Category Archives: Public opinion

Keeping the ‘Un’ in ‘Unparty’

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A comment by GS Gantt deserves a prominent reply, so I’m making a separate post of it. He wrote, in part:

Your "UNPARTY" idea has merit in that it would be in opposition to
the Democrats and Republicans, such opposition being desperately
needed. But I’m sure you know full well how terribly difficult and
expensive it would be to actually create a "third party". Besides, the
Dems/Repubs would fight this vehemently and they would probably win.
Incumbency plus money equals POWER!, and they’ve got all three.

If you’re serious (and I don’t think you are), why not pursue the
only option that has a chance of unseating the career politicians? This
would be the WRITE-IN campaign vote. Such an option would require
nowhere near the money or politics it would take to actually create a
real third party.

Mr. Gantt, I’m not sure what you mean by "serious." I’m as serious as a crutch about the need for alternatives to the current situation. My job is to throw out the ideas — and have fun doing so when I can — and hope some of them will take root and lead to action.

I’d love to see somebody run for office on the Unparty ticket. It would be really interesting to see how the public reacts. Personally, I’m hopeful, given the statistics in a recent David Brooks column. He wrote that a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that only 24 percent of Americans see the Republicans as representing their priorities, and only 26 percent see Democrats that way.

That leaves 50 percent for us to work with. None of that stuff about money and organization worries me — let the actual political parties worry about that. This is about the power of an idea, which can be like a mustard seed.

And the idea is that parties don’t matter. People matter. Ideas matter. The good of the country, and of the whole world, matter. Doing the right, smart, practical thing for the greater good matters. But parties, and ridiculously abused terms such as "liberal" and "conservative," do not.

It doesn’t matter whether a new party comes into being, as long as the grip of the other two is loosened, and people see beyond the limits of partisanship. Then the smart ideas — rather than the politically correct dogmas of right or left — will come to the fore, people who advocate them will be elected, and the country and the world will be better off.

How’s that for an Unparty manifesto? Or the beginning of one, anyway…

Another shaky start for Green Diamond

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What was the biggest mistake that the backers of Green Diamond made last time around, in terms of their ability to win over the people of the Midlands to their cause?

It was being mysterious.

They came in and announced that they were going to build something really exciting — a billion-dollar "city within a city" on undeveloped land within minutes of downtown — and then clammed up, for months and months on end. They spent that time trying to line up everyone of influence in the community that they could get on their side before telling the rest of us the particulars of their plan.

This created suspicion, and gave those inclined to oppose plenty of time to get organized before the unveiling. And by the time of the big presentation, the promoters had lost much of the community already.

So some folks are going to try again. This time, Greenville developer Bob Hughes is taking the lead, at the behest of…

Well, he’s not saying at whose behest.

This is not an auspicious beginning.

 

Attention, District 5 voters!

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Opponents of Tuesday’s referendum on whether to let Lexington-Richland School
District 5 borrow $131 million needed to build new schools think they smell a
rat: They shrug off the district’s insistence that the bond issue will not
increase the taxes they pay for capital debt service, saying their taxes for
operating these new schools will go up.

Typical of this point of view is Don Carlson of
Chapin, who was quoted in today’s lead news story as saying:

"Unless these new buildings plan on heating, cooling, feeding,
supplying and teaching these students all by themselves, you can bet … your
tax bill is going to see an increase."

For Mr. Carlson and
like-minded voters in the district, I have the following three points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  2. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.
  3. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway.

OK, so I’m being a
little facetious. Actually I only have two serious points to
make:

  1. Your taxes for
    that were going up anyway, because the school-aged population of the
    district is growing at a rate of 500 to 600 kids a year, and the district has to
    pay to educate them somewhere, somehow.

  2. The real issue in
    this referendum is whether you’d rather those taxes be spent entirely on paying
    teachers and operating the classrooms in new schools that will be assets to the
    community for generations to come, or spend a large chunk of that operating
    money — which would otherwise have gone into the classroom — on mobile
    classrooms that depreciate the moment they are placed on the grounds of
    increasingly overcrowded, less-excellent schools.

That’s the choice
before you: Whether to spend your increased taxes for operations wisely or
foolishly. A "yes" vote is for the wise option.

In the interest of
full disclosure, there are two ways that your property taxes might not go up to
pay for school operations. One is that you just let one of the best districts in
the state go to pot, and watch your property values fall like a rock along with
the quality of the schools. The second is that legislators come up with a better
way to pay for school operations. That could happen, but there are a lot of
variables between the talk going on at this moment and an actual new school
financing system.

Jumping the gun

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The sides in the culture war that is smothering America’s judicial selection process couldn’t wait to get started fighting over the nomination of Samuel Alito. The sooner you attack, the sooner the other side attacks back, the sooner everybody gets really ticked off, and the more money you can raise, so you can pay your advocacy group’s staff, so you can keep on attacking, so … well, you getAlito2_1 the idea.

Anyway, the prize for being the first out of the gate this time — judging by nothing more reliable than my e-mail — was the ever-feisty People for the American Way. President Bush announced his new nomination at 8 a.m. The "American Way" folks couldn’t wait that long. My first release from them came in at 7:58. Either that, or 6:58. (I’m not sure whether my e-mail had switched over to standard time yet, since my desktop didn’t ask my permission to make that move until a couple of hours later.)

Anyway, the release proclaimed, in all capitals,

BUSH PUTS DEMANDS OF FAR-RIGHT ABOVE INTERESTS OF AMERICANS WITH HIGH COURT NOMINATION OF RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST ALITO

No point in throat-clearing or small talk. Might as well get to screaming right off the bat.

The same group weighed in again a couple of hours later. It wasn’t until a few minutes after that that the second party was heard from. At 10:04, Jim DeMint declared that:

Judge Alito is one of the most respected judges in America. His constitutional credentials are unquestionable and his judicial philosophy is verifiable…. In 1990, Judge Alito was unanimously confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate because he commanded respect across party lines. Now that he has been nominated to the Supreme Court, I hope Democrats will resist the temptation to obstruct the process and deny him an up-or-down vote. Judge Alito is a dignified man and he deserves a dignified process. He deserves a fair hearing and a fair vote. People in South Carolina and across the nation want a judge who will carefully listen to the arguments in each case and make thoughtful decisions. Americans want a judge who will strictly interpret the law, not legislate from the bench. We have a critical confirmation process ahead of us and I am confident Judge Alito will clearly demonstrate his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.

Then, at 11:30 came a piece headlined:

Christian Coalition of America Praises the Nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

It went on to quote CCA President Roberta Combs as saying, "President Bush has hit a homerun with this nomination."

Then, at 12:02, The American Civil Liberties Union got the opposition back up on the scoreboard with one headlined, "ACLU Urges Senate to Explore Supreme Court Nominee Alito’s Record on Reproductive Rights, First Amendment." On that side of the Kulturkampf, "reproductive rights" is seen as rolling off the tongue more smoothly than the simpler "abortion." Don’t ask me to explain.

Being a moderate, Lindsey Graham didn’t hit me with a release until 1:27 p.m. (He said that John Roberts hit a home run. But since I have yet to see instant replays on either of these taters, I’m waiting until the official score is posted.) But he made up for his tardiness at 5:58 with a breathless anouncement that the senator would be meeting with Mr. Alito on Tuesday.

And that’s just the start. There’s plenty of action to come, sports fans.

Harriet Miers was a BABE

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This might seem like a strange thing to bring up now that Harriet Miers’ nomination has been withdrawn. In fact, it would be an odd subject even if her nomination were still operative. But I’m not the one who first brought it up, and when I ran across something interesting while hunting for art for my last posting, it seemed to call for a mildly interesting footnote on the whole affair.

A lot of people (tacky people, mostly) said unkind things about Ms. Miers’ personal appearance — something that, it should go without saying, should have no bearing on her suitability for a seat on the court. Even one of our own letter writers (none of whom can be described as tacky, of course) remarked upon her makeup in a way that was not complimentary.

But that was nothing compared to the nasty, catty stuff out there in the Blogosphere. Such was to be expected, of course, from the incorrigible Wonkette, who said Ms. Miers reminded her of "an LPGA contestant," and then conducted a "poll" on the subject of her readers, who said she reminded them of, among others, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne.

Plenty of others joined in, as you can see by the links from this posting.

But allow me to have the last word. I discovered this morning that Harriet Miers was a babe. At Miersbabe_3 least, she was once upon a time (in 1963, when she was in high school, to be exact). Beauty may fade as bitter experience does its worst upon us, but at least this former Supreme Court nominee can say (if she ever wants to) that she was once better looking than any of those making fun of her.

Not that it matters, of course. I just thought it was interesting.

Exchange with Ted Rall

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Since some readers regularly e-mail me samples of his work, I thought there might be interest in this piece that Ted Rall sent me yesterday, and in the brief exchange we had on the subject. I think he was hoping I would buy the piece. He doesn’t know I’m not in a buying mode. In fact, he has my sympathy because fewer and fewer papers are likely to be in a buying mode.

Anyway, my initial reaction to the piece was as follows:

Actually, Ted, the only way we’re going to win is if it DOES become "boring"
enough that al-Zarqawi can’t get coverage any more. He can’t win, except by
demoralizing the American public to the point that it just wants to quit. And he
can’t do that without coverage.

But rest assured, Katrina will eventually fade into the background enough to
return to the daily suicide bombing being repeated over and over on the 24/7
boob tube news. And al Zarqawi will be a happy man, and won’t have to try so
hard to depress us.

Mr. Rall responded thusly:

It depends on whether we view al Zarqawi as the leader of a movement or just one more personality heading up one particular pyramid of insurgent cells (guess which one I think it is). I think the Iraqi insurgency is intrinsically undefeatable, first and foremost because the US isn’t willing to commit the half million troops that would have been needed to enforce total domination and law and order.

To which I responded,

I cite him as the guy taking credit for the biggest recent attempt to get our
attention. He and al Qaeda are indeed but one of the factions hoping we’ll just
get demoralized and go away…

Mr. Rall is right that we (if he means our leaders) have never been willing to commit enough troops. And he’s right that the terrorist attacks over there haven’t garnered the same kind of overplay in the U.S. media to which the terrorists are accustomed (due to Katrina). But he’s wrong about the rest. The various insurgents — al Qaeda, other assorted foreign jihadists, Sadr’s people, never-say-die Baathists, and so forth — can’t defeat us. Not unless we become so demoralized that we decide to let them.

Has America supported its wars?

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This really should be required reading for anyone out there laboring under the illusion that there is something uniquely awful and unAmerican about our involvement in Iraq — or in Vietnam, for that matter.

You think the American public is turning against the Iraq War in a big way? Well, get back to me when we’ve had a reaction as awful as the New York draft riots that Abe Lincoln had to deal with.

John Prine was not expressing such an unusual sentiment when he sang: "We lost Davy in the Korean war/And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore."

Basically, it’s tough to maintain public opinion in favor of military operations in a democracy, even when they are necessary. The reasons why a war may be just and necessary are usually far too complex to keep before the electorate for an extended period of time. That’s why you see oversimplifications. All anyone who is now against the war seems to remember is "WMD," when it was and is much more complicated than that.

Anti-war activists almost always have the advantage, because their message is simple: Stop the killing. That’s why in the long term,  opinion starts to sway their way. And that’s a serious problem when you engaged in something as extremely long-term as the War on Terror.