Ruy Teixeira is fast becoming one of my favorite commenters on politics, yet I’m convinced he considers himself a liberal. In actuality he appears to be a person in the process of leaving the Democrats. I believe he would agree with Ronald Reagan that his party went off and left him behind.
Today he writes about a group of voters called “Scaffles,” a portmanteau of socially conservative and fiscally liberal. He credits New York Times columnist David Leonhardt with originating the term and I suspect he considers himself a scaffle.
Teixeira believes Democrats should be trying to appeal to this group of “getable” voters. And he spends most of his column explaining why and how the Democrats have been “captured” by socially and fiscally liberal individuals. Socially liberal voters put their influence and more importantly money into pushing the Dems to the far left, especially on social issues. This leaves the Scaffles to vote for Republicans.
It’s a good column, I recommend it to you.
