Today, as we’ve been told by flyers, television stations, administrators, campus organizations, the incessant howls of voter registration drives and anyone not currently residing under a rock, is a fundamentally important day for the future of our country. Today’s elections, whether for the oval office or a state Assembly position are an opportunity to define our future.
This opportunity must be born out of a desire to tell the Republican Party, up and down the ballot, their message needs reshaping. A couple weeks ago I wrote that we must show respect toward the conservative members of our campus community. Here I am calling for the elected members of the Republican Party to do the same, by advocating for principles and issues related to the tenets of true conservatism.
The issues the Republican Party currently advocates are so far from the ideals of their true party platform that their message doesn’t make intuitive sense. Put simply, the GOP has become rife with logical inconsistencies.
Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency within the current Republican Party lays fruit within their economic policy. Republicans have an inherent detestation of “tax-and-spend” liberals. This ideology at one point led the GOP to advocate for low taxes while also severely limiting government expenditures. What has happened recently, however, is that the Republicans call for an increase in spending while keeping in place those same tax cuts, a policy I like to call “borrow-and-spend.” Such a policy is in large part responsible for the addition of a new digit to the national debt clock in New York City, a symbolic representation that proudly displays the over $10 trillion we owe. It seems some have forgotten their lessons from Political Science 101 — that a government must tax its citizens at a level consistent with desired public programs — and they have most certainly forgotten the lessons one learns throughout childhood; you can’t spend what you don’t have. The thought is mind-boggling. How can a group of policymakers put in place tax cuts for the wealthy while conducting a war that is draining $10 billion out of our pockets each month? Yet the more pertinent question is, how do these people consistently get elected?
They do so by hijacking voters by making relatively inconsequential social issues the focus of elections around the country. The GOP has done this recently by aligning itself with the Christian right, and in doing so their message has become muddled and even more inconsistent. For what is abortion legislation but government literally in the body and the mind of the people? How is calling for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage or potentially lifesaving stem-cell research related to conservatism? Yet, due to human psychological orientations to questions of faith, these are the issues that capture attention and get votes.
That is why today is of the utmost importance. While it’s easy to get complacent by looking at the polls of the presidential race, Democrats, of which there are many on this campus, must show up and have their voice heard on elections representing all levels of government. A mandate is necessary.
The Republican Party must be forced into a period of self-reflection of which they can return as a party with a consistent and coherent message. I understand the negative consequences of a government controlled by one party. The failures of the
It may seem like a pipe dream, but such transformations are anything but impossible. In the 1960s, the Democratic Party was torn apart by their insistence on legislating social issues and was forced to re-assess its composure and its message. What then followed the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was one of the largest partisan re-alignments our country has ever seen, leading President Lyndon Johnson to utter his now famous remark that the Democratic Party had “just lost the South for a generation.” Such a change was critical in the transformation and ultimate resurgence of the Democratic Party, and such a transition is in order for the current Republican Party.
While some have trouble saying it is our duty to vote, we have a responsibility to do so and to do so in a manner that assures our representatives operate in the full faith of the country. Today we have the opportunity to exercise that responsibility. Hopefully we do so in a way that transforms the direction of the country and our politics.
Get out there and vote.
Ben White ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.
