Coming soon to a presidential election near you: Dennis Kucinich running as an independent in the general election, funded by Wall Street capitalists scared of the concept of Hillary Clinton in the White House; or Mike Huckabee also aiming for commander-in-chief without a party, with campaign funds funneled surreptitiously from George Soros.
That mind-spinning scenario came down late last week and is just another sign of how our political leadership would rather play the system than take care of the needs of our country.
The idea is simple. In the past couple of years, Ralph Nader ran to the left of the Democratic candidate and took away just enough votes to give the presidency to Republican George Bush. The current leader's father was undone in 1992 by H. Ross Perot, much more a conservative than a liberal. Each time, the effect of the insurgent candidate was to help someone with a completely opposite point of view into office.
Perot and Nader at least ran on principle. If there's an independent candidate this time, it will be all about politics.
The possibility of something like this happened rose when Dr. James Dobson, who has been one of the leaders of the so-called "religious right" as the president of Focus on the Family, threatened to withhold support from the GOP if abortion-rights supporter Rudy Giuliani won the nomination. No matter that the former mayor of New York City has a tough law-and-order record that cleaned up the Big Apple, is strong against terrorism and is more likely to appoint judges sympathetic to Dobson's viewpoint. Pulling a power play, it would seem he'd rather throw the election to Hillary Clinton.
Dobson has been highly influential in the Republican party in the past, with many thousands of supporters across the country. However, in this election season, none of the front-running candidates could be described as a Christian conservative and one of them, Mitt Romney, is a -- gasp! -- Mormon. Seeing Huckabee and other religious right candidates trailing badly, Dobson is grabbing at straws to try to remind party pros how much sway he really has.
Right now, it's an empty threat and could remain that way. People are going to vote however they're going to vote in the primaries and, if the polls are in any way accurate, Giuliani could very well win the GOP nomination. In a match between Giuliani and Clinton, the religious housewife from Alabama will hold her nose and vote for Rudy, much like independents held their nose and gave Hillary's husband a second term.
But, what would happen if someone were to approach Huckabee (and I'm only using the Arkansas governor as an example because he fits the Christian conservative profile) and convinces him to run as an independent. Financial backers of the left, seeing a chance to divert Giuliani votes to someone else, can flood the new campaign with donations and make him appear to be a legitimate candidate, giving that Alabama housewife a realistic alternative to Giuliani. That could give Hillary one or two competitive states.
There's a similar scenario possible for the other side, where Clinton's stance on Iraq has not convinced anti-war activists that she represents them. In fact, Clinton and Barack Obama both refused recently to promise that all U.S. troops would be out of that country by the end of their first term. The anti-war left wants those troops out NOW, if not YESTERDAY.
Just like the Alabama housewife wouldn't change her vote in a two-person race for the White House, the University of Massachusetts philosophy professor would hold his nose and vote for Clinton over someone like Giuliani, who generally supports President Bush's military efforts in the Middle East.
However, if Kucinich (like Huckabee, a profile-fitting example), were to be convinced to run as an outside candidate in the general election, and for rich Republicans to provide him with money and legitimacy, then he could draw away votes from Clinton, handing a couple Upper Midwest states and maybe the White House to Giuliani.
This is politics in the United States in 2007. We still have not passed solutions to the Medicare and Social Security crisis, our borders are still sieves, and terrorists might still be in our midst. Our leaders might not be able to tackle the real problems of the day, but they're at the ready to game the electoral system in a bid to gain or maintain their power. After all, what's more important?
You know the answer for them. Just remember the answer for us.
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Interesting to see the pro- and negative treatments of the arrival of the autobiography by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, "My Grandfather's Son." As you might expect, the conservative media has been glowing in its reviews of the book and the man, while the left is somehow shocked -- shocked! -- that he hates them for their abusive confirmation hearings in 1991.
Those hearings were a watershed moment for American politics. If a young person amazed at the hatred and mistrust between the political parties ever asks how control of Washington, D.C. turned into a death struggle, point to the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas.
Anita Hill, then a professor at the University of Oklahoma and now at Brandeis University, claimed that Thomas had sexually harassed her years earlier while they worked at the Dept. of Education. The issue never came up in Senate Justice Committee hearings, only when his nomination, opposed by liberal groups fearful of a black conservative in a high government position, went to the whole chamber.
There was no way to prove or disprove what took place between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Therefore, there was no way it should have become an issue in the nomination. But liberal groups, desperate to keep blacks on their side of the political fence, pulled out all the stops to prevent Thomas from reaching the high court.
Thomas, however, won approval and has for 16 years been a pretty good justice, and has proven to possess a mind of his own, not always ending up on the side of Antonin Scalia. We're definitely better having him on the court, and much worse off for how his confirmation was handled.
National politics, through the Clinton and Bush years, have never been the same.
