Voters' Priorities vs. Republican Priorities

This is from a post at www.pollingreport.com:

CBS News Poll. Oct. 12-16, 2007. N=1,143 registered voters nationwide..

"Which one issue would you most like to hear the candidates for president discuss during the 2008 presidential campaign?" Open-ended .

War in Iraq
26%
Health care
25%
Economy/Jobs
11%
Immigration
6%
Education
3%
Environment
2%
Social Security
2%
Defense/Military
2%
Terrorism (general)
2%
Abortion
1%
Other
12%
Unsure
8%

Notice some items that are missing: taxes; welfare; and crime. All issues that the Republicans were able to use in the 1980s and 1990s to scare white middle-class voters into voting for Republican conservatives like Reagan and Bush. Notice what ranks relatively low on the list: immigration, which is the issue currently favored by Republicans to scare white middle-class voters into voting for conservatives. Notice what are the first two issues: Iraq, which is a war that Republicans started and health-care, which is an issue that doesn't really favor the conservative approach to government.

If these priorities stay this way up until the November 2008 election, it will be a hard campaign for Republicans. Their only hope is to throw enough mud at the Democratic presidential nominee that they can obscure the fact that their priorities and the voters' priorities are radically different.