The Lessons of Power

[kokopelle]

I've been thinking about the lessons about power that one can derive from the Mid-term elections. I'll put them into bullet format.

1) Those who live by the sword also die by the sword.

Not all of us are lucky enough to die in bed. The Republicans have been winning by very narrow margins at the polls. This time they lost by very narrow margins. Should they be surprised? No.

2) The base is not enough

The Republicans made a strategic decision to only (mostly) address their base. They were almost forced to do this because their base did not 'play well with others'. To move on issues that their based did not support was done at the risk of losing the base. This has worked well, until charges of corruption and dereliction of duty (by fiscal conservatives) caused a fraction of their base to revolt (see point #1).

3) The attainment of absolute power does not guarantee future absolute power.

The Republicans hoped to stay in power via sophisticated grass-root efforts, district re-engineering, and control of the levers of government. The result seems to have followed the classic line, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". A thing most telling to me is that corruption of the polling booth technology seems to be most connected with the Republican political machine. The Republicans seem to be gifted with the motivation and opportunity for election machine shinagins. Does this mean that the Democrats are not smart enough (opportunity) or aren't desperate enough (motivation) to do the same? I don't know.

4) Fear is not the only motivator

Fear can motivate many people. People also have a brain in their heads, recognizing that there is more to the world than just fear.


The Republicans lost supreme government power because of (according to the polls) a perception of corruption. There are lessons here for the in-coming Democratic party powers. There is definitely a lesson for those people running for President in 2008. I sincerely hope that we are leaving behind a period of political imperialism and fear-mongering. This is what I would like for Christmas.

Comments

[iskender.livejournal.com]

Fear is also unreliable. Spread fear and you might risk having your army scared of various things. Fear is alienating by its very nature and whatever kinship is forged by it momentarily may very well collapse after a while.

Also keep in mind that Bush has promised to fight abortion, among other things, for the flag-pumping rightwing. As a crusader, he's terribly impious and insincere. If I was a Christian fundamentalist, I'd have to wonder when the actions would follow the rhetoric.

[greensh.livejournal.com]

Bush did seem to take part of his base for granted. He ended up coming across as impious and insincere. The question is, could he have ever lived up to what he committed to doing? Part of his 51% of the voting public were fiscal conservatives who wanted little to do with abortion and people on life-support. Some number of these people just walked away. This left Bush pandering to a base, the religious right, that he could not fully satisfy. A perfect world for the religious right would have been a miserable world for many more people. It wasn’t going to happen (thank goodness!) This is not new to politicians. The thing new is that this portion of the base is dogmatic, single minded, and sees the world only rightly working their way. If you are not with them, than you are against them. It could be that Bush found himself outside the religious right fence, "against" the very people who helped build the previous Republican victory. I've not heard much from the religious right since the election. It will be interesting to see who they throw their lots in with.

[breimh.livejournal.com]

All I can say, at this point, on this issue is that you should take a look at this, all of the information presented, and consider the things brought to light there. Then look at the base of power, and determine what is the lesson to be learned.