My previous blog analyzing the 2012 national elections at
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/11/election-analysis-national-edition.html
Here are more thoughts on the political trends of this year
1) Less patience with overseas interventions
In the recent past, there were always pressure for the US to "do something" whenever there is trouble abroad.
It some cases, it meant sending troops on a temporary basis to place like Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, etc.
But in other cases, when the US was reluctant to send troops (ie. Rwanda 1994), there were shrieks of horror of "how dare we not save those people".
After 9/11, we sent troops to Afghanistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden!
However, there were also cries to "do something" about Saddam Hussein, the horrible dictator who favored Sunnis over Shiites and Kurds, and showed that favoritism via massacres and poison gas. He also tried to takeover Kuwait in 1991, for which the US troops rescued.
But with all that trouble, there was concerns about Saddam Hussein wanting to violently retaliate against the US.
So we went in 2003 to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That was the easy part.
The hard time was keeping order. Whereas the US didn't have much difficulty in occupying extremely homogeneous nations like Germany and Japan after WW2, it was much different in Iraq.
The Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds had long histories of mistrust and rivalries. Many Americans (myself included) underestimated the level of violence that would occur between such groups after Saddam Hussein was ovethrown.
Plus, even though Collin Powell warned Bush that more troops would be needed to keep order, Bush decided to go along with Donald Rumsfeld "its OK, it wont be that bad" mentality instead ................until 2006, 3 years after the invasion.
Yes, the 2006 US surge calmed things down in Iraq, but the American public was losing patience with the war in Iraq.
After the 2008 elections, Barack Obama kept his promise of withdrawing from Iraq and sending more troops to Afghanistan. However, since killing Osama bin Laden, the American public is losing patience with the US defending a corrupt government in Afghanistan.
So Obama is planning to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2014. As Joe Biden said "the Afghans are responsible for their own security".
Contrast that with Mitt Romney, who kept saying Obama was "apologizing for America" and promised a tougher foreign policy.
Yet, when it was getting closer to the general election, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan started to take a more moderate tone, expressing that using US force would be a last resort.
But it was too late.
People don't have a short memory as some pundits think they do!
The public knows that Romney is a flip-flopper, that he earlier promised a tougher foreign policy when running in the Republican primaries, and he (surprise, surprise) flip-flopped his position when it was getting closer to general election time.
The public wasn't fooled!
The public was getting burned out in having US troops fighting overseas.
The public supports the Obama plan to withdraw from Afghanistan.
The public doesn't want more US intervention in Libya, nor does it want the US to be involved in the Syria mess.
As for Iran, the US public (which was already tired of war in the smaller Iraq) sure as hell not going to want a fight, unless Iran attacks first.
Chances are pretty high that
this is it for US troops fighting overseas for a very long time.
With our memories of the hellish fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US public will be like "
we ain't getting involved" if there some civil war going out somewhere far away.
The rest of the world will have to manage their own affairs on their own. The days of the US bailing them out is over.
2) Flip-Flopping not effective in the YouTube era!
As I mentioned earlier Mitt Romney was promosing a tougher foreign policy in the Republican primaries, then struck a more moderate tone as the general election got closer.
Politicians used to have an easier time getting away with such a strategy in the past.
Republicans would sound more conservative during their primaries, then moderate their tone for the general election. Democrats would sound more progressive during their primaries, then moderate their tone for the general election.
But now, in this age of YouTube and social networks, you can't get away with such stuff.
After all, it only takes a few seconds to find a speech from a few months ago!
And it only takes a few seconds for a politically savvy person to remind his/her social network of evidence that the politician has flip-flopped.
And with John Stewart posting clips of politicians saying totally opposite things, AND with people easily re-posting those clips to their social networks, flip-floppers have been cornered.
So from now on, politicians need to be more consistent.
No more of this "sound more conservative/liberal now, be more moderate a few months later" nonsense.
Just express a belief/policy plan/etc and just stick with it already
3) Libertarians getting more votes this year
Earlier this month, I posted a blog post mentioning how Gary Johnson's campaign showed a sign that the libertarian movement is being more mature
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2012/11/libertarian-movement-gaining-maturity.html
Guess what? That maturity has good results.
.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/11/08/Libertarian-Party-buoyant-Greens-hopeful/UPI-46151352363400/#axzz2CpZfoW8c
Cravings for less Washington gave the Libertarian presidential entrant a record vote count while a tight Obama-Romney race hurt the Green Party, officials said.
The nearly 1.2 million votes won by Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican New Mexico governor, supported public-opinion polls showing "consistently that a majority of Americans want less government than we have today," party Executive Director Carla Howell told United Press International.
Johnson, 59, who initially sought the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, won the Libertarian nod at the party's May national convention.
His nationwide vote count -- the highest count of the minor-party candidates -- represents about 1.2 percent of the total popular presidential vote in the 48 states in which Johnson ran, a UPI analysis of Tuesday's results indicated. Johnson was denied ballot positions in Michigan and Oklahoma.
His vote count also beat the previous Libertarian Party record, set in 1980 by lawyer-politician Ed Clark, of 921,128 votes, or 1 percent of the nationwide total.
So yep, Gary Johnson broke the record for most votes by a Libertarian.
Gary Johnson also got more votes than any other minor-party candidates. (usually,
the Green Party usually gets 3rd place.....NOT THIS YEAR)
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And this occured in a year in which the election was expected to be close!
In other words, a year when the rear-kissers of the 2 big parties kept saying "
you're wasting your vote, you'd get (Romney or Obama) elected"
Well, SCREW THAT!
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Many of us are tired of out-of-touch religious fanatics in the Republican Party!
We're sick of being made to feel that the party of Rick Santorum, Todd Akin, Joe Walsh, Jan Brewer and other sick, disgusting fanatics
is the so-called "best option". And we're sick and tired of phonies who pander to those folks and flip-flop the other way come general election time (ie. Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan)
As long as the Republican refuse to LOUDLY disown the drug-war fanatics, the homophobes or the anti-immigration fanatics, they
WILL NOT get the respect of the Libertarians!
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As for the Democrats, they need to start taking the deficit seriously. The government can't pay for every pet project out there!
And this Democrat attitude of
"if you want PBS to be 100% privatized, you're an evil guy who hates Big Bird" is very annoying !
Just because we don't want our taxes to subsidize something, that doesn't mean we're against it! We just prefer certain things to be funded by private sources.
And the Democrats need to start taking the US high corporate tax rate seriously. It is HIGHER than the supposedly "socialist" Canada as well as "socialist" European nations. Enough with this crap of "
lower corporate taxes just reward the rich" crap!
This anti-rich envy isn't helping our economy at all!
Democrats need to start being more realistic about economics. We can't subsidize everything, we can't tax our way to prosperity, and too much taxes and regulations makes the US a less hospitable place to invest!
Countries like India and China have learned their lesson the hard way. They reversed course, started promoting more market-friendly policies and are now rising economic powers.
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I'm not sure who will be the next Libertarian running for President. We need to have someone as mature as Gary Johnson to promote the Libertarian. We need someone who picks his/her battles wisely, and continue to point the flaws of the Republican and Democrat policies.
The more we vote for the minor candidates, the more the Republicans and Democrats have to start paying attention to us! After all, if they want us to vote for them again,
they have to earn it!
Now that the Republicans and Democrats have to notice the rising Libertarian vote, they have to adjust to that! Let's see how they'll adjust!
