Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
What Are We Politically?
There appears to be an almost even split in terms of our national politics. The latest Rasmussen poll in this regard shows that 33.9% of us are Republicans, 33.7% of us are Democrats and the balance of 32.4% is ‘something else’.
Self-described/registered Republicans are 50.15% of those who belong to one of the two usual political parties while self-described/registered Democrats are 49.85% of those who belong to one of these two parties. That is a very even split and tells us why it is the ‘something else’ that often decides who will be elected and who will be sent packing.
There has always been the suggestion that the ‘something else’ is actually the middle grouping of people that are neither Republicans nor Democrats, but the “Independents” as we call them.
More likely though, this ‘something else’ group is comprised of the full spectrum of political leanings. I am part of the ‘something else’ group and believe myself to be more conservative than the Republican Party as a whole which makes me considerably more conservative than those in the Democratic Party. You might be more liberal than the Democratic Party as a whole and also be part of this ‘something else’ group. Others in our ‘something else’ group may very well be somewhere between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party as they see themselves.
When we think about the likely composition of both recognized political parties, and recognize that there is a range from more liberal to more conservative in each of those parties, we begin to better understand why the ‘something else’ group really wields a lot of power over the outcome of our political campaigns.
If we add the people who defect from one or other of the two recognized parties over the relative position of the candidate selected, then we better understand why the races at the national level are usually decided by a narrow majority of all those who voted. The defectors certainly include those who simply don’t vote as well as any who vote for the opposing candidate.
It would be interesting to divide the total amount spent on both campaigns by the number of deciding votes. That would tell us what each of the votes that made the difference really cost.
We also see why a “third party” candidate is so disturbing to the two major parties. That throws everything into the proverbial “cocked hat”.
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