The Strategy of Political Belief
We all know that political candidates’ positions on critical issues usually depend on whose votes they are trying to win. We want to believe that they are for or against something because of personal conviction, because it’s right or wrong. Sometimes that sort of candidate actually comes along. But we have been disappointed time and again by candidates who take one stance on an issue in the primaries, only to soften or reverse their position in the general election. It’s a game that’s been played for a very long time. And it has come to the point where the media no longer even try to pretend a candidate’s position is rooted in belief.
Take this article from the New York Times, where one paragraph bluntly lays out the reasons some Republican candidates have to support or oppose Arizona’s immigration law.
Several Republican candidates have found themselves caught between supporting the law to attract primary voters who may not reflect the views of those casting ballots in a general election and opposing it with a mind toward attracting Latino voters.
There’s no attempt to take into account anyone’s personal beliefs here. It’s all strategy. Sure, this comes from the pen of a journalist, but we can often see quotes from campaign insiders along the same lines. This is how ridiculous our political system has become. Do we even know what someone really believes anymore?
It seems even Obama is no different. We thought so, we starry-eyed liberals dreaming of a brighter future, an epic rise from the depths to which the Bush administration caused our country to sink. And while Obama has maintained some of his positions, no one will forget that he started shifting to the middle as soon as the primaries were over. Nor that he has continued many of the Bush policies he told us he was opposed to.
Yes, I know politicians have been pandering to the voters for as long as we’ve had politicians. But there’s not even any guessing about it anymore. We are supposed to make our election choices based upon a candidate’s positions, then we read in the media that a candidate has taken a particular position in order to win over a particular group now in the primaries or later in the general. And what, we’re supposed to pretend we didn’t read it? We’re supposed to shrug our shoulders and just accept that that’s politics? What sort of twisted, psychotic system is that?