Parties, priorities, politics, and the mess that is our Congress
holzman has a post about what I shall henceforth term "The change in tide that saved Hyde."
He says, "There are no acceptable excuses" to not tackling the Hyde amendment in this Congress, with its Democratic majority and a pro-choice President.
The big excuse given is of course that the President and Congress are "saving political capital" for the bigger thing of healthcare. And whatever else comes along next week. You have to question their priorities if they really are believers in abortion choice (or medical/personal privacy) as a right. Once you premise a right -- what's a bigger core issue than basic rights? Seems kind of ... expeditious. Mercenary. False?
And what about DADT, which was supposedly a major item in the President's sights, and which requires only an executive branch process to repeal?
Saving political capital at the expense of what they claim are the rights of constituents? How would that have played in the Civil Rights era if LBJ had explicitly held off on the Civil Rights Act to instead pass Medicare with his social capital intact?
Even if one isn't a believer in such things as-matters-of-right or as-rooted-in-rights, then there is still a good chance the government's current play in them may strike you as very peculiar - perhaps even unconstitutional. Whether as a matter of privileges and immunities, or the government's longstanding overstep into the realm of religious establishment or into the states' police powers, or whatnot, they may seem rather expeditious runarounds of the basic structure of government as set forth in that old thing, that piece of paper, that Constitution. That is, these things raise questions about the legality of government action and its role entirely. Then I am sure some of you see these as government intervention to fix government intervention, bringing to mind the sadly-funny comedy routine of the klutz fixing what he broke, and thereby breaking more.
That there are many schismatic issues I have discussed with people over the years where an approach completely off the two-party tug-of-war strikes almost everyone but the party-line extremists as a good way to go. Of most interest to me, almost universally the approaches that are broadly accepted in these discussions stem from core constitutional principles. The extremists are too caught up in the symbols of the fight to realize or accept a solution completely outside the symbolic realm - a realm that empowers and emboldens them (as victims and victors), that gets them party backers, that keeps the rivals-in-two-camps game going.
I was just talking to tezliana about the need for third parties. But not a far left party. Not a far right party. (The "new parties" always seem to come from the fringes dissatisfied they don't get all the symbolic stuff they want.) But also not "in the middle" of the symbolic false dichotomy extremes, each of which have contradictory positions, and the symbolic structures of which are the problem for many to whom I talk. These are the people now relegated to being the oddballs in one or the other polarizing party, or independents, or members of tiny parties with little representation. People relegated to having to pick apart the symbols tossed around each issue to decide where they stand, because the press only talks in the symbols they are fed.
So, one or more third, off-the-linear-map parties. For example, a party backing the core constitutional rights of speech, protest and redress, religious practice and government non-establishment of religion, security against search (including "privacy" and therefore choice, whatever their take on what a fetus is or is not, plus all the rest of the 4th A.), self-defense, due process, fair and speedy trial, etc., etc. A party that understands that rights are what governments cannot do to you, not what other people must do for you. A party looking not to blindly remove federal government with a hatchet but to trim the areas where it's grown into the states' core functions and has been expensively messing up, and to increase the areas where it's abdicated its proper functions and the states are absent or messing up. A party that doesn't cry "commerce" to regulate that which will never move in commerce, and doesn't cry "states' responsibility" to handle goods that always move in commerce. A party that thinks the Constitution isn't some piece of paper it can and should trample or selectively ignore any time it can make the cry of necessity and urgency.
Just an example. Dunno. That one might actually get my vote. Me and the over 1/3 of the country with strong allegiance to neither party. Coalition pulling to the center should happen among parties, not just within one. Coalitions are also less able to coerce members away from core goals with the threat of pulling election finance. For example of the travesty that is coalition within a party, now we get a big healthcare package that it seems has insufficient internal party support; given the work and political fury that went into it, it "must" be passed, and that will be done with ever-less-savory attachments to buy votes (some paid in cash and some in what the bargainers themselves call rights).
Unfortunately, both parties keep passing election-regulating legislation that ensures a national third party has almost no chance to work. And finally, the media will do all it can to paint any such party as solely consisting of the extreme edges of either big party, left or right, simple linear distribution.
He says, "There are no acceptable excuses" to not tackling the Hyde amendment in this Congress, with its Democratic majority and a pro-choice President.
The big excuse given is of course that the President and Congress are "saving political capital" for the bigger thing of healthcare. And whatever else comes along next week. You have to question their priorities if they really are believers in abortion choice (or medical/personal privacy) as a right. Once you premise a right -- what's a bigger core issue than basic rights? Seems kind of ... expeditious. Mercenary. False?
And what about DADT, which was supposedly a major item in the President's sights, and which requires only an executive branch process to repeal?
Saving political capital at the expense of what they claim are the rights of constituents? How would that have played in the Civil Rights era if LBJ had explicitly held off on the Civil Rights Act to instead pass Medicare with his social capital intact?
Even if one isn't a believer in such things as-matters-of-right or as-rooted-in-rights, then there is still a good chance the government's current play in them may strike you as very peculiar - perhaps even unconstitutional. Whether as a matter of privileges and immunities, or the government's longstanding overstep into the realm of religious establishment or into the states' police powers, or whatnot, they may seem rather expeditious runarounds of the basic structure of government as set forth in that old thing, that piece of paper, that Constitution. That is, these things raise questions about the legality of government action and its role entirely. Then I am sure some of you see these as government intervention to fix government intervention, bringing to mind the sadly-funny comedy routine of the klutz fixing what he broke, and thereby breaking more.
That there are many schismatic issues I have discussed with people over the years where an approach completely off the two-party tug-of-war strikes almost everyone but the party-line extremists as a good way to go. Of most interest to me, almost universally the approaches that are broadly accepted in these discussions stem from core constitutional principles. The extremists are too caught up in the symbols of the fight to realize or accept a solution completely outside the symbolic realm - a realm that empowers and emboldens them (as victims and victors), that gets them party backers, that keeps the rivals-in-two-camps game going.
I was just talking to tezliana about the need for third parties. But not a far left party. Not a far right party. (The "new parties" always seem to come from the fringes dissatisfied they don't get all the symbolic stuff they want.) But also not "in the middle" of the symbolic false dichotomy extremes, each of which have contradictory positions, and the symbolic structures of which are the problem for many to whom I talk. These are the people now relegated to being the oddballs in one or the other polarizing party, or independents, or members of tiny parties with little representation. People relegated to having to pick apart the symbols tossed around each issue to decide where they stand, because the press only talks in the symbols they are fed.
So, one or more third, off-the-linear-map parties. For example, a party backing the core constitutional rights of speech, protest and redress, religious practice and government non-establishment of religion, security against search (including "privacy" and therefore choice, whatever their take on what a fetus is or is not, plus all the rest of the 4th A.), self-defense, due process, fair and speedy trial, etc., etc. A party that understands that rights are what governments cannot do to you, not what other people must do for you. A party looking not to blindly remove federal government with a hatchet but to trim the areas where it's grown into the states' core functions and has been expensively messing up, and to increase the areas where it's abdicated its proper functions and the states are absent or messing up. A party that doesn't cry "commerce" to regulate that which will never move in commerce, and doesn't cry "states' responsibility" to handle goods that always move in commerce. A party that thinks the Constitution isn't some piece of paper it can and should trample or selectively ignore any time it can make the cry of necessity and urgency.
Just an example. Dunno. That one might actually get my vote. Me and the over 1/3 of the country with strong allegiance to neither party. Coalition pulling to the center should happen among parties, not just within one. Coalitions are also less able to coerce members away from core goals with the threat of pulling election finance. For example of the travesty that is coalition within a party, now we get a big healthcare package that it seems has insufficient internal party support; given the work and political fury that went into it, it "must" be passed, and that will be done with ever-less-savory attachments to buy votes (some paid in cash and some in what the bargainers themselves call rights).
Unfortunately, both parties keep passing election-regulating legislation that ensures a national third party has almost no chance to work. And finally, the media will do all it can to paint any such party as solely consisting of the extreme edges of either big party, left or right, simple linear distribution.