Wyoming Vote Tracker

Have you heard George Strait’s new song:

I felt the rush of the Rio Grande, been to Yellowstone
And I’ve seen first-hand Niagra Falls
And the lights of Vegas
I’ve criss-crossed down to Key Biscayane
And Chi-town via Bangor, Maine
Think I’ve seen it all
And all I can say is

How ’bout them cowgirls
Boys ain’t they somethin’
Sure are some proud girls
And you can’t tell them nothin’
And I tell you right now girls
May just be seven wonders of this big, old round world
But how ’bout them cowgirls.

Had to do that because I was perusing a Montana blog called Ridin’ For the Brand, which you can find at ConservativeCowgirls.com

As conservatives, we respect our core values; we are loyal to our ideals; Montana’s values are conservative values, and it is those values are what makes Montana what it is: the best place to call home.

The Conservative Cowgirls hail from across the Big Sky State. We are proud of our Montana ranching roots and the values taught us by our families’ ranchers, cowboys, and cowgirls. We believe in thinking, learning, and taking action, all in defense of Montana’s values and the promotion of personal responsibility.

The post that caught my eye was this: I can’t help it: my brain is wired conservative This is sure to invigorate the free will/election debate within the Evangelical Right. At any rate, there were some gems in the article, and indeed, it is something to think about:

• Linda Skitka, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it’s possible Amodio’s liberals appeared more flexible than his conservatives because the population was skewed.”We’re not a very liberal country,” she said. “We’re more likely to find extreme conservatives in the U.S. than extreme liberals.“Skitka said there’s ample evidence ideologues on the far left can also be uptight.

  “Extreme conservatives could be really rigid,” she said. “Moderates should be pretty flexible. But if we go all the way to the left, they may look a lot like the extreme right - rigid in their ideas.”

Imagine that, a sample of people for research skewed? Who woulda’ thunk it?

• In an interview last week, (University of California-Berkley researcher Philip) Tetlock said he would be cautious about drawing conclusions from neurological studies like Amodio’s. Using that kind of evidence, he said, “it’s hard to distinguish between someone who’s rigid and someone who’s principled.”For example, he said, “Take (President) Bush and Iraq: Is that rigid, or is it principled? The psychological data won’t resolve that. It’s a political value judgment that hinges on the extent to which we share his priorities.”Nevertheless, Tetlock called Amodio’s research “important.”

  “It’s important to learn how political belief systems operate - whether there are different underlying processes at work,” he said. “It may have implications for the relative likelihood that liberals and conservatives would make different kinds of errors in decision-making situations.”

  And what does that mean?

  “For a conservative, the worst mistake is to abandon a good policy prematurely,” he explained. “Liberals think the worst mistake is to stick with a bad policy too long.”

• Mark Pollock, associate professor of communication at Loyola University, said the Amodio study “provides scientific evidence for conclusions people (studying political rhetoric) have reached previously.”Such as?”A higher tolerance of ambiguity and complexity is typical of people who are liberal,” he said. “That’s not a surprise. It does, however, suggest there may be a hereditary and neurological basis for that. It also might suggest there’s less likelihood of people shifting their political ideology if it’s hard-wired in there.”

  Pollock saw another benefit to Amodio’s findings: If political attitudes are tied to neurophysiology, he said, “it would make bashing conservatives - or liberals - pointless. It’s not as if people are making a choice to see the world this way or that way. It’s how they’re built.”

Translation: the libs are afraid that they just might not be gaining all the ground they previously thought. Of course, if they’re extreme liberals, they’ll be rigid on maintaining that they are gaining ground.

Technorati Tags: Conservative Cowgirls, scientific studies, political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism

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