The Hawks That Bind

Pictures from a Seahawks game? Why are these here?

I just posted a recap of the Seahawks' 2012 season, from the point of view of my youngest son and me, on the Field Gulls site of SBNation, where I spend way too much time and am occasionally known as fiftyone. (If I'm known at all.)

Anyway, thought it would be nice to post a link to that story here (LINK LINK LINK), and slap up a couple pictures of us at the last game of the season, defeating the hated St. Louis Rams and witnessing Wussell Wilson in Weel Wife. Read the article. You'll get what I'm talking about.

Most importantly,
/go hawks

The Electoral Effect of the Tea Party: Six Visualizations

Click below for the post. It's a googledoc I made. Yell at me if it doesn't work.

Cheers.

LINK LINK LINK

- Just John

We Gotta Wear Shades (Part Two)

Recap of Part One, published yesterday and below this post:

People say our system is broken, our media sucks, a Dark Age of politics is upon us. Poppycock, I say. The future is bright for three reasons: Good ideas can spread faster than ever; civil liberties are once again an important part of our national conversation; the two-party system is nearing its end. The Republican coalition cannot survive in its current configuration, opposing everything, including its own recent platform ideas, and being pulled too far rightward for its own good, by its rebellious Tea Party wing.


See, here's the problem for Republicans. Their ideological real estate is shrinking, pushed rightward with every centrist proposal they oppose. The smart half of the party braintrust can see this, and sees a future string of national and statewide electoral defeats unless a dramatic move to the center is made. Already, the list of embarrassing losses in races Republicans ought to have won includes Delaware Senate '10, Nevada Senate '10, Indiana Senate '12, Missouri Senate '12. Add the most recent presidential race if you believe Romney had to move way too far to the right during the primary season. I won't argue with you too hard on that one.

Taking the long view might hold the R patchwork together. Ah, but the other half of the Grand Old (White Men's) Party has no interest in the long view. The Tea Party enthusiasts are mainly concerned with putting Tea Party-type representatives in office. If a few RINO's (Republicans In Name Only, a derisive term) lose along the way, it's no skin off the backs of the far-right wing ideologues. "It's not like those guys were on our team anyway," they're apt to think.

Tea Partiers are right, to an extent. There are substantive differences between the two R factions.

Establishment R's ---------- Tea Party R's

Pragmatic ------------------ Ideological
Trim gov't services --------- Eliminate gov't services
Interventionist -------------- Isolationist
Much less libertarian ------- Much more libertarian
Consider science ----------- Deny science    

Each of those five divisions is critical. Look at it from the Tea Party's standpoint:

If compromise is a dirty word, one can't very well compromise with one's own teammates. Let alone the other party.
If government services are repulsive wastes of taxpayer money, just keeping those programs in place is hardly a satisfying result.
If we should get out of other nations' business, then war isn't much of an answer, now is it?
If libertarian ideals are important, they ought to be respected. Lip service won't do.
If science is just a bunch of anti-God bogus claims, why even bother with it at all?

Therefore, I cite irreconciliable differences between the Republicans and the Tea Partiers. I pronounce them separated, pre-divorced, effective immediately, with an official signing of the papers later this decade. I don't think 2015 is out of the question, but my money's on 2017, after a fresh batch of nationwide and statewide losses.
  
And the sooner we see an official split in this version of the Republican Party, the better. Not because the amount of D's in Congress will increase. (It will. Duh.) But because the anti-everything crowd that runs the GOP needs to be relegated to a fringe party. Only then will the remaining adult politicians will be able to return to crafting what makes our system great: bills that neither party really likes. I kid, but I don't. Governing a diverse, giant, rich, polarized country such as ours is not something to be entrusted to extremists.

Make no mistake: once the Republican v. Republican divorce is consummated, conservatives will suffer electoral losses -- for a short while. But dominance by one party can't last.

And that's where the future brightens considerably: First, the D's will fill the vacuum, swooping in to collect congressional supermajorities. They will enact laws similar to what we saw in 2009-2010: centrist policies that do next to nothing for the little guy and the middle class. Granted, Obamacare is a boon to the poor, but just look at this list:

a) Foreclosure and homeowner relief were half-measures at best.
b) The stimulus package, too small to begin with and watered down with tax breaks to boot, didn't fix unemployment.
c) The preservation of corporate tax loopholes and 11-figure subsidies to oil companies, which shift more of the tax burden to small businesses and individuals.
d) Somehow, Democrats found a way to extend all of the deficit-ballooning Bush tax cuts.

A couple more cycles like that one, and the Greens will rise. There is only so long the outer wings of a party can be satisfied by table crumbs. Do you see what I'm saying?

WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL HAPPEN EVENTUALLY TO THE DEMOCRATS.

Sorry for yelling. Just wanted you to see that point a bit better.

So, long term: there must be no fewer than four parties in our collective future. From left to right, on a rudimentary scale:

The Greens.
Aggressively redistributive and pro-little guy. Highly ideological.
Vote share: 15-20 percent

The Democrats.
Center-left. Government has an important role to play; pragmatic types. Solutions-oriented.
Vote share: 30-35 percent

The Republicans.
Center-right. Limited government is best; states-rights types. Business-oriented.
Vote share: 30-35 percent

The Libertarians.
Far-right and off-the-scale individualists. Highly ideological.
Vote share: 15-20 percent

To be perfectly fair, this is already how things were set up in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and even in the 2000s up to Barack Obama's election. Sure, there were only two parties at the time, and the numbers fluctuated considerably with things like Watergate and recessions and popular figures like Reagan.

It'll be so much better with four. Fringe groups will be less influential, yet their constituents will be represented with actual, er, representatives. Greens and maybe Socialists (real ones) will take office and sit on committees. Republicans will be able to focus again on fiscal responsibility and caging the territorial tiger that is the federal government. We need Republicans to do those things.

The skill of consensus-building will once again be elevated, as no party will be able to overpower another.   Gridlock will recede as filibusters become more rare.

Voting for the lesser of two evils will be largely a thing of the past, thank goodness.

So. Shades. Don't forget the shades. If we can manage to not rip each other's throats out in the meantime.


Another teaser: Tomorrow, I have some graphs to share that illustrate just how debilitating the Tea Party is to Republicans in competitive races. I'm very excited about those. Almost as excited as about the long-term political future of the United States of America.

We Gotta Wear Shades (Part One of Two)

You see, because the future's so bright for American politics, and hence for America itself.

/deep breath

How dare I?

Am I not paying attention? Am I living in some ivory tower? (Synthetic ivory, of course.)

Seriously, wake up and smell the feces, John. This is supposed to be the darkest age of our politics. Our elected representatives can't agree on anything. Obstruction for obstruction's sake is the new normal. Gridlock is expected. Our news programs consist of people screaming past each other. Our candidates for president spent in the vicinity of $2 billion in 2012. What's worse, that last figure ought to be shocking, but there's precious little outrage about the amount of money in politics.

Then, of course, when disagreements arise, which is always, everyone is compared to Hitler, all the time. Because that's an effective way to make your argument and draw people to your side. It's also super-mature.

Oh, but that's not all. Not even close! That's only one and a half paragraphs! An all-out assault on truth has surfaced in the past two decades, during which candidates are not punished for lying -- instead, the media "reports" any obvious lie by pointing out a tall tale by the other side, you know, for fairness' sake. Or reporters excuse the lie as spin, and that's if they don't ignore it altogether. Entire networks exist to promote certain ideologies. Our highest-paid newspeople are entertainers whose only use for facts is to try and pimp them to disprove other facts. As if that were possible. The War on Truth is going very well, thank you.

If there was a compulsory nationwide drinking game, whose rules are: "Do a shot every time you hear a logical fallacy on the air," every American would die before tomorrow morning.

And yet, and yet. Like I said earlier, the future is bright. Brighter than ever.

One reason is that new ideas are quick to gain traction, quick to be embraced, quick to be exposed. The Internet is wonderful for the spread of information, bad AND good. If something is really worthwhile, it can go viral, just like the things that are less good, and yes, I'm looking right at you, Psy. Well, not right at you, because eww.

Another reason for optimism is that personal liberty is making a comeback. After the stinky, anti-constitutional overreach that was the "Patriot" Act, civil liberties are once again at a premium across the nation and across the aisle. The push to legalize gay marriage, marijuana, and yes, the pushback against gun control all reflect a shared value: civil liberties are important. We may disagree on what shape they take, but at least now we're talking about how to expand them, or protect them, or stay carefully within the rules of the Constitution as we explore the limits of regulation. I'm not sure that's the same conversation we were having a decade ago.

But the main reason for optimism in American politics is that a realignment of the parties is on the way. And not too far off -- years, not decades.

This realignment is not on its way just because I said so. It's coming because the current situation cannot hold:

D President offers policy embraced by R's for years (health care reform via individual mandate)
R Congress votes against it
D President offers policy based on fact (climate change is real, let's boost green energy and cut emissions)
R Congress votes against it
D President offers ideas designed to rescue country from financial ruin (everything proposed in 2009)
R Congress votes against it
D President nominates R politician to head the Defense Department

R Congress votes against him!

D President offers idea based on common sense (ban weapons that make killing sprees easier, protect all other gun rights, close gun show loophole)
R Congress votes against it, inevitably. If you think the House R's will vote for whatever clears the Senate with the President's blessing, then... I can't help you.

The point here is: after years of unflinching opposition to every single proposal made by this President, the Republican Party runs out of things it supports. At some point, all it stands for is what it stands against. Which, pretty soon, is everything. Including its own principles.

I don't see a political party surviving for very long in America if the only victories it can offer its constituents are negative victories, even as it moves away from the center of the nation's political pulse. Give that party another x years of blocking everything in sight, claiming only negative victories (like, say, through 2017, then under a President Clinton), and the fractures already evident will widen. To the point of fracture.

The sooner we get to an official schism in the GOP, the better. For everyone, even conservatives.

Well, for everyone, except the far right. And maybe the far left. But I'm OK with extremists paying the price for a national return to sane politics.

Part Two of this post will be published tomorrow! A preview: Parties change. The Democrats have claimed the center, but after the upcoming Grand Old Parting, the Republicans will survive, and thrive again. Some of their ideas are really good! And out of the ashes of the GOP, a better, four- or five-party system will rise. Not a moment too soon, either.