[Osx-nutters] AHMADINEJAD

[Chris Gehlker]

On Sep 25, 2006, at 1:03 AM, David Cake wrote:

> 	And the worst of it is, that given the basic rules of the US  
> political system, these people probably are doing the right thing  
> to achieve their goals, just at the cost of a functional political  
> process.

I think the conventional wisdom among American academic political  
scientists is  that the direction of causality is the other way  
round. The  theory  goes that after the Voting Rights Act was used  
as  an excuse  to gerrymander permanent incumbency, the parties   
needed to cater to their more extreme elements at the local level and  
that this extremism gradually worked its way up through the  
organizations to the national level. Finding themselves  
disenfranchised, moderates simply dropped out of the political  
discussion, leaving the field to the more extreme elements.

The first part of this story certainly meshes with my  own  
experience.  I  can remember a time when  elections for such offices  
as State Senate  or House were always contested and all the political  
junk mail that I got stressed how moderate and reasonable the   
candidate was. Now most such  races are uncontested and its all about  
who wins in the  primary. Primaries are all about turning  out true  
believers in elections with little publicity and low turnout. Since I  
live in a republican district, I pnly receive mail stressing how  
conservative the candidates are and how much  they  dislike Mexicans.
--
Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!