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June 01, 2006
Peggy Noonan Thinks We Need A Third PartyShe's wrong. Has she forgotten the man she once worked for? First, her take:
The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there. The problem is one we face periodically: an unresponsive politics. For whatever reason, it occasionally occurs that the parties become united in the belief that the way things are is the way things must be, and there is no way to change it, and so we must continue doing business as usual. Despite the fact that the public is demanding a sharp break. The situation arises every ten or twenty years. It persists for a time. But it is inherently an unstable situation. And it is, ultimately, self-correcting. I wrote, a long time ago, about this. I'm speaking mostly of "liberals" here, but what I mean is the agreement among the political-media class -- whether Republican or Democrat -- that a certain position must prevail, despite the public's strong disagreement with that position. In almost all cases this bipartisan agreement on a position the public disagrees with can be categorized as the liberal one, for whatever reason. But eventually the public gets what it wants, because someone eventually comes along who realizes they can win an election by -- get this -- doing what the public would prefer him to do.
Europeans have a terrific system for managing politically-sensitive disputes: They ignore them. And, better still, they ignore the desires of those on one side of the issue entirely. In Europe, new parties are created at the drop of a hat. In the American system, however -- which is a winner-take-all system, and a loser cannot gain marginal influence by joining with other parties -- third parties are generally unsuccessful and almost always marginal. In America, a "third party" is created when someone has the balls to challenge the anti-voter consensus in one party and take over that party, installing a new pro-voter consensus. That's exactly what Noonan's old boss, Ronald Reagan did. For those of you who are too young to remember, Reagan was despised and considered borderline lunatic for championing heretical, and supposedly dangerous, positions. Seeking not detente but victory in the Cold War? Insane! Punishing criminals with long jail sentences and even the death penalty, rather than coddling them and making excuses? Troglodytic! Neanderthalic! Cutting taxes? Beefing up the military? Bombing terrorist states like Libya? The man was widely considered a mental patient. And, of course, a moron. Including by the establishment figures of his own party. John Anderson ran as a third-party candidate to prevent the maniac Reagan from getting his crazy fingers on the nuclear button. There was really only one small, insignificant base of support Reagan could rely upon: an often-overlooked special interest group called "the majority of the American public." It's not so much that we need a third party. It's that we need, as we needed in 1980, what is, for all practical purposes, a third-party movement to take over power in one of the two major parties. Any Republican who promises -- and who seems to mean it -- to radically cut the fat out of the budget, veto all bloated spending bills, and stop illegal immigration (and, frankly, slow legal immigration as well) will win the Republican primary, and will also win the general election. A Democratic maverick could do the same in theory, but not in practice. The Democratic Party is too committed to higher spending and higher immigration, both of the legal and illegal kinds. A Democratic candidate who vowed to lower spending and seal the borders could win the general election in a cakewalk; but he could never, ever win the Democratic nomination. Not so in the Republican Party. Those who endorse the current state of things are sharply at odds with the typical Republican primary voter. For a Republican primary voter, a "radical" who proposes controlling government spending and building a border wall is not "radical" or "scary" at all, but perfectly mainstream. John McCain can't win the Republican nomination because he's too committed to supporting his like-minded colleage Ted Kennedy on immigration. (He also can't win as a third-party candidate. What's his platform going to be? "John McCain: Pro Illegal Immigration, Anti Free Speech.") But a lot of potential candidates haven't strongly committed themselves to any particular position (like, say, a former mayor of New York that many swear they will never vote for). And some of them might just be smart enough to realize that the key to winning the presidency is pleasing 50 million or so American voters, and not pleasing a couple of thousand journalists and pundits. Someone we may not have heard of may just capture the Republican nomination because he actually has the guts, if you want to call it that, to do what the majority of the American people want him to do. Noonan seems to forget that, while the party establishment has great influence, it's the party voters who actually get to choose a presidential candidate. Congressmen and Bush can ignore the will of the Republican voters in 2006 if they like; they may lose control of Congress, but most of them will get to keep their seats, which is what really matters to them. There's not really much of a choice offered in these races -- you can either vote for the incumbent, or vote for the guy who will lose. But in 2008, we get a big choice. We get to pick from a half-dozen or more serious candidates. And one of them is going to figure out, as Reagan did, that the smartest politics also happens to be the smartest policy.
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The Morning Report — 12/5/24
Daily Tech News 5 December 2024 Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - December 4, 2024 [TRex] Horse Sense Cafe Quick Hits Leftwing Media "Experts" Spin Hunter Biden's Pardon By Inventing Previous Pardons That Never Happened Assassin Guns Down the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in the Middle of the Street in Alvin Bragg's Sanctuary City for Killers, NYC Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Tennessee's Anti-Transgender-Surgery-for-Children Law; Unqualified DEI Incompetents Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor Shine In Their Stupidity Dank Brandon's Bewildered African Adventure White House Once Again Turned Into Eyebleeding Gay Meth-Hallucination Nightmare by White Trash Delaware Hillbilly Biden Clan Search
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