Certain conservative atheists are all excited about some of the results of CPAC:
For those who shit on my efforts to secularize the right, you can apologize anytime. Also, you're welcome.
How would you like a choice of secular parties to vote for? Coming soon, thanks to AFL. https://t.co/CdWDrpS9QP
— David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) February 28, 2021
I’ve never heard of Silverman, who apparently is a conservative atheist, but it’s not hard to see how years of hard work – or at least hard wishing – can make it easy to misinterpret the results. People see what they want to see, not what is there. I include myself as an occasional member of that group.
So how is Silverman wrong? This is not a straw poll of the conservatives, the Republicans, or the base.
It’s a straw poll of the attendees of CPAC, and to a poll professional, which I am not, I am quite sure they’d note this is not a random, representative example of anything at all. This is a self-selecting group within the stratified hierarchy of the conservative movement. In fact, it’s probably near the top of the movement.
In fact, a liberal reading of those stats would suggest this: CPAC, being a gathering of conservative/Trumpist leaders, have placed abortion down at the bottom of the straw poll, which reveals them to be deeply out of touch with their base, which remains strongly anti-abortion.
Now, is there any repercussions for telling the truth? How many of the base pay attention to such trivia as straw polls at CPAC? It’s hard to say, actually. The aliens (to sober governance) now infesting CPAC are relatively new to the game, and they may not realize how important it is to posture properly to keep the base happy; indeed, the lack of imposition of anti-abortion laws on the nation may have contributed to the failure of the traditional Republican leadership, who’d been stringing the anti-abortion forces along for decades.
It’s something to keep an eye on.
(For those wondering, I picked up this Tweet and a link for a future post from this Friendly Atheist post by Hemant Mehta. Mehta and his crowd are a bit repetitive and abrasive – like me, come to think of it – but I do appreciate their work on collecting information such as this.)
