MDP: Take Advantage of Taxpayer Funded Right to Screw with GOP Primary
[YouTube]hdZDSxfYvuE[/YouTube]
Michigan Democratic Party Chair, Mark Brewer just sent this video out with the following message.
Friends,
Republicans have extended an invitation to all Michigan Democrats to crossover and vote in the Michigan GOP presidential primary this Tuesday, February 28th. Yesterday, Republican Senators Rick Jones and Arlan Meekhof said they’d welcome Democrats to crossover. You can check out the invitation for yourselves by watching the video clip below.
Any Democrat who takes Senators Jones and Meekhof up on their offer will still be able to participate in the Michigan Democratic Party’s presidential caucuses on May 5, 2012.
If Democratic crossover votes affect the results of the GOP presidential primary next Tuesday, the Republicans will only have themselves to blame.
Sincerely,
Mark Brewer
Chair, Michigan Democratic Party
Now, as someone who proudly voted for John McCain in the 2000 primary, I’m all in favor of using MI’s cross-over primaries to screw with GOP primaries.
The thing is, I’m not convinced the presumed choice here–supporting the medieval Rick Santorum–is really a good idea. Sure, it might make Mitt Romney go bankrupt sooner. But I think Democrats underestimate Santorum’s ability to run against Obama.
And frankly, while Santorum’s regressive views are exposing the GOP brand in its true form, I’d sort of like debate to get beyond whether women have no rights, or just a few.
They would be better advised to vote for Ron Paul. More votes for Ron Paul = more panic by Republican establishment.
@William Ockham: Yeah, and I think Paul might do not-poorly here–lots of students, after all.
But the two questions are 1) do I want to publicly proclaim to be a GOPer, with all that’ll mean for the spam I’ll get and 2) will my vote have a marginal effect in the clusterfuckery?
@William Ockham: To get more votes, Rick is spouting Tea Party rhetoric, so having this fight draw out to the convention will give more play to the views of Ron Paul, Orly Taitz, etc.
Franklin Graham saying what he did yesterday shows what Santorum’s backers truly propogate.
The horns of a dilemma. For whatever it’s worth EW, I still think a crossover vote for Sanctimonious Santorum is the way to go. I think Sanctimonious Santorum would lose bigger against Obama than Plastic Mitt.
Sanctimonious Santorum would energize the Repug base more, but would turn off more independents, particularly women.
Plastic Mitt would do pretty much the opposite. More independent support including women, but less Repug base energy.
I can see why you would hesitate EW, but I’m convinced Sanctimonious Santorum’s craziness would be his overall downfall against Obama.
Ok, I’m going to go real strategic here (or maybe esoteric is a better word). I’m of the opinion that economic performance is the biggest driver in a presidential campaign. I expect Obama to win. What will be interesting is how the Republicans interpret the loss. If Romney is the nominee, they will believe that the reason for the loss was Romney’s moderateness. That would send the party into a frenzy of conservative insanity. I think that is actually a bad thing for the country. If Santorum is the nominee, the loss will be interpreted by insiders as due to his social conservativism. I don’t think that’s how the movement folks will interpret it. I suspect they will figure out a way to blame Romney anyway, but that will cause a rift in the party and give the moderates (relatively speaking) a chance to make a comeback.
This is just idle speculation, of course.
I too don’t like the push for dems to vote for santorum as an attempt to throw the general electorate behind Obama. Beyond the obvious, ‘what if he wins’ problem. Every show of support for the filth that comes out of that man’s mouth shifts the overton window closer to his views. the last thing a responsible dem should do is anything that normalizes or mainstreams santorum’s rhertoric. the momentum we give him might push the republican party farther to the right, so that even if obama wins, the nation will have become more conservative.
if you want them to nominate a candidate that can’t win, vote paul (at least the overton window might be pushed toward an anti-war stance)
if you want them to nominate the most liberal candidate vote for romney (a liberal republican might heal some of the R/D divide and it will further alienate the right wing extremists)
@william
if what you were suggesting worked they would have gotten the hint after palin sunk McCain in 08. instead they doubled down on their conservative ideology and took a collective step to the right. which shifted where the middle is now percieved in America. When they mainstreamed palin the entire country became more conservative. it lost them the elecetion but gained them a shift in the balance of the american psyche. I think nominating santorum would have the same effect. which is what created the Republican lockdown.
if they lost the general elections with Santorum i don’t think they would blame it on his social conservatism. I think they would just shrug it off as how difficult it is to beat an incumbant president. whereas if Mitt loses the primary it will make it less likely that liberal republicans will bother for the nomination in 2016, once again shifting the american pshyche to the right.
if it is most important to us that the president have a D next to his name, a vote for Santorum might make sense in the short term (it would make it more likely for Obama to win a general election). But if what is more important to us is nuturing progressive ideals within the American people with an eye to the future; we need to alienate extreme right wingers not give them national momentum and a national pulpit with which to make their views seem more popular and legitimate than they really are. if we can show that santorum’s views are too extreme for even republicans to accept them, then we will have effectively removed those views from the serious consideration of both parties. (like what has happened to ron paul)
@Kris: You make some excellent points Kris!
I guess I still come down to the idea that Sanctimonious Santorum is so obviously out of his mind and in the end this craziness will only be acceptable to a minority of voters.
And I do believe that some of the Repugs realize how damaged their party has become and that these (still few) folks know full well that what they are seeing is not the resurgence of Repugs/Conservatism, but instead its demise or at least its banishment to a political wilderness for some time to come.
I’m more aligned with WO’s comment that having Sanctimonious Santorum be the face of the Repug party might make its domination by crazies a wake-up call.
As to Obama, I do think that he has helped shift things rightward, and that if Sanctimonious Santorum and the Repug party were shown to be crazier that outhouse rats that they are, perhaps, just perhaps, that might begin to help Democrats, and even Obama, realize that parroting wingnut policies is pure poison to the electorate and progressive policies are the right policies.
This is not flattery. It is pure “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” not to pull the lever for Santorum even if your vote will help Romney lose his quasi-home state and discomfit his whole campaign. Much as I am tempted to cheer for Santorum for horse race purposes, you do not want him with even as much of a realistic chance to be president as the Republican nomination represents. It’s going to be extremely easy for the Obama campaign to demonize Santorum and not to have to defend any of their positions very hard. Santorum plays to Obama the adult in the room. The question then is if it will be enough [for Santorum] to win for Santorum to crush Obama among white working class voters.
So what is the consensus? I’m thinking Paul because he’s not going to get the nomination but it will register as a lack of support for the other nominees. To be honest, I’m horrified by the thought of voting for Santorum. What if he won? This country is crazy and crazier things have happened.I am ashamed to admit that,just for fun,I crossed over and voted for W in the 2000 primary,not really proudly,but what harm would it do?
LOL. You have to be very careful what you wish for.
Here is a paper that might provide some insight.
Accountability with Strong Parties
Obama’s dream strategy in the intramural game of attrition, is to eliminate the R candidate that might be most attractive to his own D-I voters, so that he can run against the most extreme R which will scare us into voting for the lesser of two evils and deny the R candidate crossover votes.
It decreases his accountability and the accountability of the party, that is, stabbing the voters in the back because they suffer no consequences, because we have no where else to go. (They have already done this by not allowing a primary)
Boehner cant control his Tea-partiers, I’m sure they know Santorum, Newt, and Mitt are awful, they just want back in power but they need donations from the MIC, Likudniks, and bankers. I feel like this is a vanity election or the Rothschild’s would have bankrolled Jon Huntsman, or Pawlenty.
What is more important how the election debates affects the democrats. You know Ron Paul will hammer Obama on his Neocon foreign policy and civil rights. Maybe he’ll tell Obama Bradley Manning is a hero. :)
I can’t see voting in a party’s primary just to mess up that party’s process. Heard of blowback, or the law of unintended consequences? Plus it seems wrong in a deep Kantian sense, it implies that one accepts a rule that democratic processes need not be respected and might be messed around with for ends like fun (ratf*cking) or to win an election. But when I want to run an election, or win one, I expect it to be fair? Not if I act in ways implying I accept a general rule allowing disrespect of the democratic process. Messing up the other party’s primary has that Kantian moral contradiction.
@tjallen: Why assume that people here are Democrats? Besides, they’ve been invited to participate.
Respect of the democratic process? This is politics, not a friendly game of sunday badminton. See James O’Keefe, hanging chads, Supreme Court deciding the election, Katherine Harris/Jeb Bush deciding who won florida, vote flipping diebold machines, election trickery by mail, black voter disenfranchisement.
@MadDog:
This will never cause Obama to go left. Everyone already knows Santorum is crazy by what comes out of his mouth. Consider the Overton Window Theory.
If he won the primary on that kind of poison, that would be an affirmation, not a warning. Dems/Obama would be free to trade away anything at all, The Democratic Party would be more sure that center/left voters had no where to go, apart from Iceland.
My rationale is simple. I really really really don’t like Mitt Romney. I have an opportunity to vote against him now in Michigan. I will cast my vote for Santorum. My motive is expressive, not instrumental.
I don’t like the spam from the GOP, but it will come to an end as it did the last time I crossed over to vote in the GOP presidential primary.
I like the voting for Ron Paul alternative. There’s no danger of him getting the nomination, and it might get more attention for his anti-war and justice views. He takes the oath to “Protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” more seriously than most. Also, I would enjoy seeing the Republican frontrunners racking their brains trying to figure out where Paul’s support is coming from, so they can try to steal it.
Bob in AZ
@ maddog
Thanks for your kind words, they gave me a warm fuzzy.
I think the GOP is blind to the crazy of santorum. We can see it becuase we are on the other side. Think of it like Fox News. We can see that the Fox news anchors are partisan propagandists but they can’t. Sauntorum will be the same. we will be baffled about how they can believe such swill and they will swallow it hook line and sinker. i think you will be depressed to find out that they will rally behind him in a united front instead of splintering due to his social conservatism.
we think he is too crazy to succeed becuase he is so obviouslly too crazy for us. the problem is that he is not too crazy for them. from their perspective romney is a liberal, bachman is the wingnut and santorum is the moderate candidate they’ve been looking for…
marcy, i share your concerns about santorum. though in theory he is the weaker candidate nationally, he is energizing the base, and in very dangerous ways.
compared to romney, he’s an emotional rocket, and in his pitting his candidacy against obama’s secular muslim-in-disguise, carves out a far more stark and defined distinction for the running.
i find him far scarier than romney, frankly, who presents the best target for the real issues of the economy and the elite wealthy. tricky ricky scares the bejeebus outa me.