l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 May 23, 2012 by Warner Todd Huston
The Washington Post published a long Op Ed by a pair of think tankers
pretending at both being “centrists” and offering an unbiased analysis of
why politics has gotten so “partisan” these days. The pair also claim they
know how to end this messy partisanship. But what they wrote is a perfect
example of why things have become so polarized, not an example of how to fix
anything.
The authors, Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, published theirs
headlined, “Want to end partisan politics? Here’s what won’t work — and
what will,” a piece filled with all sorts of claims, pseudo analysis, and
offers of solutions. The piece is practically one long paean to liberalism
as opposed to serious analysis, but it does do one thing successfully. It
shows us why the public debate has gotten bad not for its analysis and
solutions but for the left-wing ideological underpinnings of their arguments.
The pair start with five solutions they think we should avoid, the first
being a propensity to invest our hopes in a third party. On its face, this
is correct. Third parties are now and always have been a joke in the U.S.
system. They have never been worth anything other than a sideshow act. Only
once did a third party ever make major headway and that was Teddy Roosevelt
’s Bull Moose Party — with which he almost won another shot at the White
House — but once TR was gone the party collapsed.
It isn’t their insistence that third parties are a waste of time — they
are right there — but it is in Mann and Ornstein’s analysis right there in
the sixth paragraph that shows their bias and proves why partisanship is so
bad today.
What they say in analysis in that paragraph and throughout the piece shows
that they think that left-wing, liberalism is normal, it is the baseline
measurement for what America should do and how it should think. So,
naturally they think politics is terrible when the country doesn’t go far
enough left to suit them.
Here is what they wrote in that sixth paragraph:
The third-party fantasy is of a courageous political leader who could
persuade Americans to support enlightened policies to tax carbon; reform
entitlements; make critical investments in education, energy and
infrastructure; and eliminate tax loopholes to raise needed revenue. But
there is simply no evidence that voters would flock to a straight-talking,
independent, centrist third-party candidate espousing the ideas favored by
most third-party enthusiasts. Consensus is not easily built around such
issues, and differences in values and interests would not simply disappear
in a nonpartisan, centrist haze.
Notice what they say here of what would constitute a “centrist” candidate.
A “centrist” in their estimation would support,
A global warming measure like the ruinous carbon tax that has failed
every nation in Europe
Entitlement reform — though they keep this vague and never say what it
means
“Critical investments in education,” a liberal’s way of saying pump
taxes up for school spending
Infrastructure expenditures, a liberal’s way of saying more taxes
Eliminating tax loopholes, usually a liberal’s way of focusing on “the
rich” and wallowing in class warfare
In other words, a “centrist” in these two’s estimation would be textbook
liberalism. Their baseline ideology is so far left that it skews their
entire piece making their “solutions” to be just more left-wing
partisanship even as it is presented as centrist, even-handed solutions.
The two allow this basic liberal ideology to infest every section of the op
ed. In their next portion, term limits, the pair say that a good candidate
would need to understand “the need to compromise.” Again, somewhat vague,
but usually “compromise” means “agree with liberals,” while liberals won
’t ever compromise with anyone else.
But is “compromise” a panacea? In truth the founders did not make a system
where we compromise for the sake of compromise. They made a system where
that compromise would be guided by American principles and those principles
make no appearance in this op ed.
Next they attack a balanced budget amendment idea saying it is no solution.
Why? I’ll let them explain,
When a downturn occurs, basic economic theory tells us that we need “
counter-cyclical” policies to inject adrenaline into a fatigued economy —
meaning more government spending and/or lower taxes.
Liberalism again. “More government spending” is never a solution. Never.
But to these gentlemen, that is a baseline “normal.” Why, of course an
important solution to a bad economy is more government spending. (By the way
, I am not for such an amendment, either)
Next the pair erroneously claim that the Supreme Court’s Citizen United
decision has embroiled political campaigning in “a new Gilded Age of
influence peddling by special interests.” Again, this is simply left-wing
opinion, not fact and again liberal assumptions form their baseline.
The fact is, before Citizens United, only liberals had free reign on
spending, unions in particular. Citizens United just gave conservatives much
needed spending parity with the extreme left and their union thugs.
Next the two indulge a liberal view of our political climate.
…an examination of the Obama presidency suggests that we are
experiencing neither politics as usual nor an odd blip. We are witnessing
unprecedented and unbalanced polarization of the parties, with Republicans
acting like a parliamentary minority party opposing almost everything put
forward by the Democrats; the near-disappearance of the regular order in
Congress; the misuse of the filibuster as a weapon not of dissent but of
obstruction; and the relentless delegitimization of the president and
policies enacted into law.
Like the good left-wingers they are, these two pretend that all this somehow
started once Obama became president. Notice how they put the onus of
recalcitrance on the GOP. No mention of Pelosi’s ignorant leadership when
she was Speaker, not to mention the years before that going back all the way
to at least Ronald Reagan where Democrats perpetrated this destruction of
“the regular order in Congress” by being the party of no every time
Republicans had a majority.
No, to these to partisan hacks, only Republicans are the meanies. This left-
wing ideology is further underpinned by this laughably partisan sentence:
Given the defeat of problem-solvers such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind
.) and the emergence of take-no-prisoners partisans such as Richard Mourdock
, there is no reason to think the system will correct itself anytime soon.
The pair then get to their “solutions,” left-wing demagogy all.
First up is campaign finance. They want “donation disclosure.” This, of
course, is simply a means for attacking political donors that donate to GOP
candidates. Anyone that donates to the GOP is open for evisceration by Mann,
Ornstein, and all their left-wing pals in the Old Media while the left and
their union thugs and other groups will be left alone.
Want proof of my assertion? Just look at what happened to Mr. Frank
Vandersloot (and others) once team Obama and the Old Media targeted him for
destruction.
While Mann and Ornstein pretend all they want is “disclosure” of donors,
what they really want is a ready-made enemies list for liberals to use to
attack Republican donors.
On top of that, their campaign finance “solution” is just one long drawn
out attack on the John Roberts Supreme Court. More left-wingery.
They go on to offer a few more so-called solutions, one of which is the
foreign idea of “mandatory voting” laws where citizens are forced to vote
no matter what. This is a thoroughly un-American ideal. Firstly one of our
freedoms is the one not to vote. Secondly, the assumption that more voting
must mean better votes is childish in the extreme.
More votes do not mean more informed votes and informed votes is what we
should be looking for. Not just a larger number of votes. Remember, voters
thought voting the Nazi Party into power was a great idea in pre-war Germany
. Voters also constantly voted to support slavery in our country. A mere
volume of votes is not a solution.
The story of the aftermath of the Constitutional Convention goes that Ben
Franklin told a bystander that the founders had given us a republic “if you
can keep it.” By this he meant that we had to have informed voters, voters
that cast their vote based on the laws and principles that the founders
gave us that day. Just adding a million voters to the rolls does not in any
way guarantee they will be informed voters. In fact, it is likely they won’
t be.
In the end what is missing from every section of this failed attempt at
analysis and solutions was any discussion of American principles. Instead we
got liberal pap presented as “centrism.” and everything else measured
from a left-wing baseline.
Of course politics has gotten so “polarized.” When the liberals pretend
that their ideas are truly American ideas, when they pretend that only their
ideas are the ground level starting point for every debate, no wonder
conservatives and those that believe in the founder’s principles don’t
want to indulge in any destructive compromises and no wonder they seem
unyielding to that vaunted “compromise.”
This absurd piece is proof of why our politics has come to loggerheads. Mann
and Ornstein are part of the problem, not any part of the solution. |
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