« UPDATED There's No Place Like St. Elmo | Main | Taking on the Winners »
March 26, 2006
When Is an Elephant Not an Elephant?-And other uses for chipotle
[Cross-posted from The Pulse.]
PARTY FOUL
Out in the West Tennessee county of Henry, the Mexican girls are likely scarcer than in El Paso. That’s probably fine by some, including an openly racist candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 8th District named James Hart. To write much more about Hart’s views on non-white peoples gives him and his bile undeserved publicity, but we’re just getting the picture framed here. Hart is running as a Republican, as are two other men (Rory Bricco and John Farmer) who are intent on having a chance this November to unseat current U.S. Rep. John Tanner. The fact that all three of Tanner’s challengers call themselves Republicans is causing what would normally be a sleepy re-election to gain a little spice. Maybe it’s chipotle. They’re putting that into everything these days.
At present, the issue is a proposed debate among the three GOP candidates. One faction of the area Republican establishment, along with its favorite candidate Mr. Bricco, opposes allowing Mr. Hart onto the platform because, they contend, his racist views are not and should not be considered Republican. They ask, why let a person who espouses non-Republican views into a specifically Republican debate?
The other candidate, John Farmer, has come out strongly in favor of including Mr. Hart. Farmer and his backers state that all three candidates have met every Constitutional requirement to be a candidate for the House’ and that under state and local election laws, all have met the requirements to be in the primary on August 3. Farmer argues that excluding Hart from debates, where his radical positions would stand in stark contrast to the others and thus render him unacceptable to the party’s now-informed voters, is untrue to party principles.
HERD MENTALITY
What is a true Republican? For that matter, what is a bona fide Democrat? These questions are only interesting to the respective parties’ faithful, perhaps, but the rest of us can use them to understand our roles in civic life a little better. The human is an institutional animal, at least for the time being, and every institution seems to have its core believers, its fringe crackpots, and what I like to call the “amiable amblers” filling in the numbers. All of them call themselves by their institution’s brand name. Maybe the label is really chosen by the wearer, no matter that the sweater’s different. Bzzzzt. Try again. Declaring oneself a member of a political party is in no way a crucial step in the civic process. How’s that?
Parties have become the proverbial “ends unto themselves.” Whether you’re just dying to meet people who think a lot like you, or you’re seriously devoted to achieving meaningful changes in public policy, political parties are among your choices of means toward each. Obviously they work well for a lot of people. We’ve gone and let two of them become the government itself, though, and the result is that the constant inter- and intra-party bickering gets in the way of our choosing our representatives.
Again, I’m not stating there shouldn’t be political parties, or even that they should play a minor role in actual government. Policy proponents have to coalesce around something, after all. But how about taking the parties’ hands off the election process? Get them out of the election commissions and the district maps, and let the people decide who gets to run. The Republican State Executive Committee has actively pursued removing James Hart from its primary ballot, even though he legally qualified for it. (In case you don’t remember, Hart ran unopposed in the 2004 primary and was Tanner’s Republican opponent.) I sympathize with the difficulty of having someone claim affinity whose message is abhorrent, but I guess I’m with Farmer on this one: that the voters should be the ones to put Hart out. A party should not be able to dictate to a public election commission.
IT’S ALL RELATIVE
By the way, federal legislation has been submitted that would give responsibility for decennial Congressional redistricting to a bipartisan commission in each state. The House bill’s author is Rep. John Tanner, and Rep. Zach Wamp is a co-sponsor. I urge the people and their representatives to consider a truly independent model for this commission, rather than perpetuating in yet another way the exclusivity that is “bipartisanship.” Still, anything to stop the gerrymander helps.
Pulsations | By joe lance | 09:25 AM