Maybe too early to tell, but there seems to be a bit of a backlash going on against these characters.

Edsel: make me some tea: Maybe too early to tell, but there seems to be a bit of a backlash going on against these characters.

I think it's fair to say that this election corrected things away from the Tea Party and back towards the middle. Won't mean much until the picture for 2012 is more clear though. I doubt that the Tea Party Congresscritters are going to suddenly decide it's time to start cooperating with the Democrats, but they might if they think it's hurting their chances for reelection.

Well, it's likely to separate the career politicians from the ideologues.

Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

coeyagi: keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

I just hope next year isn't a backlash of the backlash (2011) of the backlash (2010) of the backlash (2008).

Could be... But the shine on the Tea Party has been getting duller and duller as the months go by. Last I saw 53% or so have a negative view of the Teabaggers now. I doubt they'll ever get that back, but stranger things have happened.

Obviously, a long way to go until the elections, so it's a possibility the Democrats will have to prepare for, at any rate.

keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

Yes, a GOP candidate was replaced in a recall election by another GOP candidate. That'll show em!

King Something: Any bets on when the Arizona legislature passes a law that makes it illegal for Latinos, college students, and LADIES to vote? Next year's elections will be on the 6th, so I'm guessing they'll put it into effect some time between 30 Oct and 5 Nov - just in time to prevent them from voting, but not enough time for the Latinos, college students, and LADIES to challenge it in court.

I will take that bet, and I will give you 100:1 odds. My $10,000 against your $100. It will be worth it to find out if you really are that ignorant, or if you just like to run your mouth about things you don't have any clue about.

Talondel: keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

Yes, a GOP candidate was replaced in a recall election by another GOP candidate. That'll show em!

Yes, that's all that happened last night... Keep spinning.

Duyogurt: The Democratic party had better start paying more attention to the Senate rather than the Presidential race.

No argument there... and I would assume they are.

eiger: The problem is that the US really is in a pickle and our system is not producing solutions to our problems (if there even are any). One can blame this on a variety of things. I personally blame the overly rightward shift of our political parties. Regardless, most low information voters have no idea why this is happening and merely vote out whoever is currently seen as "in charge" in order to punish them for not making things better.

If you want to improve the quality of elected officials you first have to improve the quality of voters. If you want to improve the quality of voters, you need to get 'low information' voters to stop voting. For a generation now we've been trying to encourage voting and telling people that they have a civic duty to vote. We're sending exactly the wrong message. You have a civic duty to cast an *informed* vote. We should be encouraging people to educate themselves on the issues, or in the alternative to NOT VOTE. Showing up at your local polling place and punching random options (or frantically reading the ballot for the first time in the booth) just so you can get you "I VOTED TODAY" sticker is not helping. If you really wanted to help you should have stayed home.

Put another way, low info voters are noise. High info votes are signal. Right now the high info votes are completely drowned out by the noise. We need to find ways to increase the signal votes and decrease the noise votes. The best way to do that is to encourage people to be more informed. Failing that, the next best thing we could do is stop encouraging the uninformed to vote.

keylock71: Talondel: keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

Yes, a GOP candidate was replaced in a recall election by another GOP candidate. That'll show em!

Yes, that's all that happened last night... Keep spinning.

There's nothing to spin. There was no 'backlash' against the GOP. There was a backlash against Russel Pearce, who quite frankly deserved it.

The Homer Tax: Difficulty: The people who agree with me are informed. The people who agree with you are uninformed.

Difficulty: You can't read what I wrote, and I can't be bothered to explain it to you.

Philip Francis Queeg: But what will become of the Republican Party?

Both parties would presumably shift away from policies and rhetoric that appeal to low information voters who vote mostly on 'gut' and shift toward policies that actually stand up to reflection and scrutiny.

Wellon Dowd: Talondel: Put another way, low info voters are noise. High info votes are signal.

Do you have a reason to believe that low information voters vote differently than do high information voters? Perhaps they split evenly or in the same proportions as the high-info crowd. Do they affect the outcome of elections?

This is a good primer on the causes and effects of political ignorance: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa525.pdf

If you're the type that says "OMG CATO KOCH BROTHERS LIBERTARIAN WHAAAAAAARRRR" then a google search for "effect of political ignorance" will turn up large numbers of scholarly articles on the topic.

Talondel: keylock71: Talondel: keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

Yes, a GOP candidate was replaced in a recall election by another GOP candidate. That'll show em!

Yes, that's all that happened last night... Keep spinning.

There's nothing to spin. There was no 'backlash' against the GOP. There was a backlash against Russel Pearce, who quite frankly deserved it.

He did deserve it, but a moderate Republican in Mesa pretty much counts as a Democrat. Also, Phoenix elected a pro-union Democrat as mayor.

Philip Francis Queeg: Talondel: keylock71: Talondel: keylock71: Awesome...

Hope the GOP is enjoying the backlash this morning.

Yes, a GOP candidate was replaced in a recall election by another GOP candidate. That'll show em!

Yes, that's all that happened last night... Keep spinning.

There's nothing to spin. There was no 'backlash' against the GOP. There was a backlash against Russel Pearce, who quite frankly deserved it.

You heard about Ohio and Mississippi, didn't you?

I did. But this thread is not (was not?) about those. It was about what happened in Arizona. Forgive me if I assumed a comment in a thread about the recall of a Arizona state legislator was actually about voters in Arizona.

AZ Legislative District 18 is a conservative stronghold in an area that is (while changing) still largely white and Mormon. So to a certain extent it's a big deal that those voters shifted from the hyper-conservative borderline fascist Pearce and to a much more moderate conservative. But it's still the election of a conservative in an area that will continue to be dominated by conservatives. That's hardly evidence of a "GOP backlash".

It's also worth noting that the claim in the headline that the vote came out as it did because of latino and student voters is completely unsupported by the linked article. It's also unsupported by the pre-election polling that showed that even the Mormon voters in District 18 were leaning slightly against Pearce. Link (new window)