So have you been following the primaries at all?
If you're like most of America, the answer is no. If you aren't a candidate, working for a candidate, or a political junkie like me, watching either party play the game of deciding who they will put up in the general election is about as exciting as watching mold develop on those bananas your kids swore they'd eat if you bought them.
However this primary season is a little different, particularly for me and my interest in the long term health of Conservative politics in America*. This season, we are seeing the disintegration of the ability of the Republican National Convention to control the kind of candidates that get nominated. Throughout the nation, the RNC has supported the kind of candidates they normally do, but the voters, ever more rightest these days, have instead nominated an entirely different breed of Conservative. Marco Rubio, Ron Paul, and Sharon Angle are just a few examples of Republican nominations that present a serious risk in the general election of alienating... well...nearly anyone.
In my August 5th post 'What Tea Leaves' I talked about the possibility that the Republican party would lose the ability to nominate electable candidates. That the radical elements within the party would become the only voters in primaries and would pick people that spoke to them, but not really to the American conservative. This risk seems to be playing out. Classic conservative candidates are being forced out, forced to run independent, or ignored as ridiculously out of touch replacements spout position like abolishing the constitutional church/state separation entirely, or removing the Department of Education, or using 2nd Amendment remedies on congress members they disagree with. (Yes, Sharon Angle essentially suggested armed insurrection or shooting a congressman was a viable alternative to political discourse.)
So today's Political Kick is a bit of an odd one for me. It involves me asking voters to NOT vote ticket. Do NOT vote for a Republican just because they have an elephant next to their name. The environment of the current 2010 elections has made party voting a serious mistake. But what makes it odd isn't that, it's that I'm also going to advocate that voters, if they face a candidate like Angle on their ticket and can't abide the opposition's candidate, that they refrain from voting.
That's right, I'm coming out in favor of abdicating your political power in cases where you find yourself between a radical and a platform with whim you disagree. My reasons are somewhat unique to the current political situation. The Republicans, after their defeat in 2008, should have gone through a period of vetting and reorganization and loss where they rebuilt from within. But they were granted a windfall in that the economic situation was not so easy to turn around on a dime, and as a result, they have been able to gain political momentum in 2010 without having actually developed a new platform, approach, or even internal control over their own party.
This makes some of the current Republican candidates downright dangerous. They do not represent the mainstream conservative view, they hold positions that are destructive to the American way of life, and they might just win if people say "Well I'd rather have a conservative in office" and ignore some of the fanatical ideas and methods considered acceptable by some of these people.
Now I will never ask people to vote against their interest or ethics. But I can and will, at least in this limited case, suggest that those faced with a radical do not contribute to identifying or associating their party with such individuals.
I'll revisit this later, but just to get it on paper, be careful out there. Conservative politics are in flux, and NEED good, thinking, rational men and women to help rebuild what conservative politics SHOULD be. That might require some time of loss and lack of power - something the Republicans have never been terribly good at.
Conservatives: Get involved. Speak out. Provide an alternative view to the radicals that are infesting your party. And whatever you do, don't sail with a boat of fools just because it has a familiar or nostalgic feel.
Be careful out there, come November.
If you're like most of America, the answer is no. If you aren't a candidate, working for a candidate, or a political junkie like me, watching either party play the game of deciding who they will put up in the general election is about as exciting as watching mold develop on those bananas your kids swore they'd eat if you bought them.
However this primary season is a little different, particularly for me and my interest in the long term health of Conservative politics in America*. This season, we are seeing the disintegration of the ability of the Republican National Convention to control the kind of candidates that get nominated. Throughout the nation, the RNC has supported the kind of candidates they normally do, but the voters, ever more rightest these days, have instead nominated an entirely different breed of Conservative. Marco Rubio, Ron Paul, and Sharon Angle are just a few examples of Republican nominations that present a serious risk in the general election of alienating... well...nearly anyone.
In my August 5th post 'What Tea Leaves' I talked about the possibility that the Republican party would lose the ability to nominate electable candidates. That the radical elements within the party would become the only voters in primaries and would pick people that spoke to them, but not really to the American conservative. This risk seems to be playing out. Classic conservative candidates are being forced out, forced to run independent, or ignored as ridiculously out of touch replacements spout position like abolishing the constitutional church/state separation entirely, or removing the Department of Education, or using 2nd Amendment remedies on congress members they disagree with. (Yes, Sharon Angle essentially suggested armed insurrection or shooting a congressman was a viable alternative to political discourse.)
So today's Political Kick is a bit of an odd one for me. It involves me asking voters to NOT vote ticket. Do NOT vote for a Republican just because they have an elephant next to their name. The environment of the current 2010 elections has made party voting a serious mistake. But what makes it odd isn't that, it's that I'm also going to advocate that voters, if they face a candidate like Angle on their ticket and can't abide the opposition's candidate, that they refrain from voting.
That's right, I'm coming out in favor of abdicating your political power in cases where you find yourself between a radical and a platform with whim you disagree. My reasons are somewhat unique to the current political situation. The Republicans, after their defeat in 2008, should have gone through a period of vetting and reorganization and loss where they rebuilt from within. But they were granted a windfall in that the economic situation was not so easy to turn around on a dime, and as a result, they have been able to gain political momentum in 2010 without having actually developed a new platform, approach, or even internal control over their own party.
This makes some of the current Republican candidates downright dangerous. They do not represent the mainstream conservative view, they hold positions that are destructive to the American way of life, and they might just win if people say "Well I'd rather have a conservative in office" and ignore some of the fanatical ideas and methods considered acceptable by some of these people.
Now I will never ask people to vote against their interest or ethics. But I can and will, at least in this limited case, suggest that those faced with a radical do not contribute to identifying or associating their party with such individuals.
I'll revisit this later, but just to get it on paper, be careful out there. Conservative politics are in flux, and NEED good, thinking, rational men and women to help rebuild what conservative politics SHOULD be. That might require some time of loss and lack of power - something the Republicans have never been terribly good at.
Conservatives: Get involved. Speak out. Provide an alternative view to the radicals that are infesting your party. And whatever you do, don't sail with a boat of fools just because it has a familiar or nostalgic feel.
Be careful out there, come November.
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