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June 28, 2005
Eyes On The Prize?
Mitch Evans writing in Human Events Online surveys evidence of the fault lines running through the Democratic party:
The assault by liberal advocacy groups on Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, for his trimming of the state healthcare behemoth known as TennCare has sent out a message to all Red State governors eyeing the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: You can’t pragmatically address your state’s problems and get away with it.
I'm very interested in the Dem's ongoing internal struggle between the aging Vietnam war radicals and those who want to return the party to the ideas of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy.
But as our Democratic friends will be quick to point out, the Republicans also include a faction with an idealogical hair-trigger: the so called religious right. As Robert Novak recently reported, Alberto Gonzales could be GWB's first choice as a SCOTUS nominee; but because of his previous record as a Texas Supreme Court justice, Gonzales might well alienate those to whom the abortion issue is central, which would include most of those with a religious connection to the Republican party.
So the question, as ever, remains: which faction has the most influence, the most votes, and the most irrationality? By irrationality I mean the practice of voting against one's party (and thus for the opposition) solely because of a narrow ideological postion.
I happen to think that the presumed fanaticism and motives of the "religious right" has been exaggerated to a great degree by the left, and amplified by their reliable friends in the MSM.
But the coming political battles are exceedingly complex equations with many variables, and only one result. I think focusing too much on just one of those variables can backfire.
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Comments
I think that's quite true. Personally, I see the faultlines in the Republican Party showing much more prominently, since they're the party in power and are under pressure to perform.
Posted by: Fargus at June 29, 2005 06:24 AM
