1. National security - Since the 1960s, Democrats have seemed indifferent, even hostile, to national security concerns. It seems they are more concerned about not offending our enemies than preserving our security. OTOH, Republicans have been in the forefront of rebuilding and maintaining our military, and taking the action necessary to preserve our security.
2. Crime/Personal Responsibility - In general, the Democrats exude an attitude of disdain for personal responsiblity. When somebody does something wrong, they seem to blame everybody and everything except the actual person who did it. There has been a tendency to make perpetrators into victims, and vice versa. Democrats seem to believe in rights with no responsibilities. Their open-ended welfare policies, which encouraged young unmarried women to have children at the public expense, were a perfect example of this.
3. Interest Groups - I have a strong dislike for many of the interest groups that form the base of the Democratic Party. I think that the "civil rights" groups, rather than promoting black advancement, have become a form of organized crime, and that the "women's groups" are largely a collection of man-hating feminazis who seek to impose active discrimination against men. Trial lawyers are an abomination, and a symbol of an out-of-control legal system that has the potential to ruin our business climate and severely damage our economy.
4. Social Issues - While I am not an "evangelical Christian," I find the active hostility toward any type of Christianity that I see emerging in the Democratic Party to be very alarming. I think one of the most dangerous trends, heading toward a potential constitutional crisis, is the trend toward judicial activism. The judiciary has stepped over the line of its authority in my opinion, and must be reined in, and liberal groups favor judicial activism because it allows them to use, in effect, black-robed dictators to impose unpopular change on society that they favor. I favor traditional values in general; I don't, for example, believe that raising a child as a single parent is a "choice" that is equal to raising a child within a stable marriage. All indicators point to inferior results from this type of child-rearing, and there's no point in pretending otherwise to advance a highly dubious political agenda.
The reality is that the "elites" who are denigrating "red state voters" as extremists are the extremists themselves. And their hypocritical bigotry has shown through beautifully in the wake of this election.
not concise, but well-stated, particularly the point about personal responsibility and anti-religious bigotry. Agnosticism comes to me only by default, not by active diminution of all things religious. personal responsibility precludes groupwide bigotry, as individual actions have individual consequences.
I'd add that another emerging red-state stereotype is dependence on government aid. That one is particularly ironic. Particularly since votes in 'red' precincts are won by folks who put down public expenditure. I find the lack of trust in public services on the right equally alarming as the bigotry/hostility on the left. Roads, hospitals, schools, bridges, and busing routes don't build themselves, and they certainly don't get built in times of permanent budget deficits.
