A Perfect Example
Friday 22 October 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + election + Journalism
Apparently, Steve Pearlman of The Washington Post thinks that the reason people are leaning Republican this election has nothing to do with really shitty policy and strict party line votes on highly unpopular bills in defiance of the will of the people, but because we’re too stupid to resist our feelings.
As for the details of that new direction, it’s not at all clear what voters have in mind. Most voters – particularly the swing voters – aren’t as well-informed as they might be on major policy issues. What they do have are experiences and instincts and emotions that politicians play upon in order to win elections. Rarely, however, do the election results add up to a mandate. More often it’s nothing more than a temporary license to govern.
Americans, it is said, are suddenly recoiling at the dramatic expansion in the reach and power of a federal government that is “taking over” the economy. Topping this list of alleged voter grievances is a new health-care law that requires every American to buy health insurance, a new consumer protection agency for financial products and the government bailout of the auto industry.
Now ask yourself: Do you think the results of the coming election would be tilting in favor of Democrats if the “individual mandate” had been omitted from health reform, if the consumer protection agency had been dropped from financial regulatory reform and if General Motors had been left to die. Somehow I doubt it.
The dirty little secret is that most Americans don’t really know what they think about the issues that so animate the political conversation in Washington, and what they think they know about them is often wrong.
This quote, I would add, is a perfect example of why most of America now looks down on the Washington elite: they’re utterly convinced that the only informed vote is one which is in affirmation of overt statism, and that anything else is the natural result of our intellectual inferiority.
Fuck off, Pearlman. Unlike a Jedi, you can’t just waive your hands and make the rest of us ignore the bloating national debt and ever-encroaching reach of government (no matter how hard you try).
2010-10-22 » madlibertarianguy