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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (17663)	11/12/2007 2:52:06 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Respond to of 224749

Dems wary of 'liberal' label-Only 23% accurately identify themselves By: David Paul Kuhn politico.com, Nov 12, 2007 Clinton is among many Democrats who prefer to call themselves progressives. Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked this summer if she would describe herself as a “liberal.” The Democratic front-runner shied away, saying the “word” — noticeably not using the word — has taken on a connotation that “describes big government. “I prefer the word ‘progressive,’” she said. It has a “real American meaning.” Then she expanded the term to “modern progressive,” and, finally, clarified that she was a “modern American progressive.” While Democrats are emboldened, they remain wary of the term “liberal.” By contrast, the label “conservative” remains in vogue with Republicans. At a recent Republican debate, Rudy Giuliani referred to himself as a “conservative” four times in roughly the same time span — a minute or so — it took Clinton to reject the word “liberal” and embrace “progressive.” In seven Republican debates this year the word “conservative” was used 100 times. In the seven Democratic debates the word “liberal” was used four times — not once by a candidate. “Conservative is identified with a sensibility,” Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg said. “The rejection of the Bush-Cheney policy is very clear. But I don’t think the public identifies it with conservatism. “You can be as liberal as much as you like, if you are a Democrat, as long as you don’t call yourself a liberal,” Nunberg quipped. “They are running from the word liberal as fast as they can because it has been tainted. It’s ‘bleeding-heart liberal,’ ‘tax-and-spend liberal,’ ‘liberal elite,’ ‘liberal media,’” Lakoff said, who has been a rhetorical consultant for Democrats in the past decade. The Republican debates bear Lakoff out. Most of the 18 uses of liberal in the GOP forums have been in pejorative terms: Liberal media? Check. Tax-and-spend liberal? Check. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) went so far in one debate as to claim that President George W. Bush “ran as a conservative and governed as a liberal.” Of course, there is reason behind the Democratic rhetorical re-branding. In early autumn, the Gallup Poll found that while 43 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, only 23 percent of voters called themselves liberals. While 30 percent of Americans considered themselves Republicans, fully 39 percent labeled themselves conservative.