Sound The Trumpet : Americans drift into political oblivion

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“Americans drift into political oblivion”
by OneNewsNow - Jim Brown
June 17th, 2009

Polling shows that despite having elected perhaps the most liberal president and Congress in history, Americans still have not lurched to the ideological left -- yet they are increasingly dropping their affiliation with the Republican and Democratic parties.

Forty percent of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys this year describe their political views as conservative, 35 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as liberal. Michael Franc, vice president for government relations at The Heritage Foundation, says the slight increase for conservatism since last year is a response to what has been happening in Washington.

"The bailout of the auto industry, the micromanaging of corporations, the talk about major expansions of government, passage of massive new amounts of federal spending are all working, I think, to spook a lot of Americans to the point where some of them are now saying, 'this conservative thing looks pretty good,'" he contends.

So far in 2009, Gallup has found an average of 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democratic, 28 percent Republican, and 37 percent independent. Franc says since last year, there has been a steady migration of Americans from identification with the two major parties to the status of independent.

"What you're seeing here is an enormous amount of dissatisfaction with the current administration and their policies, but the Republicans as a party have not done enough to lure those dissatisfied individuals into their fold," he points out. "And some of these individuals have actually vacated the Republican tent in the last six months to a year, and they haven't been drawn back in yet."

Franc says if Republicans hope to regain the majority in Congress one day, they will have to figure out a way to convince those conservatives to rejoin the GOP.

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