basis of fact rather than Marxist ideology – whether “accomplishment” be measured as success in one’s career or success in one’s attaining personal honor – it would be the leftwing, not the rightwing.

My liberal commenter – who couldn’t be bothered by the facts or the evidence – continued his screed against conservatives:

Few of them have a four year college degree and many have no higher education at all. When you talk about education to a right-winger, they think of grade school and high school. Talk about education to a liberal and they think about college.

Again, it would be nice if these people actually lived in the real world, rather than their world of bogus theories and opinion-as-evidence.  I responded by saying:

Here’s a chart connecting education with political party that CLEARLY shows that those with the very least education OVERWHELMINGLY voted Democrat rather than Republican. The uneducated, ignorant masses Ben Hoffman tried to attribute to Republicans are in fact about four times more likely to be DEMOCRATS. In other words, it shows the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Ben falsely claims:

Here’re some 1990 Gallup poll numbers relating education to political affiliation:

Rep = Republican
Dem = Democrat
Ind = Independent/Unaffiliated

Grade school education:
23.4% Rep, 54.6% Dem, 22.5% Ind

Some High School:
22.8% Rep, 51.3% Dem, 26.0% Ind

High School Grad:
29.4% Rep, 40.5% Dem, 30.2% Ind

Some College and/or Tech:
36.0% Rep, 35.0% Dem, 29.3% Ind

College Grad:
42.0% Rep, 30.7% Dem, 27.7% Ind
(Source: The World Almanac of U.S. Politics, 1991-93 edition, p.25)

As you can see, in 1990 the better educated you were the more likely you were to be a Republican, and the less likely you were to be a Democrat.

A Gallup poll taken in 2008 shows an exact similarity between McCain and Obama supporters as to college graduates, with 46% of college grads supporting McCain, and 46% Obama. There was a 10 point gap at the postgraduate level, but that is relatively easy to understand today, given the fact that postgrads overwhelmingly go into education, and liberals have ideologically targeted and purged conservatives. These days, conservatives aren’t allowed into education because liberals are biased and vindictive.

But even given the moderate advantage in postgrad degrees and the left, Ben’s statement is destroyed.

Now, one area that conservatives – who have “accomplished nothing” on Ben’s view – excel in is personal happiness. Conservatives are happier people than liberals. That’s a confirmed fact as well.

The liberal has more to say:

As I wrote about before, much of the problem with right-wingers is an inferiority complex.

A Newsmax article has some interesting things to say about this incredibly untrue statement:

“You find that all the way back to the early 1970s, as long as we’ve been keeping data on the subject, conservatives have consistently shown greater life satisfaction than liberals,” Brooks tells Newsmax.

In one study, people who identified themselves as conservative were nearly twice as likely to say they were very happy as people who said they are liberal.

In contrast, Brooks says, “Liberals are less likely to be optimistic about the future, and they’re more likely to say they feel like a failure.”

Arthur Brooks also points out:

“Generally speaking, conservatives come in two kinds: those that have conservative political beliefs throughout their lives, and those that adopt them by about the time they are in their early 30s,” Brooks says. “And you find the people who adopt conservative beliefs rather than grow up with them are people with more education. They grow up in a liberal household and are more likely to go to college. When people go to college, when people have more opportunities in life, when they become more hopeful, they get happier, and at the same time they’re getting more conservative.”

I have no doubt that liberals will continue to go on believing that they are smarter, better educated, better informed, and just plain better.  But that is only because they are actually dumber, more factually ignorant, more convinced in the superiority of their own groundless opinions, more miserable, and frankly more morally inferior to their right-thinking counterparts.

Obama’s Plan To Destroy America’s Farms Moving Full Steam Ahead

The bill is House Resolution 2454, imposing a domestic carbon emissions cap-and-trade program on the American economy.

The goal seems to be nothing short of eradicating American farms and self-sustainability.

Even DEMOCRATS are opposing the Obama Energy Bill. Climate change legislation will be utterly devastating for American farmers. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) of the House Agriculture Committee says that not only will he not vote for it, but no one else on his committee will support it either. The bill would increase the cost of everything that farmers depend on, such as diesel fuel, gasoline, fertilizers, pesticides, and a host of other things. It would raise taxes on energy by $846 billion over the next ten years. Due to the fact that farming is so energy intensive, one major study shows that it would reduce farm income by $8 billion or 28% over the next four years, by $25 billion (or by 60%) through 2024, and by $50 billion (or by 94%) by 2035 [source: Heritage Foundation study]. Many are shaking their heads in amazement over the proposed impact.

Cap and trade legislation would utterly devastate the agricultural community with stratospheric operating costs, and would just as utterly destroy rural America.

To make matters even worse, the 1,000 page bill pushed through by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey has barely been examined in spite of its sweeping consequences as Democrats play cutthroat politics with America’s future.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN) is complaining that the Agriculture Department has little if any role in the climate change bill, and that the EPA is driving it. Peterson said, “A lot of us on the Committee do not want the EPA near our farms.”

Agriculture Department Secy Tom Vilsack repeatedly said, “There is obviously work yet to be done on this bill.”

Nevertheless, Nancy Pelosi is trying to rush the bill through the House, demanding that it be finished by the end of next week – leaving almost no change lawmakers could change it. And Barack Obama is pushing hard to impose his agenda before Americans have a chance to know more about it and oppose it.

The economic aspects are terrible enough:

WASHINGTON, DC, June 9 — A US House bill that would introduce a domestic carbon emissions cap-and-trade program would cost $846 billion in new taxes, the Congressional Budget Office said on June 5. [….]

American Petroleum Institute President Jack N. Gerard said on June 8 that the analysis confirmed the bill would be “massively costly.”

“The $846 billion price tag on emission allowances, borne disproportionately by oil consumers, will drive up costs of producing and refining gasoline, diesel, and other fuel products while doing nothing to protect fuel consumers, including American families, trucking, the airlines, the construction industry, and many other businesses that rely on oil to make or transport products,” Gerard said.

API: ‘A job-killer’
API said that based on allowance costs in CBO’s study, impacts could be as much as 77¢/gal for gasoline, 83¢/gal for jet fuel, and 88¢/gal for diesel fuel.

“This is what happens when market-based regulation is abandoned in favor of picking winners and losers,” Gerard said. “Putting most of the burden on one sector also helps explain why this legislation promises to be a job-killer.”

The bill was cosponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee’s Energy and Environment Subcommittee.

But the impact on industries such as farming will be utterly devastating:

For Farmers, Cap and Trade is a Permanent Drought Season

Economists at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis are digging deeper into the effects of the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation that includes a cap and trade plan to reduce carbon dioxide by 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020 and by 83 percent below 2005 levels in 2050. Today’s victim: Farmers. Our CDA analysts found that Waxman-Markey would adversely affect farmers in a number of ways:

• Farm income (or the amount left over after paying all expenses) is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in 2024, and over $50 billion in 2035. These are decreases of 28%, 60% and 94%, respectively.
• The average net income lost over the 2010-2035 timeline is $23 billion – a 57% decrease from the baseline.
• Construction costs of farm buildings will go up by 5.5 percent in 2025 and 10 percent by 2034 (from the baseline).
• By 2035, gasoline and diesel costs are expected to be 58 percent higher and electric rates 90 percent higher.

And for the rest of us, including those of us on fixed incomes and already struggling in these tough economic times:

• The cost of producing everything from wheat to beef will increase. Indeed, the price deflator for private farm inventories goes up over 20 points by 2035. This increase gets quickly translated into much higher food prices for consumers at the grocery stores.

Most of our readers know cap and trade is an energy tax in disguise. The goal of cap and trade is to drive up energy costs so much that Americans use less. But there’s a fundamental problem with this. Just about everything we do and everything we consume uses energy, so even after consumers turn up their thermostats in the summer and down in the winter, consumers are still using a lot of energy. But under a cap and trade, they’ll be paying an exorbitantly high price for it.

Farming is no exception; in fact, farming is very energy-intensive, with fuel, chemical, electricity and fertilizer costs. They have to purchase a lot of equipment and have to construct a lot of buildings. The Heritage Foundation’s CDA estimates that the price of constructing farm buildings will go up by 4.5 percent in 2024 and by over 10 percent in 2034 (from the baseline) solely because of the upward pressure cap and trade puts on energy prices.

The price of tractors– and every other piece of farm equipment you can think of– will increase as well.

Worst of all is what happens to farmers’ net income. Farmers live off their gross income; what they earn in addition to that is their net income or marginal income. Waxman-Markey significantly shrinks farmers’ net income pie. Farm income is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in 2024, and over $50 billion in 2035. These are decreases of 28%, 60% and 94% from the baseline, respectively.

Waxman-Markey increases the costs of farm inventories, which in turn raises the cost of food sold to the consumer. At first glance, this may appear to be a good thing for farmers. Higher prices equals higher profit. But this would only be true if all other things were equal. That’s certainly not the case here. Higher energy prices hurt the overall economy, which means less demand for all goods, less production, higher unemployment, and reduced income. This overall economic slowdown reduces demand for agricultural goods, too. And, as we’ve seen above from the charts, a lot changes for farmers; particularly, their overall cost of operations rise and their net incomes fall.

Waxman-Markey’s effect on farmers should raise a red flag for those in the farm belt and will put U.S. agriculture at a tremendous competitive disadvantage if enacted. Consumers will feel the pain as well, not only from the increase in their own energy prices, but increased food prices. And for what? A change in the temperature too small to notice.

For more, check out The Heritage Foundation’s Rapid Response Page

This won’t just undermine the American farmer; it will force him out of farming altogether.

How is it NOT a truly terrible idea to annihilate America’s ability to feed its own people?

This goes beyond undermining the US economy; it may well literally create starvation conditions for millions of Americans.

Last May, while on the campaign trail, Barack Obama said:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

And now we see what Obama’s “leadership” looks like: it looks like a bigger version of North Korea.  Nationalizing the auto industry and imposing tiny little clown cars on the country; an energy policy that will tax us into freezing in the dark at night (or conversely sweltering in the summer heat); and of course the whole famine thing.

You can’t say he didn’t warn us, I suppose.

Revelation 6:5-6 “When he opened the third seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wage, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wage, and do not harm the oil and wine.”

The beast is coming. That approaching reality is becoming clearer every single day.

Democrats Keep Tax Cheat In Charge Of Tax Committee

Charles Rangel will be with us for some time to come, because the same Democrats who hounded one Republican after another out of office for nowhere NEAR the same level of corruption don’t seem to mind when their Chairman of their House Ways and Means Committee is a documented tax cheat, or when other members of the powerful tax committee are caught red-handed with $90,000 in their freezers.

Rangel is under fire for using a rent-subsidized apartment as a fundraising office, failing to pay taxes on income from a Dominican Republic villa he owns and using his House stationery to solicit donations to a school at the City University of New York that is to be named in his honor.

Republicans also accused him Tuesday of violating new House rules on earmarks by failing to put his name on funding for a rail connection between Manhattan and Kennedy International Airport.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “Democrats are leading the effort to turn the most closed, corrupt Congress in history into the most open and honest Congress in history.” She liked the ring of her own asinine ideology so much she said it again and again with varying iterations. “The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.”

To coin a phrase from a speech that Barack Obama plagiarized: It’s “Just words.”  Why do the right thing when it’s easier to say the right thing and then do whatever brings in the bacon?

Today “the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history” has two proven low-life slime balls writing our tax laws.  At this point the shocking revelation would be that there was an honest Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

To quote the former official “spiritual mentor” of the Democratic Party, this is a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.”  And may they leave their droppings all over Nancy’s favorite pant suit.

The next time some Democrat offers a finger-wagging lecture of how the rich “ought to pay their fair share,” just imagine the face of Charles Rangel, the powerful Democrat who cheats on his own taxes while he writes tax laws for everyone else.  And – to put it into the typical rhetoric of Democrats – just think of all those poor children who will go hungry and neglected because Charles Rangel wanted to keep money he owed in taxes in his own pocket instead of helping them.

Charles Rangel Too Dumb, Or Too Corrupt, To Follow Own Tax Laws?

I suppose we’ve finally got the properly sarcastic retort to the now very tired Democratic charge that John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns:  “John McCain doesn’t actually own ANY houses,  thank you; and at least his wife, who does own them, pays taxes on them.  And she’s not even the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.”

What do you say to a Democratic Party who gives Republicans moral lecture after moral lecture that a good government is a government that heavily taxes its rich citizens – and that the rich “have a duty to pay their fair share” – whose own House Ways and Means Committee Chairman in charge of tax laws doesn’t bother to follow his own laws or pay his own fair share?

Barack Obama Speech: Great On Delivery, Lousy On Substance

Barack Obama knows how to deliver a speech well.  But, in all seriousness, a good delivery doesn’t make the message delivered any more true than if it is poorly delivered.  And the very worst liars are often enough the very best talkers.

According to FactCheck.org, Obama “stuck to the facts except when he stretched them.”  I would argue that he stretched them beyond the point of ridiculous on a number of occasions.

At the macro level, one serious criticism is that Obama fundamentally contradicted himself. He spent the first third of the speech engaging in classic old-style politics, delivering several unfair and frankly over-the-top attacks.  Then he spent the last third talking about new politics, rising above attacks, coming together, and having the grace to build bridges.  You can’t start off delivering an old-style attack, and then claim that you represent a new style.

Also at the macro level, Barack Obama, whose campaign theme has been “change we can believe in,” promised to “spell out exactly what that change would mean” and deliver a “workmanlike” speech.  But, as two Associated Press articles report, Obama too often only “touched on major issues quickly and lightly,” and when he actually offered specifics, the vision he presented “collided with reality.”

For the links to the AP stories, and for more analysis of Obama’s speech, continue reading.