For example, Fox News viewership is 4x-5x that of MSNBC. Rush Limbaugh couldn't even see Air America from his lofty ratings perch. Political non-fiction by conservatives (Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin) outsell their liberal counterparts by a significant margin.
Look at Al Gore's Current TV ... Keith Olbermann's show recently reported a whopping 46,000 viewers. More than that attended a recent Paul McCartney concert in Cincinnati and Olbermann is getting paid $10M per year to host a nationally televised show.
Why is this? Why do liberals not turn out in force to hear the ideals and philosophy of the left? But when it's time to donate or vote, they run neck and neck with conservatives?
Perhaps we can investigate this by breaking down the demographics of the Democratic Party. Let's consider the profiles of groups that vote largely Democratic:
- Government workers: 23 million
- Labor/Union: 14 million
- People receiving govt assistance in some form: approx 60 million (there are 40 million receiving food stamps)
Looking at groups voting largely Republican:
- Evangelical Christians (anti-abortion): 40 million
- Military: 3 million
If we assume these groups are predominately single issue voters, then we can see that Democrats have an edge on "guaranteed" votes on election day. These people are not going to be swayed by ideas or debate. History shows that approximately 70% of these groups will vote for the party that gives them what they want.
It's also interesting that about 20% of the US population describe themselves as liberal while about twice that associate with a conservative ideology. These are philosophical points of view, cutting across many issues and not likely to be a single issue voter.
My conclusion is this: there are a lot more people interested in conservative ideas than are interested in liberal ideas and the data support this. The fact that the Democrats successfully compete with Republicans on election day is attributable to their alignment with certain single issue voters who want more government, more power to organized labor and more government handouts.
These people don't care about ideas. They don't care if what is happening is morally right or if such policies overall do damage to the country. They just want their check every month.
Why buy a book?
