Do you have questioning thoughts about your political party affiliation when voting season arrives? Why be active in politics or even take time to vote for that matter? Political parties originated early in our nation’s history, although President George Washington
Do you have questioning thoughts about your political party affiliation when voting season arrives? Why be active in politics or even take time to vote for that matter?
Political parties originated early in our nation’s history, although President George Washington on leaving office discouraged such formations. He considered political alignments as factions detrimental to the spirit of the nation’s formation and future.
The differing factions in our country’s early history evolved into the nation’s two main political parties. Several attempts have been made to form a mainstay third party with no success.
Political factions continue to thrive. Small political parties such as the Green and Libertarian receive less than one percent of the popular votes in presidential elections. Larger factions representing active voter blocs reside within the Democratic or Republican parties. The reason they belong to a party is to sponsor candidates for Congress. By positioning within the parties, dominant factions can get senators and representatives with their political views elected to state and national offices.
In fact, what has developed is that extremist liberal and ultra conservative group factions are now the majority blocs within the respective parties. The deficit spenders are in control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The GOP is dominated by Southern evangelicals and radio/TV personalities.
These extremist power blocs continue in power due to the indifference of large numbers of independent voters and registered party members. Obvious from the turnout in the 2008 presidential election, only 56.8 percent of registered voters went to the polls. In Hawai‘i 63.1 percent of voters turned out.
Those that do vote appear to do so out some kind of loyalty or family background influences with no rational basis for support of a candidate or party. Surveys show that about one-third of registered voters nationwide are Democratic and one-third Republican and the remaining are independents. Yet the majority voting by states is consistently for one party generally referred to as Red or Blue electoral results. The independents vote with unflinching loyalty, with an occasional exception as demonstrated recently in Massachusetts with the independents having over 50 percent of the voters. Scott Brown, a Republican Party candidate, won their votes in the recent U.S Senate seat race. A Democrat had held that seat for 37 years.
The golfers I play with at Wailua, mostly voting Democrats, kid me because I’m active in the local GOP. They enjoy a joke when I’m attending a caucus meeting or function by asking how just myself and two or three others attending could constitute a meeting? Why waste my time with the minority island party? I refer them to the Gettysburg Address for enlightenment.
The why to be politically connected and involved is contained in President Lincoln’s famous speech: “… It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The Progressives in Congress have taken over our government with aims to run our lives better than we can. What are you going to do about it? Tea parties are a force, but with no party affiliation are totally ineffective to stop these extremists. The Keynesian spending spree is merely a façade to perpetuate the recession. (Economist John M. Keynes’s key theory for fiscal stability during economic downturns.) We are all Keynesian puppets. The president’s chief of staff boasts of not wasting this economic crisis. What spending from the top achieves for them is making us dependent on Big Brother by taking away our economic freedoms and undermines local rule.
If you want your government back, you need to get cracking.
• Ron Holte is the former chairman of the Kaua‘i Republican Party.
