In Alice McDermott's touching, depressing novel,
Charming Billy, a 1998 National Book
Award winner, the Irish-American narrator, makes a parenthetical
comment on her father's "legion of cousins" in New York,
regarding whom "it had seemed to me that there were more
alcoholics among them than there were Republicans, or even
redheads."
I laughed out loud when I first read that passage since my
family was one of the few Republican households in St. Louis who
were both Irish and Catholic (and German and French) in the 1950s
and 1960s. My grandfather "converted" to the GOP during the New
Deal, which was probably a lot easier for him since he married a
St. Louis German-American woman after moving to town from
Cincinnati. Irish-German matches are very common in the
Midwest.
Unlike the Irish, the Germans were loyal Republicans given
their historic opposition to slavery and support for the Union
and Abraham Lincoln. If you look at an electoral map of Missouri
for the 1860 presidential election, only two counties-St. Louis
and Gasconade on the Missouri River-voted for Lincoln. These were
strong areas of German-American culture. The rest of the state,
pro-slavery and Scots-Irish, voted solidly Democratic.
After the elections of 2006 and 2008, one could be forgiven
for thinking there were more alcoholics in America than there are
Republicans. Even Republicans had second thoughts about being
Republican given…I will spare you, gentle reader, the litany of
un-Republican things perpetrated by Republicans over the last
eight years.
It is a wonder that more Republicans haven't become
alcoholics.
Nevertheless, the summer of 2009, bringing with it an
extremely negative popular reaction to a host of new Democratic
governmental programs, spending, taxes, debt and general messing
around with the economy and American society, seems to have
revived the fortunes of the GOP if only modestly.
The Gallup organization now
reports that "The Republican Party image-quite tattered
in the first few months after the 2009 elections-has seen some
recent improvement." Don't fire off the carbide cannon yet, but
things seem to be looking up just a bit.
Forty percent of Americans now hold a favorable view of the
Republicans, which is up from 34 percent in May. They still hold
the Democrats in higher esteem, with 51 percent viewing them
favorably.
The GOP had reached bottom in two consecutive polls in
November 2008 and May 2009 with that 34 percent favorability
rating.
Gallup identifies the recent lift as coming from
"rank-and-file Republicans" whose favorability rating of their
own party Chernobyled this spring, dropping to 63 percent. It is
now back up above 80 percent.
Democrats' favorability rating for their party is at 91
percent.
Technical note: Gallup's polling data is derived from its
annual Governance Survey, conducted August 31 through September
2, based on telephone interviews with 1,026 adults, 18 or older,
which yields a 95 percent confidence that the "maximum margin of
sampling error" is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Democrats still are viewed more favorably than Republicans
by independents but the percentage is now 40 percent, down from
47 percent going back to November 2008.
Of particular interest to readers of this site is that more
liberals hold a favorable view of Democrats than do conservatives
relative to the GOP. Eighty percent of liberals think highly of
the party of Jefferson and Jackson, but only 55 percent of
conservatives think well of the heirs of Lincoln. "And while more
than half of several demographic groups view the Democrats
favorably, the Republicans receive this level of support from
only Republicans and conservatives," says Gallup.
Republican numbers rival the Democrats in the South, among
men and upper-income Americans. Among the young, women, the
middle-aged, Easterners, Midwesterners, and those earning under
$75,000, the Democrats do much better, i.e., in the range of
53-58 percent.
"Still, the Republicans have a fair distance to go to reach
parity with the Democrats on this measure -- something not
achieved since late 2005 (although they came close right after
the Republican National Convention in September 2008)," notes
Gallup. "Restoring its image even among Republicans, as well as
among conservatives, could be a place for the Republican Party to
start." Nota Bene.
topics:
Conservatism, Republican Party, Alice McDermott
