By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.
The sign of broadening resistance to globalization came in a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll that showed a fraying of Republican Party orthodoxy on the economy. While 60% of respondents said they want the next president and Congress to continue cutting taxes, 32% said it's time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.
If you drill down to the poll numbers, you see that only 32 percent of today's Republican voters (i.e., about 11 percent of the US voting population — see the post below) call themselves "very" conservative. Only 5 percent self-identify as liberal, but a whopping 61 percent call themselves "moderate" or only "somewhat conservative."
This calls for an elegiac prayer:
O mighty Christian Lord, no matter how piously hypocritical your followers, one out of ten Americans is too few to maintain your holy grasp on the American sceptre of power. Thus endeth the failed experiment carried out by the soldiers of the Republican Christian Revolution, in which genuine economic greed was devoured by fake moral sanctimony. May they all rest in the shallow graves they had dug for others of lower class and of pigmented skin. Amen.
