Morning Ed: Politics {2016.02.01.M}
NPR lists out six alternatives to our current primary system. It’s no good having Iowa and New Hampshire hard-coded in, but I’ll take just about anything over a National Primary (or, really, any system that places undue importance on a handful of large states that might as well be their own countries). I favor the Ohio Plan (with some tinkering).
Heaven help us: The Snake People are now the largest generational voting bloc. Ah, well, at least they support gun rights.
The Guardian looks at the question… what the heck happened to Sarah Palin? My stock answer is always the same: The right wanted an icon, the left wanted a villain, and she wanted to be a star.
Jonathan Freedland is concerned that we are laughing at Trump and Palin when we should be worried about how they have tapped into middle class rage.
If you’re worried about political self-segregation online, it’s apparently nothing compared to real life.
Mark Krikorian says the debate on illegal immigration seems to have shifted from “enforcement can’t stop it” to “enforcement is stopping it so we need to stop enforcement.”
When it comes to presidents, a study suggests the smarter the better.
My knee-jerk reaction to the Freedland piece is, “What do you mean, ‘we’?” I’m not worried that Palin and Trump can tap into it. I’m concerned that both major national political parties could apparently be taken completely by surprise by its size.Report
The Palin piece is interesting. On the other hand, there isn’t really any explanation needed beyond the Peter Principle. She likely would have done just fine as a state legislator. Even as governor of Alaska she likely would have been close enough to within her depth so as not to matter all that much.
That being said, the idea of McCain swept down out of the blue and snatched this nice Alaska girl away to be seduced by the bright lights of the big city doesn’t really cut it. I remember when McCain named her. Most of the country had only the faintest idea who she was, but the crazies did, and the crazies were ecstatic. She wasn’t just quietly going about the state’s business before that.Report
She was raising taxes and had an approval rating that was astronomical. Most of the country didn’t have much of an idea of who she was, but I did and a lot of GOP Watchers did (and party reformers, like Ross Douthat, looked at her with hope and approval). The crazies latched on to her because they needed someone to latch on to. And the haters needed someone to hate. Her actual record was quickly forgotten, by pretty much everybody.Report
Well maybe she should have, you know still been the same politicitan nationwide she was in her state.Report
The route she took seems to have compensated her pretty well.Report
Its good we found her price before real damage was done. Although she also gave us Bristol and levi, so she still deserves the hurdle for thatReport
Ok the national review ones kinda unreal. How does granting amnstey work with cutting the legal immigration cap in half? Is this just some nativist whistle, or is this something he thinks would work absent fortress america level security spending and hiring. Not to mention how much more blatant and ugly policing would get to root out everyone who overstays visa or ninjas into america.
Its kinda of a lot to ask for just to keep out people we want to hire after allReport
It’s been a while since I read Krikorian regularly, but I believe he is of the mind that if we did get serious about it, we could reduce it considerably and the reason we haven’t is that nobody has been serious about it. Basically, make it harder for them to work (e-verify) and make it harder to collect benefits and a lot of them will go and with a border surge will make it not worth it for many more to come.
I… don’t think that’s entirely wrong. I used to, but I think a lot of it does come down to the PTB simply not wanting to enforce the law or get serious about it. They don’t want to crack down on employers, don’t want to potentially inconvenience the rest of us, and by and large just don’t see what the problem is. Which itself is not a wrong view (to be honest, that is closer to my own position than Krikorian’s views are), but that’s different from throwing our hands in the air and saying “There’s just nothing we can do! (short of a totalitarian state)”Report
Well, it wouldn’t be a totalitarian state for us white folks, but of course, the amount of governmental law enforcement effort that the hardcore anti-immigration (and I don’t put illegal in here because folks like Krikorian actually want less immigration period) folks want to actually significantly impact the inflow/outflow would likely also fall on those brown people here who have either been born here or are here legally.
I mean, yes, if you don’t care about that or consider that a bonus, then yeah, you don’t care about that too much.Report
I suppose it depends on how one defines “totalitarian” but I think there is still quite a bit of daylight between what we’re doing now and a totalitarian state (for brown people).Report
I don’t know if you have heard about a minor fuss about each state having to upgrade all drivers licenses to a secure level with a photo database per a mandate of the Fed’s dating back to 2005. It just came up here and people are all PO’d because without a license up to snuff we can’t use it for id at TSA. So 10 years ago the fed said all the states had to make their licenses up to a set standard. Now people don’t want to do that. What is the biggest complaint? How dare the Feds make us have a national ID, what do they need that database for and why should i have to “show my papers!!!!”.
How the heck do people think we could ever have a real e-verify or a useful national ID to prevent people from working. Heck some of the people complaining about the upgrades drivers license are people that want a crack down on illegals and ID”s to prevent them from working.Report
I think that’s a subject worthy of debate, and it’s a good question on how people will respond if they know that they are being inconvenienced for the sake of combatting illegal immigration. Maybe they’d change their minds, maybe not. Krikorian himself has been pretty consistent on the matter, though. And while I don’t personally favor universal e-verify, if it did pass I don’t believe it would qualify as totalitarian (just as the federal requirements for DL’s are not totalitarianism even if they are a pain in the arse).Report
Neither major party’s nomination process is broken; no major fixes are necessary.Report