Party Lines
Not a day goes by lately when you don’t read some article about how one party or the other lacks a consistent message. The charge is often leveled at Democrats, but nearly as often of late it’s another flavor of the same charge “Republicans Break Ranks.”
I propose that this is the problem with politics in America. No, not the breaking of ranks, or the lacking of consistency of message, but the belief (which seems to be nearly universal) that there SHOULD be a unity of message and of action.
Party line is a horrible thing, because it removes any ability for the voters to know where a candidate actually stands on an issue. When a Republican or a Democrat stands up and espouses the view common to their party, one is left to wonder whether it’s a talking point or an actual, deeply held belief by the candidate.
Case in point: abortion. Nearly everyone in one of the major parties pays lip service to the idea that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances and is immoral, etc. Nearly everyone in the other major party talks up the idea that any limitation on abortion is tantamount to putting women into slavery and expecting them to go back to being barefoot and pregnant, serving their husband in all things.
Where are the pols who don’t have a definite opinion? Where are the ones who, like most people I know, see the world in shades of gray instead of black and white? The ones who struggle with the idea that on the one hand abortion is not a positive thing and should be limited, but on the other hand that perhaps this is not an area where one person’s morality should be allowed to force another person’s actions?
When we expect our leaders to speak with one voice, we ignore that different people have different strengths and dissent is a good thing, making sure all sides of an issue are considered before action is taken.
I, for one, am GLAD that on certain issues the Democrats don’t have a consistent message. I hope the Republicans can join them. Then we can have honest and real debate in this country, and we can stop pretending that everyone falls neatly into one of two camps.
Who says that if I’m against the death penalty I also have to be in favor of tax and spend? Who says that if I’m Christian I also have to be for the war? What happened to individuals?
Our country will be much better off when we stop electing parties and start electing people, and when we can have an honest weighing of the values at hand in determining which candidate to vote for.
Oh, and one more thing about party lines: They’re often entirely political. Most Republicans know that one of the worst things that could happen to their party is for abortion to actually be made illegal. As long as we have party lines, that’s a big one that resonates with a lot of America. Take it out of the mix and most Americans are liberal. Really. Read the polls on issues, when the issues are presented without any labels like “Liberal” or “Conservative”, the majority sides with the traditionally “liberal” view point on almost all issues except abortion, which is nearly 50/50. And so many Republicans will posture about making abortion illegal, but they know that if they actually succeeded in doing so, they’d lose their one strongest weapon while handing the energy of the indignant fringe to the Democratic party, who could now garner huge support from the “pro choice” crowd.
What it comes down to is when a person asks me for my vote, I want to be able to examine their list of beliefs, throw out the issues I don’t really care about, and then see how many of the issues I DO care about are on the candidate’s issues list as well, and how well his or her opinion matches mine. As long as what I get out of each candidate is party line, that’s very hard to do.
For example, I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, happy with the Democratic party right now. But it’s no secret to anyone that I think President Bush is the worst President in living memory, and has done more damage (and more lasting damage) to the country than Osama bin Laden did on 9/11. So right now, my number one issue is fixing the damage, to our finances, to our reputation and to our security that has been foisted on us by this Administration. I’m sure there are any number of Republicans who could do the job, but rare is the one of them who will even admit there is a problem.
Heck, John McCain, a man I once respected as an honest voice in a dishonest game, seems to have decided that playing nice with the party is more important than having principles. To hear him talk these days, things are going swimmingly over in Iraq, and it’s absolutely right and proper that we’re there. I’m sorry, Mr. McCain, but you just lost my vote if you run again.
As any psychologist, the first step to solving any problem is to admit you HAVE a problem. Talking points, party line and “consistent message” merely gives me the (probably false) impression that the entire Republican party doesn’t realize anything is wrong.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 12/12/2005 01:25:00 AM
6 Comments:
You state that if abortion is taken out of the debate that most Americans are liberal on most issues. Could you list the issues that you are talking about, because it seems to me that most Americans live their lives as conservatives ie personal finances, religious convictions, marriage, familial relationships, etc.
Monday, December 12, 2005 9:07:00 AM
I will have to find the surveys in question. I thought that was sort of sideways to the point of the post (which is that I think politicians thinking for themselves and not based on a party line is a good goal to strive towards), and so I didn't take the time to look it up.
However, just to discuss the issues you brought up:
Personal finances, I know very few people who are fiscally conservative. More people SHOULD be, but a true fiscal conservative doesn't live his or her life on credit. It seems the number of my co-workers who fully fund their 401(k) (like I do) and fully pay off all of their debt except for mortgate each month (like I do) is pretty low.
I strongly disagree with your implication that religious convictions are conservative, even if the Republican party has successfully managed to convince people that they are. Just consider our last two Presidents. Clinton, a liberal, attended church every Sunday. When he couldn't get to his own in Little Rock or his adopted one in Washington, he found a local one. Bush, by all reports, only attends church when it's politically expedient to be seen in a church. And by the way, in terms of the Christian religion, can you honestly say that the attitude towards the poor so prevalent among conservatives is at all consistent with the teachings of Jesus?
Marriage isn't a liberal or conservative issue (unless you meant gay marriage). Last I checked, the statistics for divorce are about the same for Democrats and Republicans.
Similarly, I don't think it's fair to say that family relationships are conservative issues. TRADITIONAL family relationships (expecting the wife to stay at home, tend the children, and defer to her husband in all things) tends to be more a conservative than a liberal viewpoint, but I think it's the conservative's telling of the liberal viewpoint, rather than the actual liberal viewpoint, which espouses doing away with the family unit. Liberals just tend to try to be more tolerant of alternate arrangements, so long as those arrangements aren't harmful to any children involved.
But anyway, I'll spend some time this evening trying to look up the studies I've read that indicate that most Americans hold liberal values, when they aren't told that the values they're being asked about are liberal.
Liam.
Monday, December 12, 2005 10:20:00 AM
I'm finally getting some time to try to find links to the polls I've read linking the majority of people with liberal attitudes, when the term "liberal" is not used.
I'll probably be posting several things. The first promising reference I found is here. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to cite the source of the information, but since it meshes with what I remember reading, let me quote a few key points:
"According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate. Those numbers mean that liberal-leaning Democrats are far more dependent than conservatively inclined Republicans on alliances with the political center.”
-- Source, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne
But who is the actual median voter in America? At this moment in history, that voter is pro-choice, wants to increase the minimum wage, favors strong environmental protections, likes gun control, thinks corporations have too much power and that the rich get away with not paying their fair share in taxes, believes the Iraq War was a mistake, wants a foreign policy centered on diplomacy and strong alliances, and favors civil unions for gays and lesbians. Yet despite all this, those voters identify themselves as "moderate."
-- Source, National Election Studies surveys.
(Read the entire text, it’s worth reading, and I may have missed a source attribution or two).
I’ll see if I can find any more definitive sources.
Liam.
Monday, December 12, 2005 11:40:00 PM
In other words, the mediam voter is economically illiterate.
Monday, December 12, 2005 11:48:00 PM
Ah, here we go, a survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted about a year ago.
Some of the findings:
55% of respondents oppose making abortion more difficult for a woman to obtain. Only 36% favor.
Priority in stem cell research, 56% say conducting research that may result in new cures, only 32% said not destroying potential life.
69% feel outsourcing jobs is bad for the economy, only 22% felt it was good.
59% rated the U.N. favorably, only 32% rated it unfavorably.
65% favor Government health insurance for all, even if it means a tax increase. Only 30% oppose.
86% favor raising the Minimum Wage, only 12% oppose.
On Bush’s Tax Cuts, 25% felt all tax cuts should be repealed, 35% felt the tax cuts for the wealthy should be repealed. Only 28% felt that all of the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent.
61% favor reducing the budget deficit over cutting taxes. 32% favored cutting taxes.
Now, to be fair, there are a few items in the survey which slant the traditional conservative way, and quite a few that I didn’t list because the results were pretty close to 50/50 (among those who answered) such as 39% feeling the Patriot Act goes too far, while 33% feel it is a necessary tool. Also, 45% said torture is sometimes necessary, while 51% felt it was rarely or never justified. I’ve also ignored a few of the items which I don’t believe are liberal/conservative issues, like opinion of Muslims.
But based on the results of this survey, the majority opinion favors the “pro choice” side, favors stem cell research over protecting fetal cells, favors Government health insurance for all, favors increasing the Minimum Wage, opposed at least some tax cuts, particularly when the tax cuts conflict with reducing our budget deficit. This shows majority support for many of the pillars of the so-called liberal agenda.
Liam.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 12:03:00 AM
Upon what do you base your statement, Ralph? Care to elaborate?
Oh, and you might think twice about using words like "illiterate" four words after typing the non-word "mediam." The word is “median.”
[The rest of this comment is for anyone who would like more information on what “median” means and how it differs from “average”. If you already know, or couldn’t care less, feel free to stop reading now.]
For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the word median, in statistics there are three main ways of attempting to determine the “middle” value: Mean, Median and Mode.
Mean is what we often call average. You calculate it by adding all values together and dividing by the number of values. So if you have values (in ascending order) of 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7 and 10, the mean is 3.8 (the sum of the numbers is 38, divided by the count of values, which is 10).
Median is the middle number, or the average of the two if the result set contains and even number. So in the above set, the median is 3 (throw away the outlying numbers 1, 2, 2, 2 from the beginning, 4, 4, 7, 10 from the end, the result is 3, 3, which averages to 3).
Mode is the value that occurs the most often. So using the same sample data set, 2 would be the mode, since 2 shows up three times, while 3 and 4 show up twice, and 1, 7 and 10 each show up only once.
Median is generally used over mean when dealing with people, because it finds the spot at which exactly half of the population is to either direction. Because Mean (or average) is subject to outlying values, it is perfectly possible for 95% of the population to be below average, even though it sounds wrong. Imagine 100 people, 95 of whom make between 25 and 35 thousand dollars per year in salary. Imagine the last 5 make between 50 and 100 million per year. The average is going to be well over 35 thousand dollars per year, in fact it’s going to be over 2.5 million per year. Therefore, 95% of the population is “below average” salary-wise. On the other hand, it is never possible to have anything other than 50% below or above the median (except of course for the person who falls exactly at the median).
Which is probably much more of a statistics lesson than anyone here wanted, but I know it can be confusing, so I thought a bit of a lesson might be in order.
Liam.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005 12:24:00 AM
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