Thursday, June 12, 2014

Maybe it's the stupidity, stupid

Headlines blare that U.S. House majority leader Eric Cantor lost a primary election to a more extreme tea bagger and pundits lined up to give it all meaning. Can the Republic stand?

It's called an upset, but that's just blown dust like in sports when the team the experts didn't pick ahead of time wins the actual game. And calling the winner an unknown, mostly because the press which holds the key to known or unknown, simply paid him no attention having all but ignored the primary,  tacitly acknowledging Cantor the winner a long time ago.

Cantor, who reportedly spent something like $5 million to his opponent's $300,000, had polls showing him winning with as much as 62 percent of the vote. The pollster he believed was the same one who predicted Romney would win in 20012.

Lots of reasons have been offered for the loss. Cantor wasn't extreme enough for the tea baggers; Democrats crossed over figuring it would be easier to defeat the tea bagger in the general election; Cantor's stand on immigration wasn't in line with his constituents' thinking. A day later at least one pundit gang decided the vote was all about universal dislike for immigration reform. While it is an important issue, it's also difficult to believe a majority of voters are all that concerned over an idealistic progression.


And once they tired of giving us why this happened, those pundits quickly moved to the future. What's it going to be? Is the party of tea baggers stronger than expected, reports of its demise premature? Some went so far as to say it is the end of the Republican party as we know it. Already polling for November even though nobody even knows exactly who this candidate is, let alone his Democratic opponent who, as it turns out works for the same small college in Virginia. It's all lip flap, news people, like sports reporters, trying to report the news before it happens. Isn't that why they play the games? Because predictions are not always correct?

They all lay out logical and some illogical reasons for the results: this leads to this, leads to this, sort of thinking. They seldom go past two levels though, all in someone's form of logic leading to why the Republican leader lost, what it means and who will win in November. Along with that is the speculation about how this will destroy Congress. Doubtful.

Maybe electing a tea bagger to replace Cantor is all right. The new guy will be low on the seniority scale with nowhere near the influence and power his predecessor held. But that's a false hope. The GOP will drag out some other flabbermouth to fill the position and we will be right back where we started, logic or no logic.

Years ago on a college political science exam, I analyzed a campaign and its result, presenting my theories based on what to me was sound logic given all the information available and brought the whole thing to a nice, neat logical conclusion.

When the exam was returned with a grade, obviously made by a graduate student teaching assistant, I had received a much lower mark than I expected. Next to my carefully crafted essay was the curt note "there is no logic in politics."

My first response was anger; why even bother teaching political science if it is all irrational mayhem? How else are we expected to analyze something like an election without using logic to find logical answers. How will we ever understand what happened? What else is there?

But,  now, looking at the Cantor defeat and watching all these analysts scramble around looking for the logic in it, well, it appears the only logic is what you choose yourself, your own opinion of what happened. And there never will be a complete answer. Just look at that pollster who got the result prediction so wrong. You would have to interview every voter in that district to find answers, that's right, plural, because there will be no single one. Two voters are upset about immigration reform; one wants to save Social Security; one guy's wife's second cousin was once in a bridge club with Cantor's wife; one other is a friend of Kevin McCarthy who is the most likely replacement; and five more are just plain angry with the GOP in general, for among other things, wanting budget cuts all over social programs, but spending millions on sure-to-fail attempts to repeal Obamacare or try to pin Benghazi on the president; seven women who believe their health is their own business and not politicians'; and one is a pissed off lobbyist for an environmental group because Cantor has fought every effort to address climate change. 

And while people try to get an answer neatly folded into some cubbyhole where it fits, perhaps it takes a step back to view a larger picture.

I haven’t seen a comment yet that says maybe we are all  fed up with Republican shenanigans in Congress and the standstill government and want to get those Repubstructionists like Cantor out of there, even if it means electing yet another tea bagger to take his place. Maybe we are just pissed off and in this case the evil you don't know is most likely better than the evil  you know. One thing is for certain the one you don't know is not going to have anywhere near the power of the one he is replacing.  That's of course if the new evil can defeat another unknown who is losing in the polls when the actual election comes around in the fall.

Maybe it was just because he's a dick

1 comment:

  1. I use to be a news-aholic and spend hours watching either MSNBC or CNN. No, Fox was never part of the rotation for reasons you can imagine.

    But anyway, it took awhile but even someone like me eventually realized the talking heads often did not know what the hell was going on. They were getting paid to run their mouths and I've got to admit they are earning their money. Long story short, unless some part of human civilization is being blown up or about to be blown away by Mama Earth I don't go near those channels anymore.

    Like you wrote about Cantor's unexpected defeat, there is no complete answer but a combination of different elements that somehow makes up an insane whole.

    I actually feel foolish now given that I once thought 24/7 news channels might be a benefit to the country and world.

    ReplyDelete

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The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

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A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

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Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

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One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

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It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

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Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

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Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

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You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

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"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

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