Great article! Also, check out the article "Romney's 'Huckattack" on www.SavagePolitics.com. Here is an excerpt: "Mitt Romney's exit from the Presidential race was already expected. His campaign knew that it was very important for Romney's reputation to remove himself from further embarrassment, and thus ensure a clean slate for his next bid towards the White House. Although he did create some impressive waves amongst many Social Conservatives, who chose to believe his political posturing, his campaign never made the impact that it needed to achieve a complete victory. Realistically, he would probably never have made much inroads in the first place if it wasn't for John McCain's apparent Liberalism and unpopularity amongst Conservatives. Today, only Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee remain against McCain, men who the Media has always taken for granted, dismissing their campaigns as "radical" whims and relegating them to the bottom of the list in exposure and respect. Even so, Huckabee, who has always been the candidate with the least money (with the comical exception of Mike Gravel), has nonetheless survived most of the other "serious" candidates on the race; Thompson and Giuliani. Should Huckabee succumb to the Media and his Party's pressure to give up his run for the nomination? To Huckabee, this may sound a bit insulting when you consider the fact that he has been consistently underestimated throughout this election. Now, if he wants to increase his almost impossible odds, he needs to seek Romney's endorsement, in an attempt to accumulate enough delegates (around 500 if Romney joins Huckabee) and face the upcoming primaries with a competitive number of delegates. What are Huckabee's possibilities? What would be the consequence of such a strange victory?..." Get the rest at http://savagepolitics.com/?p=80

Mr. Martinez-

The icon for this forum is rather offensive, cf. donkey and elephant. It implies that the GOP is the butt of the WaPo's jokes.

John asks below, "Is it true conservatives only look at the 20% they disagree on and overlook the 80% they agree on?"

John has zeroed in on a distinguishing trait of today's political conservatives: their emphasis on ideological purity. The absolutism they deplore inside grad schools, where politics really is just academic, is no different from the primacy of principle they laud in themselves and fault political liberals for lacking.

Paul S., the country clubs I've had occasion to spend time in have had memberships that were overwhelmingly Republican, which is not to say none were liberal Republicans especially by today's GOP standard.

tboyer, for your clear, accurate map of the trajectory of the GOP, thanks.

When Andres says conservatives watch NASCAR, that's bigoted. But when Ego Nemo says that they're poor, church-going non-college types...well that's just good solid research.

Thanks for clearing that up, Ego. Big difference.

Very nice explanation of the three strands, Andres, but I think you -- like a lot of journalists -- tend to forget the recent historical context -- the Republican party has moved several miles to the right since Reagan's presidency.

Reagan's Supreme Court appointees would have been regarded as liberals by the Bush White House. Edwin Meese -- thought of as very conservative in his day -- would never have cavorted with the White House political adviser on ways to use the Justice Department to help the GOP.

Reagan foreign policy moderated a great deal under Jim Baker -- today's foreign policy conservatives would never have kissed up to Gorbachev.

Finally, as I recall Reagan, economic conservative as he was, never would have tried to abolish Social Security. I'm certain on immigration Reagan would not be trying to deport 2 million people -- he would try for a middle ground like Bush.

It's funny, I think McCain is probably pretty close to Reagan on a lot of issues but today's GOP has moved to the right of him.

The more I've thought about this post today, the more upset I get.
This post doesn't give information -- it teaches bigotry.
It says, see, this is what we call these folks -- this is how we define these other folks.
It's a stereotype training manual masquerading as journalism. It's really, really awful.

Pure claptrap unworthy of the Post.
Unworthy of anything that wishes to pass for informed commentary in the United States.
Bigoted and unresearched.
A waste of bandwidth.

According to Peter Novack, Sen. McCain and Sen. Thad Cochran from Mississippi both voted conservative on 80% of their votes. But McCain and Cochran are 100% the opposite on "Pork Barrel" earmarks.

Is it true that conservatives only look at the 20% they disagree on, and overlook the 80% they agree on?

Actaully there is a 4th definitiion..
LARGE C - conservative.

Which has nothing to do but confuse the other Conservatives with a Cloaked WORD of CONservative..who do a great job of STOP THINKing with the other conservatives.
ASk no questions or otherwise you will be labled as LIBERAL...

ISSA

"They tend to hang out at Country Clubs"

Actually they tend to hang out at the office, as most of the time you are talking about small business men and women who put in long hours to keep their company afloat.

I actually feel like the country club croud tends to be liberal more often than conservative.

"Country club Episcopalians"? You are about 50 years behind the times. Those folks began to leave when the church took a strong stand during the civil rights fight and they have continued to leave over women priests and homosexuality. I guess you haven't been to an Episcopal U-2charist with the music of Bono and the message of support for the Millennium Development Goals. Most Episcopalians have grown-up and take mission and ministry seriously and don't attend church to be seen with "society" types.

I say, no thanks.
We've got stereotyping and bigotry masked as political analysis here.
Fiscal conservatives are usually at country clubs and are Episcopalians? Religious conservatives are usually at church and go for Nascar?
As a scientist friend is fond of saying to me: Where is your data?
You seem to have a delightful time spelling out stereotypes that are unchanged from the age of Eisenhower.
Based on more recent data, I'd conjure the largest group of self-defined conservatives are what you might consider poor -- middle- to low-middle income workers, with high school educations, some enlisted military experience and a strong religious preference (although the largest identifiable group would be Roman Catholic, not Protestant or evangelical Christian).
You haven't explained the real situation, just defined the stereotypes weak intellects have used for 50 years to pigeonhole people they don't understand.
And for the record, I consider myself a liberal.

Thanks, Andres, for parsing a division often missed between conservatives who might be said to exploit illegals and those who feel exploited by them. The latter are categorized as social conservatives who self-define themselves as moral, though by Jesus' standards their view of illegals is anything but. The former might properly be called economically liberal (gasp!) except a curious goal of Republicans is to be called a true conservative. They fault Bush for not being conservative enough not for torturing people, which Democrats consider unChristian. Not so Republicans for whom the domain of language is not reality but language.