Why hello readers! It's been a while since you’ve heard from me, has it not? Well I’m back from my hiatus partly because I was inspired by the good stuff I saw coming out of my friends over at The Outlaw & The Elitist, partly due to having something to say, and mostly out of boredom.
Speaking of things I have to say…
I’d like to discussed how weirded out I am by the Tea Party. Not the Boston one. No, no, the Stupid one (that being their state-of-mind, not staging location). I think most people would agree that the group is a little strange to say the least, a bit crazy to put it mildly, and really f**king stupid to be accurate. However, it’s not really that I’m worried about them taking over the government. Even if they did, I'm not threatening to leave the country and go to Canada—much more likely I would grumble about it and go on with life. No, mostly I'm just perplexed by them, and a little weirded out. Perplexed by their beliefs, which I probably wont get into here, and weirded out by what they could do.
Let me explain.
So say all the Tea Party candidates win their republican primaries. On the one hand, this will move the Republican Party so far out to the right, I have a hard time seeing them as being electable to the moderate general public at all. On the other hand, what would happen if they did? Now--other than making me sobbingly laugh at my long held belief that through democracy, the best leaders will rise up and lead us--this might cripple the Republican Party more than George W. ever could have, in the long-term. And maybe even (God, I can’t believe I’m suggesting this) be good for the country. Or it will do absolutely nothing (the latter being most likely).
How’s that, you say?????
Well, I imagine it would be like this: at the moment, we have 1 “tea partier” in the Senate (1% of the vote) and 52 in the House (11.9%). Now as much as I would like to tell you how many are currently running for office and have won primaries, there doesn’t seem to be a complete list that compiles that information. The best I’ve been able to find is that there are 3 senatorial hopefuls, and possibly 2 for the house (this from diligent Wikipedia research). So on the one hand that would triple their voting power in the Senate (*snicker* wow impressive) and push them all the way to having 12% of the vote in the House. Again not exactly awe-inspiring.
It’s pretty clear where I came up with the idea that it would have basically no effect on our everyday lives (unless you are represented by these people, in which case, I feel for you—I'm from Texas), but how could I envision it hurting the GOP or being good for the Nation? Basically, the independence this group exerts on the GOP does two things:
First (and more in the foreground) it denies them reliable, controllable members of Congress. Sure they may share positions on many of the issues likely to come up, but when aiming to build a party consensus or work deals with the opposition (i.e. the Democrats), these TPers will remember their elections and how the party organization did not want or particularly support them. They would be more likely to take orders directly from Glenn Beck and the friendly foxes on Fox and Friends than from the GOP Whip. This will weaken party, as--though we laughed at their numbers in the last paragraph--3 Senators and 54 Congressmen are nothing to sneeze at. Even if the Republicans captured the majority in both houses, they would at best be left with the situation the Democrats have recently been living through, and at least the Blue Dogs have some loyalty to their party leadership (to needlessly continue this analogy, the party ‘publicans would be more like support/money-starved wolves, just as likely to bite their master’s hand as that of their foe).
Secondly, this independence could lead to them breaking away from the GOP completely. This would be actually a tremendous step forward for our political system, as there have only been 152 elected congressmen (31 Senators, 111 Representatives) not affiliated with a major party since the end of Reconstruction that number rising to 209 if they make all the gains they hope for in this cycle and then leave the GOP. That means, that the last few election cycles would have seen the election of 27% of the "new" number of independents and an increase of 37% on the historical one--an incredible gain when taken all at once. What I'm saying is that this could actually spell the beginning of a multi-party system in The United States.
While you’ll never find a more committed democrat in the country, I will also readily admit that a multi-party system based on working together and coalitions just seems like a nicer, healthier, and more fair way to govern a country. So you can see, I hope, as to why this just comes off as a weird situation to me. I know they're wrong and stupid and they mean to do terrible things if they get into power, it's just... well, I think they may accidentally also do good things for us. In the longrun. The very, very, very, verrrrry longrun. And while I still think that those *ssholes in the Tea Party should never be allowed close to law-writing quill pens, if they are able to get America into the multi-party spirit, well… I’ll try to keep my grumbling down to at least a manageable level.
Signing off, and, it’s good to be back!
No comments:
Post a Comment