“If you say you’ll be pulling the lever for the libertarians or any other third party come November? Cue the chorus from both sides of the aisle: “Go ahead, throw your vote away” But that ‘s advice best ignored.” So says Newsday’s Lane Filler, I suppose who’s a libertarian? Who assumes there’s going to be an “any third party” candidate come election time. If they just so happen to get on the ballot in time, which the libertarian party has been lax to do in the past few elections. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s not impossible, because it has become increasingly difficult since Ross Perot’s third party candidacy to get mainstream coverage. There’s just never going to be enough support for a supremely disjointed party amongst an increasingly disjointed voting bloc.
You can find bits and pieces of the Libertarian ideology in either party, and not really have your “independently minded” bonafides tested or mocked. But when Mr. Filler argues both sides’ bad policies are non-starters for most Libertarians, how do they expect to gain traction? “You can only change the Democrats and Republicans by defeating them.[…] Third parties must pursue guerrilla politics.” First of all, if you can’t even propel a strong enough candidate to get on a ballot in ALL 50 states, how can you hope to topple the two-party system? I don’t disagree in Mr. Filler’s notion that the game is “rigged”, but if you can’t even field a competent team to play the game and have to resort to buffoonish political figures that just pay lip service to the Libertarian cause, as it relates to a Republican ideology, then you are wasting your vote. Next, his shining example of guerrilla politics? Ron Paul. “[He] seems to have figured out how to use the Republicans, rather than being used. Paul claims to be GOP, while voting against his party mates’ bills.” You know what would be great here? Some actual evidence to back this up! Granted, column space and all, but if the Libertarian cause is trying to rally troops and bring in new converts pointing to Ron Paul and saying “This Guy!” isn’t going to help, especially when he’s just as regressive and obstinate as his housing party the GOP.
“Since he’s a “Republican” and has support, he gets to participate in debates and the media runs stories about him.” Ah, a delicious right-wing idiotic mind meld of a point! So whether or not the “stories” the media run are bad or not doesn’t hold any water to a voter? Any news is good news eh?
To even further this disjointed third party nonsense Mr. Filler name drops four of the “party’s”(for lack of a better term) would be ideal candidates from 2008 that Ron Paul wasted his endorsement on: The Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party…and Ralph Nader (Independent). Because Ron Paul didn’t agree with any of McCain’s policies, this is the route he chose.
The game analogy is apt because it sadly needs to be played in this day and age. Unfortunately for “third party’s” their lack of a recent serious candidate of any ilk isn’t going make the game change itself. Using vague notions like “guerrilla politics” or Manchurian Candidate-ing either of the two political parties, then yeah, the critique of wasting your vote is very cogent. Honestly, you’re also obstructing people’s right to chose a candidate that would best serve the country. Not one candidate is ever going to be the “perfect” guy for the job, and that’s just the way the game is played.
The third party/Libertarian “movement” must also come to grips with the very real danger their ideology promotes. Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election in 2000 and opened the door for W. to get in. I don’t think you’ll find very many ground floor Libertarians that are plussed by the eight years of that Bush presidency. That is the real danger of wasting your vote.
Is that a reductive argument? Sure. But so is pretending that by being a giant asshole and voting for a Unicorn is the voice of change.
“If change is what you want, you can’t keep voting for the status quo when November rolls around. As things stand right now, the third-patty votes, not matter which off-rand ticket they go to, are the only ballots that won’t be wasted.” Thanks for making my point for me Mr. Filler. It doesn’t really fit too good on a bumper sticker, but the idea that wasting your vote could propel anything is absurd. The voting booth is where representative change is enacted, but that’s not where it takes place. If the third-party’s are serious they have to change the mind of the people and there’s plenty of evidence to do so. They are lazy, obviously unfocused, and would rather backseat drive our political system than actually promote a real change to our country.
Suggesting that if the voters refused to vote for a major party, that the total number would shock and the in the next election cycle people would recognize this…and then what? Is Mr. Filler riding a Unicorn whacked out on his mind when he wrote this? You would have to assume that an actual viable third-party candidate would be able to pull all these voters together to vote for him. But if the previous points in the article show that four different people could represent third-party ideals, then voters are even more out of luck then when it was just “this guy or this guy”.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
It is usually about this time of year that my political bullshit canister tops off and I just stop caring about all of it. I loathe to read anything the pundit class writes, because it’s the most obviously cyclical at this time of year, as the echo chamber starts to heat up for the end of year elections. But what I have found to rest my ire on is this unbelievable notion that has sprouted the longest legs in recent memory: the both sides are doing it argument.
Oh, it’s true both sides are to blame for it, or one side started doing it so the other side had to do something back. It’s amazing to hear this day in and day out as politicians belly up to the Sunday talk shows and spout nonsense. Because it is nonsense. The culture of victimization is at the heart of what ails this “Do-Nothing-Congress 2.0”, and I don’t even think an infusion of new blood will help the matter.
Look at the last batch of fresh blood that entered office in 2010. They’re politically inert individuals that are only learning how to play the game. Yet they have this ability to whine and point fingers already down pat. For reference of this, watch Marco Rubio’s 6/25 Daily Show interview. He waves the victimization card so hard, that I thought his arm was going to snap off. It’s pathetic how this is what our representatives are beginning to look like. As the both side argument would concur: both sides are playing victims to one another’s shenanigans. But not only does the GOP not have any ideas to the ones they wish to lambaste, they don’t have the fortitude to perhaps “man up” and stop the “both sides” chicanery.
It would be a political/societal boon for them if they just stopped being the “Party of NO” and actually sacked up and started owning their regressive political ideologies. Most of the GOP establishment has been on record with there anti-Obama anything. They’ve vaguely hinted at an idea that would replace and improve upon a repealed Obamacare, what is that idea: oh well you know vague notions, free capital, some sort of voucher whatchamacallit, states’ rights/problem.
Their single-minded ideological approach is all fine and good. David Brooks asserted weeks ago that the GOP isn’t partisan and crazy as it seems: they just have a viewpoint…that no one else sane shares with them. But that linear ideology is only served with a corresponding viewpoint, wherein the two shall meet and compromise to form our collective wishes. Being rigid isn’t a viewpoint, or acceptable in a day and age where things are so supposedly dire.
If we are to believe the right-wing ONE of these days we’re going to turn in to Greece, one of these days. They’ve been crowing about it for nigh on four years, and for some reason we don’t seem any closer to Greece’s economy than we were three years ago.
“First let’s be clear. All argument that the court is a far right cudgel hovering over our delightful, evenhanded, fair-minded nonpartisan democratic Republic are off the table. And celebrants of the court as just and true and lovely only when it suits their personal agenda should put up their bumper stickers…” This is by America’s Treasure™ Kathleen Parker and what is my most recent evidence of this “both sides” nonsense that chokes our Democracy right now. Firstly the Citizens United ruling will have a far more greater impact on our country than Obamacare. Elections are now up for the highest bidder. If you thought that running for office was fiscally prohibitive before, it’s only going to get worse as Citizens United finds it’s footing. On Obamacare, what is really so horrible to the GOP when their corporate backed Healthcare money is going to get a giant financial goose from all the new people that are now required by law to have health insurance? “We don’t know what’s in the law!” They scream, but it’s all playing to the crowd.
That’s been my biggest aggravation thus far with The Beltway and it’s actors: a serious lack of sincerity in governance. It’s all for show, it’s for the next election cycle, it’s pandering ignorance as hard as humanly possible. If it’s not that, then it’s the tired moral issues that we should be over with by now. What would we rather have go in to the history books: our economy came back harder and awesome than ever, or instead of dealing with the economy we legislated abortion clinics into oblivion and argued over whether the President was a natural citizen or not?
Watching Marco Rubio on the Daily Show was mighty informative to me. That even after all his pro-growth nonsense, sensible immigration policy, and trying to find compromise amongst the two parties, he had the audacity to tip his hand and reveal a dreadfully partisan GOP card. He began this whole flat-tax, growth in small business, pro-growth through innovation spiel that flew in the face of everything he was successfully selling in the first part of the interview. That somehow the GOP was going to establish certainty to an completely uncertain economy/world should have led to him being laughed out of the studio, down the street and off the face of the earth. It may as well be wizardry economics. Certainty is going to lead the rich to invest in the economy? That the rich are going to invest in new innovation and that yet another bubble is all we need? It sounds less like sound economic policy and more like a junkie looking for another hit of the good stuff.
Rubio steadfastly argued that the reason he disagrees with the Democrats is because they have “bad ideas”. But I’d honestly rather have a bunch of bad ideas that are workable than just the House GOP’s “ideas” that are purely partisan and are just begging to be ignored by the Senate. The GOP is playing to the stands and they should be called on it by the media as a whole.
Marco Rubio’s victimization story is great and all until you give it context. He’s a freshman senator, a majority of his bills aren’t going to see the light of day, regardless of who controls the House majority and he knows it. So he can write all kinds of baloney legislation and run on that pretending he’s just trying so damn hard for the people. It’s the same logic that the GOP used when they pushed Paul Ryan’s budget around congress. The bill was dead and politically inert as soon as it was born, they know that. The American public must begin to recognize this context and understand that any (bad) idea and a workable (good) idea are two very separate things.
Oh, it’s true both sides are to blame for it, or one side started doing it so the other side had to do something back. It’s amazing to hear this day in and day out as politicians belly up to the Sunday talk shows and spout nonsense. Because it is nonsense. The culture of victimization is at the heart of what ails this “Do-Nothing-Congress 2.0”, and I don’t even think an infusion of new blood will help the matter.
Look at the last batch of fresh blood that entered office in 2010. They’re politically inert individuals that are only learning how to play the game. Yet they have this ability to whine and point fingers already down pat. For reference of this, watch Marco Rubio’s 6/25 Daily Show interview. He waves the victimization card so hard, that I thought his arm was going to snap off. It’s pathetic how this is what our representatives are beginning to look like. As the both side argument would concur: both sides are playing victims to one another’s shenanigans. But not only does the GOP not have any ideas to the ones they wish to lambaste, they don’t have the fortitude to perhaps “man up” and stop the “both sides” chicanery.
It would be a political/societal boon for them if they just stopped being the “Party of NO” and actually sacked up and started owning their regressive political ideologies. Most of the GOP establishment has been on record with there anti-Obama anything. They’ve vaguely hinted at an idea that would replace and improve upon a repealed Obamacare, what is that idea: oh well you know vague notions, free capital, some sort of voucher whatchamacallit, states’ rights/problem.
Their single-minded ideological approach is all fine and good. David Brooks asserted weeks ago that the GOP isn’t partisan and crazy as it seems: they just have a viewpoint…that no one else sane shares with them. But that linear ideology is only served with a corresponding viewpoint, wherein the two shall meet and compromise to form our collective wishes. Being rigid isn’t a viewpoint, or acceptable in a day and age where things are so supposedly dire.
If we are to believe the right-wing ONE of these days we’re going to turn in to Greece, one of these days. They’ve been crowing about it for nigh on four years, and for some reason we don’t seem any closer to Greece’s economy than we were three years ago.
“First let’s be clear. All argument that the court is a far right cudgel hovering over our delightful, evenhanded, fair-minded nonpartisan democratic Republic are off the table. And celebrants of the court as just and true and lovely only when it suits their personal agenda should put up their bumper stickers…” This is by America’s Treasure™ Kathleen Parker and what is my most recent evidence of this “both sides” nonsense that chokes our Democracy right now. Firstly the Citizens United ruling will have a far more greater impact on our country than Obamacare. Elections are now up for the highest bidder. If you thought that running for office was fiscally prohibitive before, it’s only going to get worse as Citizens United finds it’s footing. On Obamacare, what is really so horrible to the GOP when their corporate backed Healthcare money is going to get a giant financial goose from all the new people that are now required by law to have health insurance? “We don’t know what’s in the law!” They scream, but it’s all playing to the crowd.
That’s been my biggest aggravation thus far with The Beltway and it’s actors: a serious lack of sincerity in governance. It’s all for show, it’s for the next election cycle, it’s pandering ignorance as hard as humanly possible. If it’s not that, then it’s the tired moral issues that we should be over with by now. What would we rather have go in to the history books: our economy came back harder and awesome than ever, or instead of dealing with the economy we legislated abortion clinics into oblivion and argued over whether the President was a natural citizen or not?
Watching Marco Rubio on the Daily Show was mighty informative to me. That even after all his pro-growth nonsense, sensible immigration policy, and trying to find compromise amongst the two parties, he had the audacity to tip his hand and reveal a dreadfully partisan GOP card. He began this whole flat-tax, growth in small business, pro-growth through innovation spiel that flew in the face of everything he was successfully selling in the first part of the interview. That somehow the GOP was going to establish certainty to an completely uncertain economy/world should have led to him being laughed out of the studio, down the street and off the face of the earth. It may as well be wizardry economics. Certainty is going to lead the rich to invest in the economy? That the rich are going to invest in new innovation and that yet another bubble is all we need? It sounds less like sound economic policy and more like a junkie looking for another hit of the good stuff.
Rubio steadfastly argued that the reason he disagrees with the Democrats is because they have “bad ideas”. But I’d honestly rather have a bunch of bad ideas that are workable than just the House GOP’s “ideas” that are purely partisan and are just begging to be ignored by the Senate. The GOP is playing to the stands and they should be called on it by the media as a whole.
Marco Rubio’s victimization story is great and all until you give it context. He’s a freshman senator, a majority of his bills aren’t going to see the light of day, regardless of who controls the House majority and he knows it. So he can write all kinds of baloney legislation and run on that pretending he’s just trying so damn hard for the people. It’s the same logic that the GOP used when they pushed Paul Ryan’s budget around congress. The bill was dead and politically inert as soon as it was born, they know that. The American public must begin to recognize this context and understand that any (bad) idea and a workable (good) idea are two very separate things.
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