The Stupid Party
Posted on September 29, 2008
Swing voters vote not only for a party they like. They also vote against the party they don’t like. And they usually vote against a party because their policies or their leaders or their allies are stupid.
The competition is usually intense for which party can be more stupid.
Political parties are stupid when they go overboard in telling people how to live their lives.
Democrats are usually stupid on economics. When they tell swing voters they need to pay more taxes in order to fund more government programs that usually don’t work, they are being ideologically pure but politically stupid.
Republicans are usually stupid on social issues. Prohibition, for example, was stupid. Teaching creationism in public schools is also stupid.
Sometimes a party has the perfect storm of stupidity. For example, when Bill Clinton pushed for higher taxes, for a social policy that upsets a majority of voters (Gays in the military in 1993 for example) and for a gun ban, that was politically stupid.
Republicans seems to be reaching a perfect storm of stupidity at just this moment.
Aside from the push on several different social issues that seems destined to alienate swing voters, Republicans now are doing their best to scuttle a necessary rescue plan of the credit markets.
Republicans used to get high finance. They used to understand Wall Street. They used to get the importance of the proper regulation of business. They used to be smart enough to resist demagoguery.
After today’s vote, those days seem to be long gone.
True, the Democrats still have stupid plans. They still want to raise taxes and cut off foreign trade, and pay for dumb Washington programs that will do nothing to help anybody.
But I really fear that this vote against this rescue plan will forever brand the Republicans as the more stupid of the parties.
That is too bad, because the Democrats are really stupid. But more votes like the one we had today, and the GOP could retire the stupid trophy. They are the reigning champions and the current winner of the stupid party label.