Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

Here are some random thoughts about the 2010 elections, in no particular order:

• The Republican party is not dead after all.
• The Democratic party is fine on a national level, but the farther down you go the worse it gets.  This is pretty obvious if you take the results apart at all.  In the Senate, the Democrats lost “only” six seats (could end up being seven, but eight is not likely), but the House was a historic bloodbath, the governorships were at least as bad, and the state legislatures were awful in the extreme, with some estimates showing a fifteen-state swing in control.  Unprecedented is far too mild a word.  We’re going for “inconceivable” here, and although I will keep using that word, it means exactly what I think it means.
• The Tea Party was as important yesterday as the peaceniks were in the 1970s.  I don’t think the comparison is inapt.  Both movements were wildly unfocused, both movements involved a lot of bipartisan anger (“don’t trust anyone over 30″), and both movements settled on one party as being the one most closely allied with its interests.  The peaceniks gave Democrats large Congressional majorities for 20 years.  I believe that the Tea Party will have a similar impact.
• The peaceniks, however, made it very complicated for the Democrats to win the White House.  Except for Carter, Democrats didn’t get even close to winning the big seat between Harry Truman and Bill Clinton.  I think it possible, even probable, that a Tea Party-style candidate for the GOP would have similar trouble.  Certainly, if the GOP nominates Sarah Palin, it will lose the presidency again in 2012, even if the candidate on the other side is Barack Obama.  Pooh-pooh this if you like, but it is the case.
• As much as the focus was on how badly President Obama’s candidates fared last night, the fact is that in the mano-a-mana between Obama and Palin, the results were mixed.  Palin notably lost Delaware (expected), Nevada (unexpected), and (it appears) Washington, though there’s balance there from victories for Paul and Rubio and (especially) Johnson.  The place that Palin’s polarizing influence is most obvious, though, is her home state of Alaska, where her candidate apparently lost to a write-in GOP establishment incumbent.  In the hottest of hotbeds, in the lion’s den, the old-guard GOP bloodied the nose of the biggest rising star in the Tea Party movement.  That is hardly the sort of launching pad you want for a Palin 2012 victory rocket.
• As usual, the headlines are about the big races, but the real news is underground, where the GOP taking governorships and state legislatures gives them control of redistricting in 35 states.  That’s not to be underestimated.  2012 is likely to be a circus, but that circus will be slanted as much as Republicans can make it.  This was the year Democrats needed if they were to make the Obama surge permanent.  That didn’t happen.  Now we’ll see if the Tea Party can remake the GOP in its image.  If it can, 2012 could be even worse for the Democrats than 2010.
• 2012 will be EPIC.  The Democrats will know that a desultory showing at the polls will mean defeat.  Republicans will be emboldened.  The Tea Party will have had two years to either implode or become something durable.  I do not believe it hyperbole to say that the 2012 election will be the single most defining in terms of the direction of US politics since 1980, and possibly since 1932.  More than 1994, WAY more than 2008.  2012 is the prize fight for the belt, and possibly permanent control (as permanent as anything gets in politics).  If the GOP wins the House again, and wins Senate control (all but certain), AND wins the presidency, it might be a decade or more before Democrats get back any kind of power at all.  If the Democrat machines counter the GOP and Tea Party surges and hold the Senate and win the Presidency, the Tea Party may just become a true third party and hand the Democrats control over the government in perpetuity.

Stay tuned.

Although the crystal ball has been functioning with very high accuracy over the past couple of months, there are some doozies I missed. Like, for instance, that the Cowboys would be 1-6, and my Rams 4-4 (YEEEHAAA!) at Hallowe’en.

But it’s election season, so I want to get a prediction down before it all breaks loose tomorrow. There’s no question that Republicans are going to win, and win often. The only questions are: will the GOP take the Senate, and what will the new GOP majority in the House be?

The answers are: no, and 23 seats. The GOP will win 7 Senate seats (2 short of a majority), and 62 House seats. The crystal ball has already predicted Harry Reid hanging on in Nevada, which I have begun to doubt seriously. The smart money is all on Angle in Nevada right now. Heck, even Barney Frank is in trouble – you’d think the ball would have seen that one. But I stand by the crystal ball at the moment.

The crystal ball also predicts that I will be watching the results with great interest all night long, and this is one prediction that you can take to the bank.

Well, not really. But kind of. I’ve said before that I favor a government of the informed, and that I believe that representatives usually are, which means it’s up to you and me to know what the bleep we’re doing when we go to the polls.

I’ve been a pretty faithful libertarian most of my life, which for the uninitiated means that I want to leave you pretty much alone unless you actually need my help, and then I’d like the freedom to help you or not without having to pass the assistance through a government agency, whether I like it or not. That’s a passable shorthand for how I regularly vote, as well, but I have another rule that I’d like to submit for your consideration:

Unless I can name BOTH candidates for the seat, I don’t cast a vote in it.

Yes, really. I think it behooves me to know something about both sides of an issue. I do take positions. Those can be unpopular, and some of those positions are offensive to some people I care deeply about. I wish they weren’t. But I arrived at those positions by buying a ticket for the destination, not by picking a random train to board. I try to think about what I believe, and revise when necessary. That revision can’t happen without a place in my consciousness for the other side(s). Therefore, even in races like my state House race, where my good friend Ken Sumsion is going to waltz to victory again, I won’t be voting for him, because I don’t know anything about his opponent. There is practically no chance that I’d be supporting the other guy/gal, but the other guy/gal deserves a chance, and I didn’t give him/her one. So either I’m going to do some fast research – on the candidate’s own site (try to see people in their best light first) – or I’m not voting in that race.

It is painful. I don’t like the necessities this rule imposes on me. I’m a busy guy, and researching all the races in the world takes time I don’t really have, but since politics is important to me, I treat it with respect.

So I’m telling you not to vote. Do not vote unless you know what you’re voting for. Do not vote unless you can name the person you’re voting for and the person you’re voting against. Give the challengers a chance. Give even the incumbents a chance. Listen and think. Please. It’s my country, too, and I’d like a little more common sense out of our representatives. I want them to be REPRESENTATIVE. And I want to see that they represent a thinking, intelligent, considerate people. I still think we are that, as a people. Let us prove it tomorrow.

This is yet another of a Series of Short Takes, about the salient issues of the day.  This one is explicitly political, and even pointedly concerned with the GOP in Utah, something I almost never do, but because of my position in local politics, I felt I ought to.  Be offended if you like, but really, why bother?

I wanted to take just a second and address a comment made on a Facebook post about current law. Here’s the problem as I see it: while I agree that future law should be based on a correct interpretation of the Constitution, surely you agree with me that laws are made by men and those men don’t seem to care about your interpretation.   Or mine.   Or Mike Lee’s.  They get assaulted all the time by people waving a copy of the Constitution as if it had some talismanic value, like a sprig of wolfsbane.

In point of fact, the fastest way to get a sitting Senator or Congressman to tune out what you’re saying is to invoke the Constitution, as if it were a piece of the True Cross. People don’t buy WHAT you’re selling, they buy WHY you’re selling. First you have to make them care. First you have to get them to see that following the Constitution is good for THEM, and for the people they allegedly serve. That does NOT take debate. Debate is rarely a good way to convince – especially public debate. Mostly what that will do is entrench people against you.

Even worse, once you get them to care about the Constitution, you have then to persuade them that your interpretation of it is correct, and if you think that can ever be done by citing precedent and quoting John Locke, then you’ve never been part of a deliberative body.

What it takes is back-room private persuasion. It takes tedious, personal, intimate relationship-building. It’s a lot less sexy than the Big Speech. It makes terrible television. But it works, and in my experience – which is long, in this arena – it is the only thing that does.

In this election, perhaps as never before in my experience, we have a choice between a debater and a persuader. Mike Lee’s experience is legal and judicial. He has a good understanding of the legal arguments, and, indeed, is reputed to be formidable in a court of law. That is an arena for debate, where a question is to be decided in a public forum, yea or nay, and where the voting is done secretly, and often has a universe of just one (Lee’s experience is almost entirely judicial, instead of juridical, meaning that only one man has to be persuaded), and where that decision must be justified by a blizzard of argumentation.

Legislation also uses debate, but the debate is almost entirely for show. The decisions are made long before the speeches are made, and they never have to be justified to anyone. NO ONE has ever changed his vote on a piece of legislation because of the speech his opponent made on the floor. The very idea is ludicrous. The Facebook poster wants a debate on the Constitution; so do we all. But the poster is mistaken if he thinks that debate will do anything useful about legislation. It will not. Legislation is affected most significantly by private negotiation, not public posturing. It lends itself to a much less visible strategy, something that looks a lot like running a company or a political party and a lot less like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (much as I love Frank Capra movies).

If you want a fiery Senator that will make great speeches and accomplish absolutely nothing, then apparently Mike Lee is your man, because that is exactly what he has done. If, however, you want a man that is willing to muck in the trenches and move things in the direction we want them to go, who accomplishes things without needing to be the center of attention, then I submit to you that Tim Bridgewater is the guy you want, because that’s exactly what HE’S done.

Obviously, I think what the country needs right now is Bridgewater, and not Lee. We have elections to see who is right. I’m looking forward to this one.

Warning: Religion, Politics, and/or Money to follow. There’s a reason these are the three things you aren’t supposed to talk about, hence the heads-up.

On Abortion: Specifically the murder of George Tiller, I condemn in the strongest possible manner the murder of this man. He should have been arrested and tried, and convicted and imprisoned for the remainder of his life. He should not have been murdered. His murderer should now get the same punishment Tiller would have gotten.

Most of you know I am absolutely opposed to infanticide, no matter what euphemism it gets wrapped up in. I have been for a long time a proponent of the death penalty, but I have recently decided that my distrust of the government should extend to the justice system as well, and I now support a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would make the taking of any life, except where there is imminent danger to the life of another person, a crime. I am willing to give up the death penalty in exchange for the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent children. No executions, no abortion.

One More on Abortion: There’s a lot of chatter about how if we who deplore abortion and think of it as (at the very least) manslaughter are really upset, rather than get violent, we should lobby the legislature and get the law changed. I deplore violence. I am not a violent man. That has never been an avenue for me. But we on the pro-life side of this debate have a serious frustration, and that is that we CANNOT lobby. No legislature can change the abortion laws, because there are no abortion laws. There used to be, but then came Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court struck down all the laws we had made regarding the legality of abortion.

Essentially, the Supreme Court – in an effort to SETTLE the debate, according to the decision – created a “right” out of thin air. There hasn’t been any real debate about abortion since. Every attempt to protect the unborn in any fashion is met with fierce, howling resistance from the left, because it infringes on a “woman’s right to choose” (to kill her child). If that is, indeed, a right, then they absolutely should howl about it, but the right most of us recognize as inviolate is not the right to “choose”, but the right to life (remember the Declaration of Independence?), which is absolutely violated every time a woman aborts her child.

The pro-life movement has had a terrible time even getting restrictions on a doctor’s being able to butcher a child that has already been born, let alone one that has been partially delivered (everything but the head is out of the birth canal).  This difficulty, however, in no way excuses the violence perpetrated by anyone who is a part of this movement.  You can’t win this way, people.