Years ago, many political scientists in the US used to critique their rather free flowing party system for not offering voters a definite programmatic contest. In post-war normative democratic theory, parties were seen as able to organise and coalesce a range of interests and measures into a competing platforms which would enable citizens to make a rational choice in voting.
Of course, now that one of the two parties has started to act much more like the disciplined parliamentary caucuses found in Westminster democracies, not everyone is so enamoured of this notion.
But it’s interesting to see a bit of momentum building for a Question Time in the US, which would represent a distinctly different relation between the executive and legislature.
I wonder, though, whether many of its proponents have taken the time to watch Australia’s Question Time, or Britain’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
As a number of prominent Australian climate change scientists hit back at the increasing propensity of elements of the media and some politicians to engage in very high profile climate change denialism, no matter how discredited the ‘arguments’ they put forward are, it’s worth considering the broader phenomenon of right wing irrationality. In the United States, recent polling commissioned by Markos Moulitsas on the prevalence of ‘Birther’ beliefs has disclosed that a third of Republicans are convinced that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. As John Quiggin points out, there’s considerable overlap between the Birthers and the climate change skeptics and/or denialists.
Writing in The Guardian, Michael Tomasky considers:
the degree to which, during the Obama era, American conservatism – already fiercely ideological and obstructionist, operating according to sets of “facts” produced and paid for by oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other corporate interests – has contrived to go completely barmy.
And the rhetoric of the Republicans often reflects the wider themes of the wingnut blogosphere and talk back radio:
Healthcare is socialism. Saving the auto industry is liberal fascism. Trying to halt global warming is both. Negotiating with Iran – I didn’t even get to foreign policy – is proof that Obama wants to obliterate the US. And to top it all off, the Great Obliterator isn’t even a citizen.
Tomasky implies that UK citizens are lucky that total lunacy hasn’t yet become mainstream in British conservative politics. I’m not so sure we can say the same in Australia. What lies behind all this? I mean, you can trace particular forms of irrationality to causal factors – for instance, the close relationship between polluter interests and climate change denialism. But what allows all this madness to find a receptive (albeit minority) audience? Speculate away!
Update: John Quiggin launches a “Sane Republican Hunt”.
The darling of the libertarians, Ron Paul, (and to be fair there were some lefties who flirted with his candidacy too) has come out of the closet post-election as a New World Order conspiracy theorist – World Government is Obama’s secret agenda!
I’m not sure what it is about the dynamic of this campaign, but I haven’t turned my mind to what will happen to the GOP if the McCain/Palin ticket loses. I’m not sure all that many others have either, outside the backwoods of the right wing blogosphere where a lot have written off McCain and are feverishly discussing the 2012 ticket. There’s certainly been a fair bit of speculation around about the Dems’ future if Obama/Biden lose, and maybe all this is a reflection of the residue of the well known Democratic habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or a fear that while the uber negative campaigning so far doesn’t appear to have got much traction, that might just shift as we come closer to the election itself (which could also be why there’s been so much focus on Obama’s present level of support being “locked in” through early voting while he’s got momentum and on voter registration).
But, while the possibility that the Republicans could win can’t absolutely be excluded, it certainly is worthwhile posing the question of what happens if they do in fact lose.
Jonathan Freedland is one who has been thinking about where the GOP goes under an Obama presidency, and he makes quite an interesting case that Sarah Palin could position herself as a potential 2012 frontrunner. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, Palin’s selection – among all the other obvious reasons – was a reflection of the failure of the “conservative movement” to produce a convincing Presidential candidate in the first place. One of the real stories of the swing away from the Republicans is the exhaustion and fracturing of many of the activist factions that were on a roll from the late 90s until just a few years ago. Secondly, it might explain some of the stories about friction between McCain himself and Palin over her tactics in this race recently.
Gary Sauer-Thompson has a really good point to make about the way that Colin Powell has justified his decision to endorse Barack Obama:
Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press was based on a form of public political reasoning reasoning that addresses issues not personalities, and engages in analysis not demonization. It is a thoroughgoing critique of McCain’s issue-free, fear-mongering campaign and a rejection of the politics of scapegoating and bullying that have defined the Bush years.
As Sauer-Thompson observes, Powell’s response to the constant invocation of Obama’s “Muslim” middle name is also equally as significant (and there can just be no doubt that the McCain campaign’s linking of Obama to “terrorists” is meant to reinforce such suspicions – which have been put about all year by the noise machine). Powell has joined an increasing number of prominent moderate Republicans – such as Susan Eisenhower and Lincoln Chaffee, to name only a few, who have rejected the political tactics of division and emnity which have characterised recent GOP campaigns. While the wingnuts would no doubt live to shriek another day under an Obama presidency, a popular rejection of the poisonous culture wars would be a very significant event indeed.
With the news that John McCain has now hit 50% in the Gallup poll, opening up a 4 point lead over Barack Obama, I thought it might be worth mentioning a few cautions about interpreting both American polls and the race as a whole – because there are significant differences from Australian elections folks don’t always take into account.
(1) Polling is much less reliable in the US than in Australia because of the voluntary voting factor. Polls tend to try to sample either registered voters or use various metrics to sample those whom they predict will vote, but all this is quite difficult and it’s worth remembering that in most states, registration is open until October. In some states you can register on voting day itself. So one result of this is often significant disagreement between various polls, which you can see in spades at the moment. But one conclusion you can draw is that there’s a lot of volatility around at the moment. Many voters won’t make up their minds til after the various debates, and some won’t until Election Day itself, and the same for whether to vote at all. The Gallup tracking poll I mentioned actually gives us two numbers – 50/46 to McCain among registered voters and a much bigger gap of 54/44 among likely voters.
(2) The Presidential election is not a national election. It’s the aggregate of 50 state elections which are more or less important depending on the number of electoral college votes each state has and whether they’re hotly contested or not. So national polls might be misleading, although they can show where the momentum is. For instance, at the moment, while the Gallup poll shows McCain with either a slim or a huge lead, Republican strategists have the McCain/Palin ticket behind or at par in most of the swing states.
…could John McCain have selected for his running-mate a mid-40s former small-town mayor and State Governor for 20 months, loudly insist such a person is the best available Republican VP – and avoid gales of laughter and general ridicule?
Why then are so many people falling over themselves to make po-faced remarks that, oh, well, yes, *cough, cough*, of course Steve Sarah is the perfect candidate – that ol’ maverick magic – and anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously being sexist…
As a bit of a follow up to the discussion on this post of the familial scandals confected or exploited about GOP Vice-Presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, here’s two excellent and thought provoking pieces. First, Feminist Philosophers asks why folks might be more interested in all this stuff than, well, actual issues:
Why is the front page of the NY Times full of Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy and New Orleans near miss, when the second major political convention is about to start and there are extremely important issues facing the United States about health care, clean energy, poverty and others?
She points to the importance of citizens – and by implication bloggers – trying to refocus debate on the issues, and on the necessity of a critical education in cultivating habits of mind which place the emphasis where it should be.
Secondly, the uniformly fantabulous Rebecca Traister at Salon writes:
How we got from the dispiriting political and ideological record of Sarah Palin — that she is adamantly pro-life and anti-gay marriage, that she is a lifetime member of the NRA, that she has no foreign policy experience and supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools — to the uterine activity of her family, makes perfect, human sense: Who wants to talk about boring policy when we can talk about teens and sex and pregnancy?
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
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