>Cedric Richmond, a black Democrat who is running against Republican Congressman Joseph Cao of New Orleans, charges that Republicans are getting black candidates to run as independents so as to split the Dem vote. The district is black. Cao, of Vietnamese extraction, won in a fluke and is considered the most endangered Congressional incumbent in the nation.
>Repub governor Rick Perry's former chief of staff and other staffers attempted to put a Green party of Texas candidate on the ballot, using corporate money, to sap the vote of Dem gubernatorial nominee Bill White. This effort failed and has backfired.
>In Nevada a Tea party has formed and is running candidates. Teabaggers insist they do not know these people. The Repubs allege that the Dems are behind this. Are they? Could be.
>A Florida Tea party (FTP) also has come to be and has its own candidates. The Repubs charge that the Dems engineered this, and many FTP contenders are young with no political histories while others are former Dems. But known teabag activists say the FTP is a Repub plot to co-opt the teabaggers. The truth? At this point, who can say?
>The shock nomination of indicted Dem nonentity Alvin Greene for the U.S. Senate from South Carolina over the plausible and more active Vic Rawl, who was expected to win easily, has left many Dems angry and wary. Could this have been sabotage? It is hard to see how it could have been carried out, but that possibility should be looked into closely. Certainly Repub ultra-teabag incumbent Jim DeMint is the lone beneficiary of the Dems having an unelectable nominee.
Tales of more such ploys will doubtless be along. Dividing the other party's base or finagling its nomination of a substandard contender are old and widely used political tricks.
Needless to add, they are not admirable. Conservatives, who preach so piously about the sanctity of the Constitution, are often the ones being accused of these democracy-negating antics. Liberals, who believe in rule by the people and not by elites, should not be engaging in them, either.
There are all sorts of connivers out there who count on having a passive and deceived public in order to get their way, either in business or in politics. For those who dislike that, there is always something new and populist that can be done to bring light to the concealing darkness. And the challenge of exposing who is doing what is particularly appealing today, when secretive ways are more and more vulnerable and information is power.
Plots are news, and news is money. That is how the disruption of plots can be made into a growth industry. It should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment