'Why Party Trumps Person' (a good review for the cut'n'run conservatives planning to sit out)
Mike Rosen archive page at KOA ^ | October 2004 | Mike Rosen

Posted on 10/30/2006 5:52:36 AM PST by ajolympian2004

Based on this most recent poll here at FR a pathetic 4.7% of FReepers are planning to stay home during this election. You cut'n'run conservatives (intentionally undermining the outstanding men and women of the USA military with your no-show) are in desperate need of this review, a column written by Mike Rosen every few years during the election season:

"Why Party Trumps Person". (from 2004)

With just 80 days to go before the election, it's time for my quadrennial column on party vs. person. I've been offering and updating this polemic for more than 20 years. For veteran voters, this may be review; for rookies, perhaps, a new concept.

A time-honored cliche heard every election year goes something like this: "I'm an independent thinker; I vote the person, not the party." This pronouncement is supposed to demonstrate open-mindedness and political sophistication on the part of the pronouncer. It's your vote, cast it any way you like - or not at all. But idealism and naivete about the way our electoral process and system of government works shouldn't be mistaken for wisdom or savvy.

For better or worse, we have a two-party system. And party trumps person. Either a Republican, George W. Bush, or a Democrat, John Kerry, is going to be elected president in November. No one else has a chance.

Not Ralph Nader, not the Libertarian candidate, nor the Communist, nor the Green. Minor party candidates are sometimes spoilers - like Nader costing Gore the presidency in 2000 - but they don't win presidential elections. Ross Perot got 20 million popular votes in 1992, and exactly zero Electoral College votes.

In Europe's multiparty, parliamentary democracies, governing coalitions are formed after an election. In our constitutional republic, the coalitions are formed first.

The Republican coalition includes, for the most part, middle- and upper-income taxpayers (but not leftist Hollywood millionaires and George Soros), individualists who prefer limited government, pro-market and pro-business forces, believers in American exceptionalism and a strong national defense, social-issues conservatives and supporters of traditional American values.

The Democratic coalition is an alliance of collectivists, labor unions (especially the teachers' unions), government workers, academics, plaintiffs-lawyers, lower- and middle-income net tax-receivers, most minorities, feminists, gays, enviros, and activists for various anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-military, anti-gun, one-world causes.

I say party trumps person because regardless of the individual occupying the White House, the coalition will be served.

A Democratic president, whether a liberal or a moderate (conservative Democrats, if any still exist, can't survive the nominating process), can operate only within the political boundaries of his party and its coalition. The party that wins the presidency gets to staff all the discretionary positions in the executive and judicial branches of government. Members of its coalition are awarded vital policy-making government jobs, judgeships, ambassadorships and appointments to boards and commissions, as well as a host of plum jobs handed out to thosewho have political IOUs to cash in.

A vote for Bush is a vote for the Republican agenda and conservative players in key posts. A vote for Kerry is a vote for the influence of the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union and the likes of Al Sharpton and Michael Moore.

The legislative branch is no different. After the individual members of a new Congress have been seated, a figurative nose count is taken and the party with the most noses wins. That victory carries with it control of all committee and subcommittee chairmanships, the locus of legislative power.

Now, let's say you're a registered Republican voter who clearly prefers the Republican philosophy of governance. And you're a good-natured, well-intentioned person who happens to like an individual Democrat, a Senate candidate, who's somewhat conservative. You decide to cross party lines and vote for him.

As it turns out, he wins, beating a Republican and giving the Democrats a one-vote majority, 51-49, in the U.S. Senate.

Congratulations! You just got Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton as key committee chairs, and a guarantee that your Republican legislative agenda will be stymied.

That's the way the process works. Does this mean that in a two-party system like ours it comes down to choosing between the lesser of two evils? You bet it does. That's not to say that either party is really "evil," that's just an expression.

If we had 280 million custom-tailored minor parties, everyone could find his perfect match.

But that's not practical.

You can be a purist and cast your vote symbolically with a boutique party, or be a player and settle for the least imperfect of the Republican or Democrat alternatives.

Your vote, your choice.