The Counter-Intelligence Of Third Party Movements

As the American presidential election looms in the not-so distant future, political polarization has thrust formerly functioning parties into the depths of dysfunction and replaced them with vengeful factions that are fueled only by the other’s failure. It is not about fixing the economy anymore; it is about fixing the stage for the next election. While our economic fate may have already been sealed due to the political paralysis that has dominated the legislative scene, its exacerbation or amelioration hinges on the results of the 2012 Presidential election.

Heterogeneous and drawing from a panoply of activist groups, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has gained formidable power since its inception in mid-September. Despite Obama’s efforts to identify with OWS and mimic their fervor in his stump speeches, gravity has pulled the Obama Administration from campaign ambitions and dragged down Obama’s popularity in the polls. The fear, as John Nichols so aptly stated in a column in The Nation, is that the “movement might well develop into a virtual primary challenge for Obama.”

Because of Obama’s limited powers to enact the changes the OWSers so adamantly demand, bipartisan disenchantment and manifested outrage concerning current problems have largely distracted the left from how much worse things could be in the future. Thus, the stage is set for the emergence of appealing third party candidates at a juncture of extreme uncertainty. If history is to serve as any kind of guide, casting votes to emergent third parties leads only to the opposite of what political break-aways want.

1844 marked one of these pivotal Presidential elections. Largely divided on the issue of slavery, a sect of northern abolitionists did not seek to gradually abolish slavery; they demanded it then and there. With roots in the Second Great Awakening scene in New York, the Liberty Party canvassed the city and used then-modern media like the printing press to champion their cause throughout the state. Analogous to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Liberty Party members were often subject to violence throughout their work.

Despite being dubbed the “Great Compromiser” by many and an “ideal man” by future president Abraham Lincoln, the Liberty Party was disenchanted with Whig Henry Clay’s moderate stance on slavery. To them, he was not active or vehement enough in abolishing slavery in spite of the inconvenient reality that the executive branch at the time had little constitutional power to combat the issue directly. Thus the Liberty Party’s unrealistic goals of immediacy resulted in a significant vote for James Birney, which, as many speculate, cost Clay the state of New York and the election as a whole.

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America’s Primitive Love Affair With The Death Penalty

As the conscience of America seems permanently mired in economic worries, it is nearly impossible to find anything worth smiling at, let alone cheering for. However, in a recent GOP debate, Rick Perry was able to rouse a seemingly comatose audience not only into consciousness but also rousing applause. He didn’t do it by lambasting Obamacare or proposing a fiscal policy to get Americans out of the proverbial hole; he did it by saying nothing.

While asking Governor Perry’s opinion on the record number of executions that occurred under his watch in the state of Texas, moderator Brian Williams was unable to finish his question before the audience began to yawp and clap their hands as one would during the final thirty seconds of a basketball game. After the audience’s heartbeats finally slowed, Perry went on to state that Americans have a keen sense of “justice,” and that “if you come into our state and you kill … you will be executed.”

The ancient Hammurabi-esque similarities do not go unnoted. This institutionalized bloodlust is rarely practiced in democratic and industrialized countries, but is fairly common in nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia, two countries that certainly do not claim to be international vanguards of liberty and human rights like the United States so often does.

However modern and civilized the United States tries to present itself to the world, capital punishment is one of the ugliest aspects of the American system, and is something that many leaders try to conceal when patrolling the globe and insisting on others’ adherence to human rights. However, as the contentious execution of Troy Davis ignited international outrage, it is a flaw that many around the world can plainly see and one that has consistently contributed to others’ doubts about the United States’ role as a champion of modern justice and progress.

Yet at home, support for the death penalty is very public and popular. To make matters more difficult, it is impossible to point the finger at a single perpetrator: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike have favored the practice throughout the years despite its many proven failures and weaknesses. As a consequence, the self-injected and macabre fascination with capital punishment in the American bloodstream is something that has reduced the United States’ already slothful pace toward universally compliant judicial systems and human rights to that of a snail’s crawl.

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Unraveling Rick Perry

In twenty-seven years, Rick Perry has never lost an election.

His opponents have described him as lucky, but Perry makes his own luck. He campaigns relentlessly, surrounds himself with exceptional talent, and he keeps his mouth shut. He is the perfect candidate.

Perry the man is likable and loyal. His posse is composed of his betters: men and women of privilege who admire his moxie and inexhaustible sense of humor. Many of them were once his foes and Perry’s ability to charm and disarm his enemies makes him one of the most successful politicians in America today. Kinky Friedman wants his ashes scattered in the Governor’s good hair when he dies.

He may not be popular — recent polls in Texas show Governor Perry losing to Obama or barely beating him, and most of the GOP kingmakers have rallied to revile him — but he is incredibly effective. Karl Rove, the architect of Perry’s swing to the right in 1990, has demonstrated a very odd tone-deafness by aligning himself with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over his former Prince Charming, despite the fact that Christie has said he will not run.

Rove’s miscalculation is the same one that his enemies on the left make when it comes to Perry: they look at him and see a rube. It’s an easy mistake to make, as Perry has inadvertently cultivated an aura of shallow and callow. He blew up a toilet in his dorm at Texas A&M with an M-80. He plays with his balls in public so much that he earned the nickname “the Crotch”. He was a cheerleader. But everyone who bought the narrative of Perry as a lightweight has finished with their ass in their hands and a mountain of campaign debt. And they usually end up in his corner explaining to everybody else why Rick Perry is the last great hope for a strong America.

This is not to say that Perry is deep, he just doesn’t have the time to waste thinking things through. He has a brain trust that he trusts, and once they deliver an opinion, he usually runs with it. However, he can and will swim against the current, both within his trusted circles and the Republican norm. As Governor of Texas, he issued an executive order in February 2011 mandating that teenage girls in Texas receive the HPV vaccine. He was close to a woman dying of cervical cancer, Heather Burcham, who had been a nanny to a Houston area developer and longtime Perry supporter, Craig Wilson. As she neared the end of her life, she convinced the Governor that he had a role to play in preventing the deaths of thousands of women by mandating one of the biggest state-wide public health efforts since the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918.

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What’s Behind The Right’s War On Voting

Above is a mathematical analysis of predicting voting habits developed by William Riker and Peter Ordeshook in the 1968 article A Theory of the Calculus of Voting. They predicted the likelihood of voting as a combination of several factors: probability that a vote will make a difference, perceived benefit gained from a vote, plus the duty to participate, which must be greater than the perceived cost of voting.

Voters are a rare thing in the United States. They mostly come out for Presidential and national elections, while rarely for local polls, and almost never for primaries. Typically, voters are well-educated, well-off, and well-ripened.

As expected, African-Americans, Hispanics, women, and other minority groups voted heavily for Barack Obama in 2008, as did those under 30. Unexpectedly, however, the difference in voting pattern between the younger voters and older voters surpassed any seen before. According to Pew Research Center, “… 66% of those under age 30 voted for Barack Obama, making the disparity between young voters and other age groups larger than in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972.”

To be clear, 66% of voters under the age of 30 voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2008, with more young people identifying with the Democratic party. These demographic trends presented the GOP with a challenge: change political direction, hold onto current political beliefs at the expense of future elections, or work to marginalize the political impact of non-Republican demographics. They opted for voter suppression.

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Understanding The Anti-Reason Hysteria Of The Republican Party

Recently, Paul Krugman began a New York Times column on the anti-science and anti-intellectual stance of today’s GOP by quoting Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, wherein he stated that the Republican Party is quickly becoming the “anti-science party.” Most people haven’t heard of Huntsman, Republican pariah-in-residence. And even if they do, they probably won’t listen to him. Why? Because he’s reasonable, and there is simply no room for that trait in the Tea Party movement’s hellish and destructive crusade within the GOP.

As the Tea Party has gained momentum, reason has evaporated into the ether and has been replaced with polarizing rhetoric often with a religious flair. We’ve seen this with Sarah Palin’s spurious “death panel” remarks during the debate over Obamacare, Rick Perry’s prayer-based solution to a Texas drought, and Michele Bachmann’s more recent claims that, no matter how much she tries to palliate them with shrill and off-putting laughter, God has had a substantial role in the recent earthquakes as well as Hurricane Irene. Digging a bit deeper, former President George W. Bush, the Connecticut-coddled kid with a specious Texan drawl, kindled the polarization flame again with his famous 2001 appeal to the US Congress where he stated, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” And then with the nightmare that was the debt ceiling “talks,” we’ve witnessed a party willing to drive its country into the dirt over something more powerful than reason: their beliefs.

In this unfortunate political arena, reason — the pesky little tool that separates us from flea-picking baboons — has no place. What we see unfurling now in the Republican Party and in the remarks of its primary presidential frontrunners is not the result of reason, but rather Christian fundamentalists who pit their God against science and research in a fight they are determined to win. And that, like Krugman said, is terrifying. But it is also something that, for better or worse, is not new in the American story; it is part of our tradition.

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