VOTE FOR THE PARTY NOT THE PERSON

I have blogged about this before on Firetreeblog spot. I heard the ex-governor of Colorado on Chuck Todd’s show this morning proudly proclaim that in his state they vote for person and not the party. It sounds macho to say that. It makes a person think they have an extra measure of free will that he or she really do not have. The purpose of this blog and of previous blogs is to point out the fallacy of that Governor’s argument.

It makes a great deal of difference which party a politician belongs too. All one has to do is evaluate the voting record of senators or congressional representatives; they vote in block. If the Senate Majority Leader or the leader of the minority party tells a member of the senate to vote one way or another and that member does not do as told, the leaders will not give them important committee assignment. The same is true of the House of Representatives. What is even more important is that extra government but still political bodies have more influence than the senate and House leaders. For example, if you do not sign Grover Norquist pledge, his organization will mount a primary challenge in your up coming election. If you do not do what Karl Rove tells you to do, he will isolate your campaign from big dollar donors. Other organizations including various churches have an equal amount of influence. Democracy is based on one man one vote not. Anything else is all bad for democracy but it would serve no purpose to list them.

People sometimes ask me why I am so anti Newt Gingrich and anti Karl Rove. Although Gingrich is the greediest man in politics, I credit him with something much worse, he designing a campaign finance system in the early nineties that is devastating to democracy. He collected money using the power of his office as speaker of the House of Representatives. He went to state Republican Party organizations and found Republicans who wanted to run for office. (Down ballot campaigns do not require the big money of Presidential campaigns.) In other words, because of his success in capturing control of the House of Representatives to representing his radical agenda, he can be credited with starting this “out of state campaign money” program used by Rove, Norquist, Republican Governor Assn. and many others.

I single Rove out because of his propensity for dishonest campaigning, which also harms democracy. Look at how Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and a string of other Republican Governors, etc were elected in Wisconsin—they did not say they subscribed to Ayn Ryan philosophy. As an aside, look at what happened when Romney has an open mike at a donors affair or what happened to Todd Akin when he said what he really believed.

Because of the out of state control of financing and because of the control Senate and the House leaders have over people we elect to those bodies, our democracy is suffering. I would like it better if we could vote for the person and not the party but that is not reality. The person you elect will vote the party line.