The Republican’s Dilemma

There are really two elections for president. The first election gets you nominated. The second gets you elected. They are very different elections with a very different electorate.

The 2012 presidential election is a long way off. There’s no way to know who the candidates will be (though President Obama as the Democratic nominee seems certain). The Republicans have a problem.

OK–first things first. Yes, I am a registered Democrat and probably more liberal than most. In that regard what I’m about to tell you is delicious.

However, this isn’t going to be a heavily partisan post. The Republican dilemma is real and the Republican leadership knows it.

There are really two elections for president. The first election gets you nominated. The second gets you elected. They are very different elections with a very different electorate.

Primaries attract less participation. Most people feel they’re not that important. That concentrates power in those who are motivated–often with narrowly defined issues that are very important to few.

Simply put you need to be farther right to win the Republican nomination than to win the general election. You need to be farther left to be nominated by the Democrats.

Today that motivated far-right wing of the Republican Party is the Tea Party. From where I sit they seem intransigent in their positions.

That’s why Mitt Romney has been forced to run away from moderate programs he endorsed while the Massachusetts governor. The same seems to be happening with Tim Pawlenty who was governor in Minnesota.

True moderates are scared to run because conciliatory talk about budget compromises or social programs will surely bring out “friendly fire” from the right! It’s already happened to Newt Gingrich!

Though the far right needs to be courted to get the nomination they really aren’t as necessary in the general election. It’s not as if these disappointed right-wingers will ditch a moderate Republican to vote to re-elect President Obama.

Candidates are left with a “Hobson’s Choice.”

Like I said, the election is a long way off. I’ll be interested in seeing how the Republicans intend to extricate themselves from this trap of their own making.

Is “The American Game” Rigged?

Don’t use me to make your boyfriend jealous.

I am seldom as profoundly affected by an op-ed piece as I was by Frank Rich in Sunday’s NY Times.

What the Great Recession has crystallized is a larger syndrome that Obama tapped into during the campaign. It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that, as the president typically put it a month after his inauguration, the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” He promised to smite them.

No president can do that alone, let alone in six months. To make Obama’s goal more quixotic, the ailment that he diagnosed is far bigger than Washington and often beyond politics’ domain. What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media.

Though President Obama was elected by appealing to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, liberals are now marginalized on the edge. With no one farther left Obama has shifted farther right knowing we’ve no place else to go.

I understand this move to the center as a strategy, but I am left feeling unclean and used. Don’t use me to make your boyfriend jealous.

It’s not just health care that has me bugged. It’s all sorts of national security issues reaching back to policies of the Bush administration that need to be unwound.

To me liberalism is just another name for idealism. Good deeds should be rewarded. Bad deeds should be punished. Governmental rules should encourage good behavior. We continue to do the opposite.

President Obama was nominated and then elected heavily on the backs of people who feel as I do–and he himself made promises to that effect.

There is no satisfaction in this airing of my angst.

Politics About To Get Even Dirtier

During every recent election cycle there has been kvetching about how dirty politics has become. This, by the way, is a non-partisan dig. Both of our major political parties have been willing participants in mud related activities.

Sadly, negative advertising works in politics. It might work elsewhere, but we consider ourselves too sophisticated a society to put up with “Toyota sucks” commercials, paid for by GM.

As bad as it’s been, there’s been some restraint, mainly because those in charge have been ‘organizational’ people. You don’t get anywhere in any organization by being snippy and anti-social 100% of the time. People who fit in rise in organizations.

Now, the voice of politics might be the voice of bloggers&#185 – people who can stay home, by themselves, with none of the interpersonal requirements an office brings. Bring on the vitriol.

Here in Connecticut, Ned Lamont’s campaign for US Senate would be nowhere without the support of political bloggers. Howard Dean’s ill fated run for president was mounted on the backs of the blogging community. Dan Rather might still be anchoring the CBS Evening News, but for bloggers.

Adam Cohen, on this morning’s New York Times editorial page, talked about how computers and the Internet are making it possible for 15 year olds to swing elections. He was referring to this video, which has been viewed 30,000 times already (there are at least two versions on youtube.com). When was the last time you expressed your views to 30,000 strangers (and growing)?

Ava Lowery’s video was originally shown at the “YearlyKos,” the ‘political convention’ of liberal bloggers held last week in Las Vegas.

The cutting-edge discussions at YearlyKos were about the intersection of technology and politics. Bloggers sketched out their plans for shaping news in upcoming elections. The liberal political-action group Democracy for America gave a primer on turning online activism into offline activism, by developing networks of supporters and sending out “action alerts” to get them to contribute money and volunteer for campaigns and causes. The Participatory Culture Foundation, a nonprofit group, led a workshop on how ordinary people can make political videos and distribute them over the Internet.

We enter an era where partisans, with little restraint and powerful tools, will control the noise – if not the conversation. The technology seems to be an equal opportunity enabler (though Cohen felt the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would benefit most).

It would be a shame to think, as 2006 and then 2008’s political ads get going, what we’ve just been through were the good old days.

&#185 – Geoff, are you talking about yourself? To a certain extent, as this blog is primarily done while I’m by myself, with no outside consultation. There is no safety on my trigger, other than me.

Often I censor myself. That’s probably because of 35+ years of broadcasting live. Which bloggers have that experience?