Sarah Palin as Stalking Horse

T

Timshel

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/carson/carson27.html

With the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has impressed many as making a savvy political maneuver. McCain has not had much appeal to pro-lifers, gun rights advocates or fiscal conservatives. Sarah Palin looks to be much more appealing to those voters. So this VP pick may serve McCain's campaign for the presidency well.

Bully for him, as my Grandma would say.

For the rest of us, the Herb Tarlek question remains, "What does this mean… to me?" I believe what the selection of Sarah Palin is supposed to convey is that a McCain administration would save babies' lives, protect gun rights and shrink the size of government.

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As someone who is squarely in the demographic that they are trying to target with Sarah Palin, I can feel what they are trying to do. A friend of mine who is also a Christian and a libertarian hilariously wrote that he "is disappointed in himself because the Palin pick has softened his dislike for McCain."

Many people who were not finding much to like in John McCain will be won over simply because they find what Sarah Palin stands for much more compelling. But I'm not buying, and you shouldn't either.

Sarah Palin may be as sincere as can be, but if after a combined Reagan/Bush I/Bush II run of 20 years you still think the Republicans are going to shrink government, stop babies from being killed or reverse the slow erosion of 2nd amendment rights then you haven't been paying attention.

It's a trick! Don't be fooled. Once again, those devilishly clever statists are figuring out how to quiet unrest among the natives and co-opt the growing opposition movements (as seen, for example, in the Ron Paul Revolution).

I wish Sarah Palin the best. But if she really stands for life then she'll oppose McCain's plan to kill more Iraqis and possibly Iranians. If she really stands for shrinking the leviathan US government, then she should know that it has grown, not shrunk, under Republican administrations. If she really understands the 2nd Amendment then she should know that it is the state that wants to register and eventually confiscate our guns so that we are helpless before it. If she really stands for the things she claims to then she should walk out of the Republican National Convention and head over to be with the true friends of liberty at the Rally for the Republic.
 
It may be true that McCain's choice was aimed at using Palin as a stalking horse. But the analysis does not take into account who Palin is.

First, advising she needs to abandon the republican party is outright stupid. Such a move would completely hamstring any ability to bring about desired changes in the direction of her political philosophy. The fact is our system is specifically designed to discourage the formation of multiple parties. (in fact the original intent was to discourage the formation of ANY parties, which they quickly realized was impractical.) Sarah Palin is much more than a true conservative. She is what the republican party CLAIMS to support.

And make no mistake: Palin is NOT the type to sit quietly in the background, waiting for a tied senate vote, or for McCain to stroke out. She will be an openly active VP, pushing her own ideas, and affecting policy through her influence as president of the senate. If McCain thinks he has a tame pet whose purpose is to garner voting blocks, he is going to be surprised.

Additionally, assuming McCain lives, and assuming he does not fuck up too badly, we will be looking at a true conservative set to take the top seat, if not in 2012, then definitely in 2016. Palin also knows how to use situations for stepping stones to the next level.
 
Just eight more years of big government conservatism. If you are buying that line then you are an idiot.
 
If the founders didn't want any parties, why would their second choice be the two party system, which is as far away from that as you can get, and just barely better than dictatorship? The fact is, they didn't 'design' it to be a two party system. It's a two party system by accident, and they would certainly change it if they were alive today.
 
ib1yysguy said:
duverger's law.
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Duverger's law is a pretty weak law. It's also way over-cited, because there are numerous occasions in other countries, even with a plurality dictatorship system, that have more than two parties. In fact, out of the four or five countries in the world that maintain this dinosaur system, only the US and Singapore have no signifigant third parties. Ours is just more complicated, so all the third parties keep making suicidal dives for the presidency. If they were ever to even win the two parties would just team up against them, refuse to pass anything on their agenda, and then say that "they did nothing" at the next election.

As I said, the reason we only have two parties is a side effect of our system, certainly not any wish of the people.
 
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Parliaments, I don't believe, are addressed as part of his law. The US differs from the UK, India, and Canada in this respect.
 
The requirement that a presidential candidate must win by a majority of electoral votes pretty much denies any strong third party to develop. If there were three parties, the ability to garner 270 electoral votes would be hampered. A president is simply not allowed to win by plurality, but all too often a three (or more) party system would do just that: result in a plurality. Then it goes to the house of representatives with a limit of one vote per state, which also must select must select the president through a majority. And again, if there were three major parties, even if one were significantly weaker than the other two, the ability to attain a majority would be curtailed.

The end result is a system limited to two major parties, because a majority of electoral (or even house) votes would be almost impossible to achieve with multiple parties.

Now the writers of the Constitution were not so dense as to be ignorant of the fact that requiring a majority would limit the ability to form multiple parties. Therefore the logical conclusion is they designed it to limit parties. Anyone cognizant of history knows the the over riding desire of many was to try to avoid parties altogether, and the associated partisan politics. They soon found out that parties naturally form around issues and sets of issues, so their desire to avoid parties was thwarted by the natural consequences of a democratic style of society. But that does not negate the fact that the design of the electoral system was deliberate, and does force U.S.A. politics into a two party system.
 
RStringfield said:
Just eight more years of big government conservatism. If you are buying that line then you are an idiot.
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And if you cannot see that Palin is a far, far cry from the last 8 years, then you are an idiot, as well as completely blind. There once was a party that represented the ideal of limited government, paid attention to the constitution as it is written and not as conveniently interpreted, and stood for traditional, yes, even religious based, social and family values.

The only reason I worked against that party most of my politically active life is they tended to use a head-in-the-sand approach to social and economic problems. As I said in other threads, supporting a party that at least acknowledges there is a problem - even if one disagrees with many of their so-called solutions - is still preferable (until recently) to a party that seems to pretend your problems do not exist.

By my personal political history aside, the republican party was/is SUPPOSED to represent certain political ideals, being primarily conservative on both economic and social issues. Ronald Reagan BARELY (and I do mean BARELY) fit the mold of the traditional republican. And no one since has come even close on the national level.

Now along comes Sarah Palin, whose political history could have been written as a textbook example of the tradition republican. She is STRONG on limited government, STRONG on rooting out governmental corruption, and STRONG on traditional conservative social issues.

She will be hated by the far left. Of that there is no doubt. The mud is already flying high and hard from the far left. But any claims that she is simply more of the same we've had is, IMO, not accurate. She'll out anyone, republican or democrat, if they cross the line of ethics. IMO that tendency will include McCain, and any and all others at the national level, and it will not matter which letter follows their name on the roster. For that attitude (proven by past actions) alone, she is worthy of great respect, even if one does disagree with most of her political philosophy.
 
Good Luck said:
The requirement that a presidential candidate must win by a majority of electoral votes pretty much denies any strong third party to develop. If there were three parties, the ability to garner 270 electoral votes would be hampered. A president is simply not allowed to win by plurality, but all too often a three (or more) party system would do just that: result in a plurality. Then it goes to the house of representatives with a limit of one vote per state, which also must select must select the president through a majority. And again, if there were three major parties, even if one were significantly weaker than the other two, the ability to attain a majority would be curtailed.

The end result is a system limited to two major parties, because a majority of electoral (or even house) votes would be almost impossible to achieve with multiple parties.

Now the writers of the Constitution were not so dense as to be ignorant of the fact that requiring a majority would limit the ability to form multiple parties. Therefore the logical conclusion is they designed it to limit parties. Anyone cognizant of history knows the the over riding desire of many was to try to avoid parties altogether, and the associated partisan politics. They soon found out that parties naturally form around issues and sets of issues, so their desire to avoid parties was thwarted by the natural consequences of a democratic style of society. But that does not negate the fact that the design of the electoral system was deliberate, and does force U.S.A. politics into a two party system.
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That's not true. If one person in a three party system gets a signifigant share of the vote, say 40%, he is very likely to landslide the entire electoral college. See election of 1860.

The founders knew of no system that could maintain multiple parties. The system they had was inherited from what the British had haphazardly dreamed up hundreds of years before. They did not deliberately desing the plurality in our system, and to say that is idiotic.
 
Good Luck said:
Now along comes Sarah Palin, whose political history could have been written as a textbook example of the tradition republican. She is STRONG on limited government, STRONG on rooting out governmental corruption,
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And she is working to elect someone that is not strong on any of those.
 
A third party would be completely workable.

We would do what we do when there are close races in other elections, we would have a run-off.
 
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