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Political Animals
July 25th, 2007A long standing theory of mine is that the more individualistic are the members of a political party, the less likely they will take elected office and keep controlling majorities.
The theory is pretty simple: Every organization must have a consistent mission, and be able to communicate with the consumers of their product. This includes corporations, non-profits, and yes, political parties. Whenever a single member of an organization varies from the core product, message, or brand, the entire organization suffers.
Intellectually speaking, Democrats are fish. They are efficient at reading the positions of other members, creating a mental pack mentality, and thus enjoy the power that a mass of beings moving in unison affords. But like shad, if their leader(s) guide them into shark infested waters, there will be fewer fish and fatter sharks.
This is in part what happened to the Democrats while Bill “I Feel Your …” Clinton was in office. When he screwed up by straying (either off campaign promises or off one intern and onto another) the “school of fish” mentality caused fellow Dems to defend his indefensible actions. The entire party then carried his particular stench, and the voters decided eating beef was better.
Republicans are more like cows. Sure you can herd them, but it is hard work, they fight you all the way, and then scream loudly when you press the branding iron into their hides. They have just enough loyalty for the species to survive, but will flee another Republican like a cow flees when a wild bore runs and guts another bovine. Only once in a while does a bull (think Newt or the Gipper) come onto the Republican pasture and keep the herd bunched.
If you need evidence of this, just listen to talk radio. George Bush never got a lot of support from conservative commentators. They either held their noses and their tongues, or they started ripping flesh from Bush’s hide on the first day. Bush, being a Big Government kinda fellow (might be a typical Texas-Super-Size-Everything hangover) lost them early on. Except for Cindy Sheehan, the Democrats have far fewer mavericks — they are swimming along quite nicely (which is what animals with brains the size of fingernails do).
Libertarians are lone wolves. If there is a larger and more diverse group of individualistic ideologues than the Libertarians, then keep them caged. Libertarians lose elections in part because they rarely have a cohesive and well explained message (their message makes perfect sense to those who study constitutional history and law, have deep philosophical debates on the meaning and mechanisms of free enterprise, and spend to much time reading Ayn Rand — in short, nerd wonks). Libertarians can’t communicate well among themselves much less the voting public, who don’t even know what a libertarian or a Libertarian are.
Get five Democrats into a room, and you’ll get one opinion. Get five Republicans into a room, and you get 2-3 opinions and a hooker if one of their senators came along. Get five Libertarians in a room together, and you’ll get exactly five different opinions and a long explanation about each.
