MSM continues to push the “Southern women are turning from Bush” angle

I blogged about this back on the 7th, and I see that the DNC’s faithful in the media are still barely containing their glee at the thought of Southern women turning their backs on the President and Republicans in the coming fall elections. Case in point, Good Morning America’s Friday segment which featured three Southern women who claimed to be Republicans, who were supposedly turning to Democrats this fall.

Brent Baker at Newsbusters, however, did the digging that GMA apparently either didn’t do or didn’t care to do, and that is, checking the conservative credentials of the women in question. He found that two of them had ties to either the Democratic party or Democratic party pet causes. This suggests to me something important to note about the apparent “switch” these women are making: they either probably already had Democratic leanings to begin with, even before their ‘dissatisfaction’ with the Republican party, or they’ve reconsidered their philosophy since voting for Bush.

I stated the following back in July, and it applies to this story as well:

I don’t know what issues he [Barkley] has with the Republican party that were so bad he decided to part company with them, but I do believe that there is more at play here than just him being disgusted with Republicans. As someone who herself switched parties back in the early-to-mid 90s, I can speak with experience when I say that when you switch from Democrat to Republican or vice versa, you don’t do it because you’ve had it with your party: you do it because your beliefs have changed radically, or just enough to make you feel like you have more in common philosophy-wise with one party over the other.

Think about it this way: had I been disgusted with the direction Democrats were headed back when I affiliated myself with Democrats, I likely would have switched to the Green party or some other left-wing political party. Another example: there are conservatives today who are upset with the Republican party and who have considered or are considering switching to the Libertarian party, or some other right-wing based political party. That makes perfect sense. What wouldn’t make sense would be, for example, for me to state “I’m a fiscal conservative who is upset with how Republicans have spent taxpayer money like wildfire on ridiculous pork projects – so I’m hereby declaring myself a Democrat!” – because I know good and well the Democrats would be even worse.

Keep that in mind next time you hear someone say they are disgusted with their party, and as a result of that will vote for the other major party. If you truly are disappointed in the direction your party is going, you either stay in it to try to change it, or you switch to a party you feel is more in line with your beliefs (like perhaps the Libertarian party) – or you go Independent. Think about it: if enough people who were truly dissatisfied with the direction of their party did this, perhaps a third party could shake up things a bit in Washington.

In the case of these women, they are supposedly not happy with Republicans – so they’re voting for Democrats. That makes no sense, because if they think Republicans aren’t doing a good job at representing them, how they could get that Democrats could is beyond me – unless their philosophy falls more in line with Democrats than Republicans. In fact, people who claim to be unhappy with one of the major parties because their party is allegedly abandoning its ‘core values’ and then switch to the other, are, I think, dishonest and come off as frauds. That may be harsh, but it’s how I feel. As I noted earlier, *I’m* someone who switched parties myself and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that you don’t switch to the Democratic party because you think Republicans have abandoned you (or vice versa). That’s something I doubt GMA even bothered to consider when trying to line up guests for their “Southern women are abandoning Bush!” segment.