It has been an interesting five days since the 2016 election. Taking another swing at this blog after another extended absence. Thoughts and views haven’t changed much so a lot of the older content is still accurate, the only difference being the current roster of miscreants and demagogues have changed to match a world two years on. Here’s to seeing what happens next.
Category: Libertarians
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating
It’s a cheap shot today and return after a long absence.
The Primaries are going on today in Virginia. So far it looks like a par for course run; the races that are close are going to be driven by the grassroots support that is drummed up during these off-season primaries while strong incumbents and those who are historied within the wall of their respective parties will clinch their nominations with little difficulty. That doesn’t bother me. Shenanigans bother me, and I’ve been listening to them for months.
The purpose of the Republican Primary was to ensure that there was ‘purity’ in the selection of the candidates that were chosen last month. There was the need for this to be ‘honest’ and ‘clear of meddling’. Rush Limbaugh refers to these yet to materialize, and oft worried about, efforts at tampering ‘Operation Chaos’. The gist is simple: open primaries mean that Democrats can roll in to the polling station and supposedly pick the weaker of two candidates, effectively setting up their “strong” candidate with an easy win. If the yarn sounds familiar, it was kicked around in 2008 when McCain was winning much to the chagrin of the Republican party. It was rolled out again in 2012 when Mitt Romney was facing supposedly impossible odds against the titanic political powers of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and (seriously?) Rick Santorum.
Therein lies the problem. Since the end of the Primary, and the wretched result that has me wincing each morning I have to listen to John Fredericks talk about the latest train wreck of a video someone has dug up on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson, the discussion has shifted from the need for purity in the selection process to encouraging our team to go out and vote during the open primaries for the other side. Granted, there are primaries today for Republican candidates, and to those I say go nuts, have a ball. For the Democratic candidates and races I wonder where the wagging tail ends and the dog begins.
Now, I enjoy Mr. Fredericks’ show, and have so since I discovered it on a drive to work one morning last year, but I take pause with his notion that voting in the Democrats open primary is perfectly acceptable after our party went to such great lengths to prevent such actions. It is, of course, his choice, and he chose to exercise that, and in no way am I saying it’s bad. I’ve met Senator Northam, at the end of election night where I was working for the team that was trying to take his seat, and found him most agreeable, articulate, and, to borrow common vernacular, very real. As Fredericks said, and so I shall reiterate, what you see from Northam is what you get. No, I have no problem with his selection, but I’m saying the action of voting for a democrat after you’ve selected your Republican candidate feels…awkward. It invites analysis by others, and recognition of the inherit weakness of the primary system; any Tom, Dick, or Harry can roll into a polling station and vote for a rep from their state or district.
After the utter, pardon the following, shitcan mess that was the Republican primary in May, why on earth would we advertise, nay, encourage our huddled masses, who were terrified of the bogeyman of cross-platform voters, to go out and do the very thing we decried as fouling the process? It is hypocritical to demand a pure representation of a party, then to encourage our team to go out and muddy the waters for the other side. There is no honor in it.
Stars out of the eyes, I understand that, mathematically, the Republican turnout for a Democratic primary is going to be low (maybe 0.25-0.5% of the Republican voting block, so 0.10-0.35% of the overall voting block for the district), but the notion is noxious to me. If we are going to claim moral high ground it means constant diligence. Moral strength comes from the ability to act consistently, and in the political world consistency, if measured in gold, would be worth the national debt and a few dollars more. Lastly, if Mr. Fredericks is going to champion the notion of selecting a candidate based on his authenticity and amicable nature in working across the aisle, maybe closing a post out by talking about the unique opportunity to take Senator Northam’s seat in a special election should probably be saved for another day. Especially when you are reminding folks that Northam’s vote, if taken, would tip the balance to 21-19 in favor of the Republicans who, at the moment have a very, very weak candidate running for the coveted tie-breaker known as, you guessed it, the Lt. Governor of Virginia. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, Mr. Fredericks, to cover yourself; your machinations are showing.
When the banker wants to pick up the policeman’s gun, no one is safe
A recent story out of Seattle states that an amendment proposed for a bill that would safeguard employee passwords from being requested during job interviews, however should an internal investigation be started that protection of the employee’s private information goes right out the window. Thankfully the provision was pulled a day later and the bill protecting potential employees from having to divulge unnecessary private information went to the floor without the excessive intrusion attached.
It’s not the first time an amendment/ provision/bill like this has been introduced, nor will it be the last. The horrifying part of the story is not so much the provision, but the intention of the representative who added it (quote from The Columbian story linked above):
On Wednesday, House Labor and Workforce Development Committee chair Rep. Mike Sells withdrew the amendment. He had introduced it at the behest of business groups, who say the original bill would open an avenue for possible illegal activity by employees, such as divulging proprietary or consumer information to outsiders.
The fear by business groups who were concerned that this would open up an avenue for possible illegal activity apparently forgot that should illegal activity occur there is a process by which they contact the police and then the proper law enforcement agencies, who are trained and the only bodies by law who can do this, SUBMIT A WARRANT for the personal information directly to the site in question.
I respect a need for businesses to protect their trade secrets, yet it seems that Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t so much show up on an employee’s news feed or blog spot, rather in a bar after they’ve had one too many. If there is potential theft of intellectual property, embezzlement, or or other such criminal activity going on, my first advice to a business owner would be to get the police involved (i.e. get the folks whose job it is to sort this kind of thing out) rather than trying to play cowboy and find it on their own. The process, should it have proceeded, would have been, as privacy advocated pointed out, rife for abuse, and could lead to lawsuits from employees should other private information be divulged to a company who has not right or reason for having said information.
Lastly, to the state and federal representatives of the nation. Take a moment to think on this matter when it comes to you. Realize that anyone looking to pick up a duty of law enforcement must be addressed with great care and skepticism. Any effort by a business to take on a responsibility or to take an action that would circumvent the law of due process, those pesky warrants that police need in criminal investigations, needs to be shuffled off, and documented for public consumption. These business leaders should be named, and their organizations chastised by the public, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the barking voices that decry the vices, real and imaginary, of the government will raise a word against the corporate sector.
Simply because people work for a company does not mean that they are to have access to every nook and cranny of their employees lives. If we as a political body fear the encroachment of a nebulous, faceless monstrosity trying to worm its way into every aspect of our lives, why should we treat the businesses who are not restrained by the rules of our Constitution with less caution than the government which we can control?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus. Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.
Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here. In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one. This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is. The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved. Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.
A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution. The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.
The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration. They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.
The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public. My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship. One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.
The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures. Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly. Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.
The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do. The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level. They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other. Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.
Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes. I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.
There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers. It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.
The ever growing elephant in the room
What is $474.15 Billion dollars?
The fiscal cliff looms in the distance like a funnel cloud on the hard-packed plains of Texas. The key difference is we can avoid that wicked looking mess coming our way. Functionally, this is a historic opportunity, wrapped in gilt and handed to the parties with the same bows and trappings of the holiday preceding the impending fluster cluck that is about to go down. That gift; a moment to finally stop bullshitting and come together to get this nation on a path to a balanced budget, an aim at reducing the national debt, and reigning in the last decade and change of madcap spending that has gone on.
Those hoping for this know better. The only thing we, the American public, will get out of this deal is coal in our stockings which will be summarily taken away because it is neither green nor ours to use as an energy resource.
The New York Times has a fantastic Infographic available to the public where you can see firsthand what grew, what shrank, and what is owed to who and where. I will be frank, if the President or Congress is serious about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget then all the programs they swore to protect must share in some of the bloodletting.
Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly one-third of the budget by itself. Toss Social Security into the mix and over half the budget is consumed by these two programs alone. Defense spending. It rings in, for the first time, lower than the cost of Social Security, and is quickly being outpaced by the interest on the national debt.
This brings me to my beginning question; what is $474.15 billion dollars? That number is what is owed in interest on the national debt.
It is staggering to look at, and, mind you, that is the interest. Not some credit card minimum where part of what you pay hits the principle and we will ever so slowly knock it down. Nay good reader, this is pure interest without a dime set to the principle. I’ll be honest, that would be the first number I would be set to tackle for that number will be what kills us.
If the President’s moratorium on discretionary spending (which would freeze the large majority of defense spending but leave social security and Medicare/Medicaid alone) goes through then we’ve only slowed the train down, but it will chug along. Mayhaps you can knock out some of that principle. Hold back the rising tides, but the moratorium cannot last forever, and if it is not adapted to, the glut of costs that will come cascading down and crush any gains made.
So, while our elected officials piddle away the hours playing games of imaginary chicken and peek-a-boo with the press, handing out reports of “nothing to see here” we are getting buried. The interest grows, and will eclipse the costs of social security and Medicare/Medicaid if left untouched, all the while pledges are being made to not raise taxes on anyone and no programs will be cut. Looking at the reality on paper/webpage and listening to the news brings two conclusions to mind. Either those in power want this world to burn for the sake of petty feuds and broken ideologies, or they are, much to our chagrin, monumentally clueless as to what they have brought down upon all of us. It will come to a day when that cost, just to cover the interest being made on the debt, will choke us out, and we will be forced to cut to maintain or default. Best to do them now, with flexibility and foresight on our side than a later time when we must cut because there is no other option. When a monthly social security check is short $21 a month for living expenses versus hundreds of dollars short because there isn’t any money left to paid those who are owed. Petty promises and pledges won’t mean a damn thing then, and, to be frank, shouldn’t mean a damn thing now.
Escalation of force and your friendly neighborhood SWAT team
Stories like this one are becoming more common in the news. Swatting, or the act of placing a fake phone call from a VoIP hone or internet server to emergency providers indicating that there is a shooting/violent crime/ general mayhem going down at a particular address. Everyone from Politicians to kids playing video games have been surprised to see teams of fully armored, automatic weapon toting law enforcement officers knocking down their doors, causing thousands of dollars of damage and wasting police time and funds chasing down ghost leads with the most militant branches of their organizations.
I want to make something clear before I continue, I have nothing against SWAT teams. I respect what they do, and recognize that they should be called into the most dire of situations. What I do have a problem with is the escalating frequency with which they are being sent out to enforce mundane legal activities.
From serving warrants to handling armed 79-year-old ladies the rank and file police duties are quickly getting picked up by SWAT teams across the country. The horrify notion that the military is selling off extra hardware to police departments doesn’t bode well. Especially when those same police departments turn around and sell it off to, as the article from the Sacramento Bee puts it, “pad their budgets”.
There is a need for the SWAT teams in cities across America, but there appear to be a greater need for restraint in their deployment. If the basic assessments are being accomplished, and it is duly warranted that an escalation to a para-military level is required, then by all means send in the SWAT team. If the department didn’t bother to check the residence or call the house, and proceeded to break down a door, flash-bang innocent civilians, and then physically treat them like common criminals, then, frankly, someone needs to lose their job.
When a bad idea meets a functional tool, nothing good comes of it
Last weekend I was having a conversation with a friend and the topic of the recent expansion of government surveilance via drones came up. There is genuine concern over how the information will be used, and, considering the manuverability of some of the drones being employed, where they go, and what they will be able to see is of extreme concern.
I aruged that the drones will be used, but they will be fairly restricted, and the government is going to find out very, very quickly that they are not the best tools for the job when it comes to law enforcement. As if on queue The University of Texas, challenged by the Department of Homeland Security, downed a drone in mid flight.
Not to take some shine off of the University of Texas’ achievement, but this is old hat. Iran dropped a stealth drone, piloted by the best and brightest, and slapped together by DARPA and operated by the DoD. In terms of intellectual firepower, I imagine that the DHS has quite a few brilliant minds, but the military has an entire organization devoted to development everything from quantum encryption to weapons systems that fire 1.2million rounds a minute. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Stealth drone was harder to drop, but when it was released that they went through the GPS system to bring it down, I fell over laughing.
A paper I wrote in my last year at the Old Dominion University was on robotics on the battlefield, and the number one issue with these devices have is the communication and GPS systems. Avionic systems have some play, but the real bugs were in terrestrial based sword bots, so named because they have monikers like ‘claymore’ and ‘saber’. These battle bots were failing remote tests because they could not respond fast enough, did not respond at all, or did things like firing off around 45 seconds after being issued the command to do so. You could strip away the electronic protection on them, and give the operator faster reaction time, but then there is nothing to stop a local Al Qaeda operative, trained by a technician from a relatively unfriendly state, with a wireless connection and few tools of the electronic warfare trade, to hack in and either disable the robot on the field, or, in the worst case scenario, take remote control of these electronic weapons platforms and turn them on the soldiers standing right next to them. Granted, that scenario is half a world away, but imagine small drones with live video feed hovering about, each one supposed protected by encryption on par with, say, any of the banks that have recently been hacked, or the police departments that have had their records compromised (and I can guarantee that the LAPD servers are not going to have the same encryption as government security contractor companies, or international banking systems).
Lastly, the drones offer an odd stretch of police power reaching into the personal domain. Currently police can fly over your house and if they see pot being grown in the back yard, they can get a warrant and conduct a raid. It’s legal, there was a supreme court case on it, and it flew. Drones will be able to do the same, but there is a twist regarding that maneuverability issue. Smaller drones means that they can go places helicopters and larger drones cannot. So we can’t see anything in your yard, but what about that shed at the corner of your property. We’re still flying, technically we’re not trespassing (you wait, this will be one of the first legal arguments), and we happened to peek in this window and saw that you had a shotgun. We checked the state gun registration and you don’t have a shotgun on record with us. That’s a bust.
Is it a silly scenario, absolutely, but it is completely plausible. Why put a GPS tracker on a criminal’s car when you can just tail him incessantly with a drone? Easy way to get around that pesky warrant problem:
“no your honor, the drone was not following the individual in question. It just happened to be everywhere he was going.”
You can see where this is going.
I am all for the thin blue line doing its thing and bringing in the bad guys, but with great power comes great responsibility, and this is another example of military tech rolling down to police departments that don’t need more military tech. For the price of a drone operation system and related drones you could probably hire another dozen cops. Humans that need jobs, can form intellectual and emotional bonds with the community, grown and learn, become leaders of the community, and, best of all, can’t be hacked to dive bomb cars on the I-95.
Stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and realize the long game moments
My stomach fell out when the decision on Thursday rolled down. I was a staunch believer that any variation of the individual mandate was a legal faux pa and had to be struck down. Then I read the Roberts decision and was illuminated to an entirely new way of operating in the government. I was seeing, for the first time, not a decision based on party politics or personal interest. No, I saw a straight out of myth ruling based on pure constitutional reasoning. Okay, there may have been some political wranglings in there, and I am thrilled that other pundits and writers like Michael Medved and Paul Begala were quick to point out the true victory for Republicans in the bill.
At the root of the Roberts decisions, aside from defining the mandate as a tax and throwing the life of the bill back into the hands of Congress which may very well fall into Republican hands in November, there was this little gem:
2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by
purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. (link)
Roberts effectively stopped the government from mandating that a lack of participation in a specific filed of commerce amounted to having a direct impact on interstate commerce. In writing the decision this way he took the congressional, and largely Democratic, insistence to tell Americans what to do with their money, even when they are not spending it, and locked it away in that nasty little box known as ‘unconstitutional’.
Labeling the mandate as a tax was something the President was specific about avoiding during the creation and vote on the bill. Even after it was enacted they President and Democratic members of congress were adamant that it was not a tax, but when they went to the line the only legal way to argue it, and to save any resemblance of the mandate, was to label it just that. However, in doing so it lost that shiny aspect of a social program that could be administered by an Executive Branch organization, and was put back in the hands of Congress.
Lastly, there is the matter of the tax itself. I’ve seen the posts on social websites and heard my conservative friends gnash their teeth and scream to the heavens about how individual liberty is dead, how freedom is no longer found in the United States, and I chuckle. The issue will be revised. CNN pointed out, not 30 minutes after the decision was made, that the tax can only be challenged, by law, after it has gone into effect. That means in January of 2014, the first year the penalties, excuse me, Taxes are in place, there will be another lawsuit, another challenge, and another Supreme Court decision,
Chief Justice Roberts looked to the future on this decision, and he ruled, not as a conservative or a liberal, but as any judge should. He put the balls back in their respective courts, taking the power to create taxes away from the executive and giving it back to the legislative, and told the nation that the President would not be playing with that ball anymore. At least, not in that capacity.
UPDATE: A site I frequently visit (www.neveryetmelted.com) has a fantastic article on this and links to several other articles. I’d strongly recommend bookmarking it if you get a chance.
Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?
I thought the quote from the Avengers was appropriate here.
Two sides in Wisconsin, genuinely believing they are working for the greater good but coming from wildly different directions, engaged in a full scale brouhaha to make their point known. I’m still not certain as to who would wear the tights, but I call dibs on the Iron Man suit.
Fashion jokes aside, the fight was largely pointless, and the essence of american voters, played by Captain America in this little production, stopped the fight between two petulant powerhouses. In the end vox populi spoke loud and clear, and Gov. Walker remains in place for two more years, but has lost his majority in the State Senate.
The day-after recovery is over, the analysis is done, and we found out that 38% of voters who supported Walker came from homes that have at least one member in a union. We found out that while roughly $75 million was spent on this campaign, walker trudging up $30 million of that on his own through Super PAC donors, the real story remains that the turnout, percentage-wise, was almost identical to the election two years prior, even with a higher voter turnout.
I’m tired of the Citizens United decision being touted as the evil grandaddy and reason everyone is winning. I call BS. You can throw millions at a campaign and if the message sucks, or the candidate is less than stellar, looking at you Gingrich and Santorum, you will accomplish next to nothing except transferring wealth from donors to local businesses.
The issue with the Walker recall was that he did exactly what he said he was going to do. The politically connected unions and loyal opposition were taken aback when an elected official decides to follow through on campaign promises. Were those promises heavy handed? Some can argue as much, but these are desperate times, and the voters selected desperate measures, and thus they were delivered after much bally who and childish shenanigans by the State Senators unhappy with the legislation.
So, in response to a governor who did what he swore he would do, despite some of the blatantly childish political behavior I have seen in my life, and the result was a nationally supported recall. I don’t mean that the entire nation supported the recall, but that interests well outside the borders of Wisconsin became involved. It was no longer about just about a losing side’s dissatisfaction with being thrown out of office and then having to suffer the political fallout that comes from failing to represent the people rather than representing the interests that fill the campaign coffers.
Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…
We’ve now seen the full Circus. The major players have performed their acts. The clowns are in their car puttering off the floor, the rings are thoroughly beaten down with the prints of every elephant contending for the spotlight, and the audience is just as confused and disoriented than they were upon entering the tent. Tragic, is it not, how easily the pageantry and absurdity of the circus reflects the ebb and tide of the pre-primary seasons for the Republican party.
What we saw was a rise of individual stars who would burn out as quickly as they blazed into the spotlight leaving behind only hollow bodies in the vast expanse of the political space. Like those burned out stars, they leave husks that either disappear with time, or continue to flicker on, acting more as an irritant or pouring out continuous drivel and noxious commentary that provides nothing more to the current political discourse than a nauseating reminder that at one point a significant number of people believed them capable of winning an election for President.
No, this thirteen ring circus has done nothing for our party, and it surely has done no good for the political process. A fellow follower of politics stated that he believed this was a maturing of the party’s political savvy. A method by which the body politic separated the wheat from the chaff and would winnow our candidates down to those most deserving. I wanted to agree with him, but I had the feeling that this was too “celebrity” with the likes of Palin and Trump toting about the ever ambiguous hash of a campaign not yet announced.
I, along with a goodly number of people, look back and realize that it wasn’t about winnowing the wheat from the chaff. The process was not about locating the best candidate, nor was it about finding the best Republican to run. There was an ebb and flow to the entire affair. Someone came in, shined brighter because the harsh spotlight was on someone else, and they, by lack of close scrutiny, became the best candidate for the job by proxy. The light would shift, the audience would become enthralled with the new champion of the right, and so the cycle began anew. It was faddish in the most derogatory form of the word. The herd ran where the press led with signs highlighting word choice and bold, but ultimately mindless, plans. Catchphrases replaced worldly experience, education on policy trumped by showmanship, and knee-jerk responses became the headlines rather than the cultured response of, not those who happened to read the paper from the day before, but from those who had done this sort of thing before.
The most sickening part of the show comes from two sad players in the run of any show. There is a director, an individual who through instruction and cultivation of his actors has created the spectacle before you. In this sad and sallow case we happen to have two on hand. The litany of Tea Parties and the surprisingly quiet Republican National Committee.
The Tea Party has rushed to the center of the ring as a barker possessed of a need to upstage the existing ringmaster. It has become a monumentally disastrous initiative that has done little more than chisel away at a what little firmament there was in the base of the party. All the while the RNC, the chosen ringmaster of this show for nigh on decades now sits somberly by, not wishing to interfere or to interject itself into state level politics, having been burned or spurned by those groups in the last round of elections. The rally cry and subsequent victories of the tea party in the public eye shocked the RNC into a sort of fugue state that now threatens to undermine the organization as a whole.
We have one ringmaster who has a faint idea of what they are doing and another who appears to be asleep at the wheel, and one wonders why the field has yet to be winnowed down. I understand that are arguments to the effect that the voters must decide who is the most viable candidate, and to those arguments I will concur wholeheartedly, but that only applies if the voters are willing to decide. The day of the primaries is not the time to hop into a booth and play enie-menie-minie-mo with the candidate pictures on the touch screen. If they have been weighed and measured then the truest test comes when asking if they are found wanting. Only when the audience decides to boo one of the shows off the stage will the ringmasters even begin to pay attention. Then, and maybe then we will see some serious discussions. The time for debate is, sadly, over, and now we are to march out of the tent and to the polls to decide which elephant danced the best in the center ring. To wait for one of the performers to be shamed off stage out of their own self-interest rather than because the audience finds them unfit is a horrifying indications of how desperate the voter base is to hang on to an idol no matter how temporary.
Should we ever reach the conclusion that none of the candidates could put on a noteworthy performance and were being held up by gross expectations of the biggest player in this entire farce we are well and truly lost because “a good try” will guarantee a failure in 2012.
Old Jeffersonian 