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danieldwilliam) wrote2012-04-05 12:06 pm
On the US Election - If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me?
I’m not paying too much attention to the US Republican party’s War on Women at the moment.
It’s not that I think that restricting access to contraception or the mandating of unnecessary, deliberately humiliating and invasive “medical” procedures to influence, or to punish, the decision of women seeking an abortion is okay.
I don’t.
It’s not that I don’t think that what happens in the US couldn’t happen here or that US culture doesn’t influence our own.
I don’t.
But what am I going to do about Rick Santorum?
I do think that British voters getting incensed about Rick Santorum or the Virginia legislature is to miss the similar attempts that are being made by some of our own legislators and pressure groups to bring that sort of evil to our country.
So, I’m saving my energy and my outrage for home and for legislators I elect and to defend the universality of medical services that I and my family use. If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But here’s what I hope happens in the US.
I hope the Republican Party gets it arse handed to in the US general election. I’m all for consensus politics and reasoned dialogic discussion – but not with these guys. I hope they get a big fat kick in the nuts.
And I hope that it is the votes of women who deliver that kick. I hope the surge in support for Obama amongst women under 50 translate into a big win for him, and for the Democrats in the House and the Senate. I hope it’s obvious, blindingly obvious, to the both the Republican and Democrat Parties that it was the votes of women who made the difference and that these voters were motivated to vote by the rhetoric and legislation of the religious right-wing.
I hope the Republican War on Women turns USian women into the largest special interest pressure group in the US.
I hope the Republican Party has to sit and watch impotently whilst Democrats win seat after seat, legislature after legislature and then ram through their “left wing” agenda.
I hope this sucks for them.
I hope they realise that their assault on the fundamental physical integrity of women was the root cause of all their election and legislative woes. I hope moderate Republicans are furious that their party has been frozen out of the political process in order to pander to the prejudices of some of the utter nutjobs they share an election platform with.
I hope they are left for a few years in the political void watching bill after bill pass thinking…
“If only we hadn’t decided that poking ourselves into the wombs and souls of women was the most important thing we had to do we’d be in government and able to stop this.”
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But seriously
When the time comes I hope I won't be confining myself to telling people on the internet who I suspect broadly share my view how outraged I am.
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This is a most excellent rant. I am very impressed.
And I couldn't agree more.
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When the time comes I hope I won't be confining myself to telling people on the internet who I suspect broadly share my view how outraged I am.
I hope so too :-) I do worry that our bit of the Internet is a bit of an echo chamber.
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It’s easy to self-censor the internet and not hear all the voices.
Therefore, it’s easy to forget that there are lots of people who hold very different views about things.
Different values, different thoughts on how the world works, different views on what constitutes evidence and authority.
I was reminded by the 1st April xkcd cartoon about Umwelt and I how different people could, in effect, be inhabiting very different worlds from me and those I hang out with on the internet.
Hilarity ensues.
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I have a horrible feeling we are going to be fighting similar ground at home soon - these sudden inspections of abortion clinics announced this morning stink. I really no-one has been acting illegally in them because I dread to think how far they will go in response if they have an excuse to crack down...
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2012/04/republicans
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I think I have two questions.
Will the fall in support caused by attacking women’s reproductive rights be remembered in November?
Will those who remember it turn out and vote?
The (self-appointed) smart money seems to be saying that Republicans (and to some extent Democrats) say crazy shit to their extreme wings during the primaries and then go into a quiet huddle for a month or so and hope that everyone has forgotten come the actual election.
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There has been talk about having open primaries to select candidates in the UK, which I cant really get my head around: if I were the opposing party, I'd stuff the primary with people to select the most unelectable candidate. I mean, I bet Obama is praying that Santorum wins the Republican ticket...
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So the counter balance is to open the Primaries so that ordinary people can have a say in selecting the candidate, which leads us to your point.
Someone who is a keen partisan is probably more likely to vote for a nut-job incompetent in their opposition’s Primary than an ordinary voter.
I think in the UK one is more likely to have sufficient ordinary voters turn up to vote than partisans of the opposition and therefore Open Primaries in the UK are I think more likely to produce
Of course the problem would go away if we used preferential voting.