No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Look for Republicans to scrap old rules that interfere with their arbitrary demands

Two recent articles seem to show what the conservatives are doing here. First is the New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh.
While it focuses on the administration's handling of Intelligence, what it says is that when the conservatives aren't getting the results they want, they are destroying the governmental systems that provide the unacceptable results.

Keep in mind that these systems are put into place to keep the government from acting arbitrarily.

The Texas redistricting is a similar conflict. The Texas Republicans didn't like any map that the Democrats would accept in 2001, so they blocked any map at all and sent it to the federal courts. The Court returned a map in 2001 that presented 21 majority Republican Congressional seats and 11 Democratic ones. But the voters in five of those Republican districts split their votes and re-elected Democrats even while voting for a Republican Governor. So the Repuplicans this year scrapped the once-in-ten-years redistricting tradition, and when that wasn't enough, scrapped the long-time traditional requirement for two-thirds vote in the Senate to pass the redistricting bill. Essentially they want it their way, and no rules are going to stand in the way of their arbitrary actions.

The second article is by Howard Fineman
about Rove's apparent strategy for the election in Nov 2004. He says Rove wants to make it a culture war.

"In Florida, at Gov. Jeb Bush’s urging, the Legislature empowered him to order the resumption of tube feeding to a severely brain-damaged woman named Terri Schiavo, who had been in a vegetative state for 13 years. The governor sided against Schiavo’s husband and with her parents, who wanted her kept alive. More important, Bush sided with anti-euthanasia forces, who share many ties and sympathies with those who oppose abortion."
As a family, the Bushes are making a political and moral statement: We are for the sanctity of life, as the Catholic Church defines it, and against legal powers that would extinguish it. (Except in the case of the death penalty, which the church also opposes.)"
If it sounds like a Holy War at home it is, and the Bushes are hoping that red is the color not just of blood but of victory."

Note the similarity to the Intelligence fiasco. Jeb bush is completely ignoring twenty years of legal, ethical and medical experience and arbitrarily doing things his way.

I think that Fineman has it right, and we are going to see a lot more of this for the next year.


posted by Richard at 5:02 PM