I’m a Liar
Maybe you’re fond of speaking of the “corporate duopoly” of American politics– and I admit that the phrase does roll nicely off the tongue. Or maybe you like to imagine that there’s a groundswell of hundreds of millions of people around the globe who believe that Kerry and Bush are just two different brands of detergent, even though actual polls show wide margins of support for Kerry in other nations. Or maybe you just think it’s smart, cool, and alternative to dismiss both guys as “millionaires” or “Skull and Bones men,” because you know better than to buy into “the system.”
I could never quite pull the “smart, cool, and alternative” charade off. You can see that by my reaction over here. This thus makes moot the very name of this blog. Originally, the phrase at the top of the page was “The 2004 campaign as though it doesn’t matter. That didn’t work. Kerry has some advantages, apart from “Not Bush”. Bush has some disadvantages. (Sometimes I have this tendency to poo-poo the caricature as not correct, but go back and compare the 2000 SNL sketch where a hypoethetical Bush cries out “This is Hard” with the debate performance where he says “This is Hard”.) Bush looks worse than he did four years ago. Kerry looks better than Gore (and, need I remind you, Lieberman) looked four years ago. If some damnable basic structural items of our curious government persist due Kerry’s basic limitations or our flawed society or the ever-mystical “Shadow Government”… just remember that just because you voted for the man, doesn’t mean that you have to be a Kerry Syncoprant, and doesn’t mean that you have to stick yourself in a permanent “Elephant versus Donkey” state of mind. (That’s Limbaugh’s job — to always parlay the current RNC line whole-sale.) And you can still be smarmy about these things.
(Gore still puzzles me, but that’s another digression altogether.)
(If I could find the “comment” from early on in the blog calling herself a “60 or 70-something year old” regular reader, asking “You’re supporting Bush?” I’d place it here.)
When I saw that comment, I knew I had to change the saying at the top.
This looks like a fairly decent account of what’s wrong with the current Republican Party. Not the full picture, but a large chunk of it.
What turned out to be the remedy for the Democratic Party’s malaise: the DLC. Defendable as a force within the Democratic Party and one of several clearinghouses of ideas. As the driving force for the party, and as an enemy of any other faction, it becomes deplorable and obnoxious in its demands of ideological adherance. Note their attacks on Howard Dean during the primary, a man who spent the 1990s as one of their stars. (And, I might add after taking a good look at Dean’s stewardship as governor, a good one. The DLC’s current cast of stars… are pathetic.)
Bill Clinton gets a mixed review in relation with what he did with the DLC. At any rate, the late-night radio host on KGO offers good advice to people who call complaining about Clinton: “Don’t vote for that clown. If you see him on the ballot, skip right over him, and vote for JOHN KERRY..”)
But, I see what the future of the Republican Party would look like with a successful election-outcome. It’s Tom Coburn, bravely fighting the threat of Lesbians in Southeast Oklahoma. It’s Jim DeMint, making sure there are no single-mother parents teaching in our schools. It’s the continued power-consolidation of the corrupt Tom DeLay. And it’s the Orwellian distance away from reality of the Bush Administration. [And, no matter what, Judith Miller will continue in her role for the Party… assuming she doesn’t end in prison for “contempt of court” as her role in the Vallerie Plame incident is investigated. Just consider her a part of the opposition party, and a part of the government, along with large chunks of what we don’t normally think of as “government”.]
The idea is to break that, and help create two better parties.
Michael J Fox has endorsed Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, reasons make a heck of a lot of sense: for the cause of stem-cell research, it’s best to have a bi-partisan coalition. Not that I’ll herald the greatness of Arlen Specter, one of any number of political hacks who’ll adjust themselves to fit the wind, but… the Club for Growth and Conservative Grassroots everywhere wanted to knock him out and replace him with someone fitting their, quote-in-quote, “kleptomaniac Contra-funding retreads, neo-segregationists associated with Confederate outlets like Southern Partisan magazine and the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Christian fundamentalist jihadists who believe themselves to be the instruments of God” persuasion.
“Our” version of the enemy-in-our midst (if you assume we’re all Democrats, and I’m not entirely — I’d be comfortable with a certain couple of types of Republicans in the White House) be Joseph Lieberman, giving us the worst aspects of Scoop Jackson, Bill Clinton, and the 1980s version of Al and Tipper Gore. (The Democratic figure-head for the “Committee on Present Danger”.) I recomment not voting for him. (And Note that his White House bid got nowhere.)
Should he disappear from the Senate, he’d remain there in the policy debates somewhere and somehow. Interesting territory.