What's the matter with you, America?

This week we have read a discussion on the subject of an argument presented by Thomas Frank, who asserts midwestern poor farmers have been "tricked" by the Republican party to vote against their economic interest. He argues that the policies that republicans enact favor the rich and not the poor and middle class. The so-called "fooled" voters support, however primarily because of the Republican's campaign on morals and family values. in effect they create a populist appeal while actually putting into place elite favoring policy. Frank calls this the "backlash" effect. there is a greater impact of the backlash effect. it represents a "partisan dealignment" which is in effect when voters break rank with what their economic interests and create an inconsistency with the indicators we use to determine partisan preference. Bartels, another author argues that this is wrong, and that frank is guilty of what could be effectively considered to be sampling bias, and that he is in actuality measuring activists, rather than the actual public opinion. Bartels claims that southerners who are typically poor have become more republican and are thus accounting for the partisan spread.

I personally think that Bartels is wrong. I think that conservatives have done very well in the "bible belt: and that it is a relatively poor area. also when we examine local governments, I believe that the partisan dealignment manifests itself best there. all over the midwest even in our state here, we see many local governments in the more rural and less affluent counties and communities lean more to the right. as Tip O'Neil said "all politics is local" and if we want to measure a substantive partisan shift it would be best expressed across the full stratification of government - national voting rates, state, county and municipal.

Planning A Party? Where is my Invite?

If one of the major parties were to fall, it would present a very interesting set of opportunities for a new parties to rise. for one thing the remaining party would become the center, leaving it open to re-definition by the new party. we define our parties primarily in relation to each other, so some swift political maneuvering would allow the new party to knock the old one around in how it defines itself. Another option is to create a new party with similar stances on some of the issues as the remaining party. Doing this would cause the old issue set that the two previous parties used to distinguish eachother, and raise new topics to re-define the parties, thus forcing political progress, and a mashup of the political scene. This would probably be most easily done by creating a party based on the "moderate" stance before the fall o the previous party. this would give rise to let representatives who are more moderate from the remaining party to jump ship. if the new party seems to rise and do well in your area, the wise politician would jump ship in order to stay in office. as far as who i would choose for my leadership, it would depend on the party that fell. In a way it may be easier to choose new leaders who can establish themselves as "moderates" rather than have to contend with a long history, and peoples preconcieved notions about the candidates. the voting blocs and electorate would be the ones supporting the moderates. I call this whole process "stealing the middle" it allows the rising party to appeal the the previous extreme without having to follow the old failed agenda. a plan like this would expect high electoral success and the capacity to knock the old party around and cause it to reshape. this could leave the doors to the white house open very rapidly.