'The Elephant Looks in the Mirror 10 Years Later’

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/07/01/poll-gop-updates-look-at-elephant-in-mirror/

Poll: ‘The Elephant Looks in the Mirror 10 Years Later’ Updates Republicans’ View of Themselves
Posted by Jon Ponder
Jul. 1, 2007

In 1997, GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio released “The Elephant Looks in the Mirror,” a report on an extensive survey of the Republican Party. Now he has released results of a similar poll, “The Elephant Looks in the Mirror 10 Years Later.”

49 percent of Republicans favored ending the ban on allowing gays to serve in the military.The most interesting trend for Democrats is age demographics, where the GOP has skewed older dramatically over the decade. The percentage of Republicans age 55 and older grew from 28 percent in 1997 to 41 percent now, while the number of 18- to 37-year-olds dropped from 25 percent to 17 percent. A Republican analyst finds this to be alarming:

This is not good news [says the GOP analyst]. We already know that we are struggling with younger voters. These results … point out just how old our base is shifting. This probably represents several things including, aging of the people involved in the conservative backlash to the 60s, losing the younger generation due to the war, and the dying, frankly, of the New Dealers.

In the poll, Fabrizio identified seven interest groups within the GOP:

Bush hawks - This new, dangerously paranoid group, along with the Fortress America crowd below, accumulated its members from the GOPers’ anti-tax, anti-gubmint lunatic fringe

Moralists - More accurately referred to as “Christian nationalists,” they generate headlines on social issues that make sensible conservatives cringe

Government knows best Republicans - Seems like an oxymoron but Pres. Bush is, if nothing else, a big-government conservative

Dennis Miller Republicans - The snarks get their own category?

Fortress America Republicans - Like the Bush Hawks, the “nationalist” wing of the Christian nationalism gained members from the economic-focused groups, the Heartlanders and free marketeers

Heartland Republicans - The number of these sensible Republicans declined from 1997

Free marketeers - As did the number of self-identified anti-taxers

Despite their dominance in the media, moralists represent less than a quarter of the Republican Party. Their influence appears to be waning, however, perhaps because their pose of moral superiority wears thin, even among conservatives:

[By] a margin of 53 percent to 42 percent Republicans believe that “The Republican Party has spent too much time focusing on moral issues such as abortion and gay marriage and should instead be spending time focusing on economic issues such as taxes and government spending.”

Forty-nine percent of Republicans in the poll favored ending the ban on allowing gays to serve in the military.