Joe the Plumber and the Two Party System
Posted: February 5th, 2009, 11:20 pm
It is a sad fact of my life that I was once a Republican. I was young and naive and my family were all Republicans. We belonged to country clubs, etc. Those were back in the heady days of Barry Goldwater when extremism in the defense of liberty was no vice.
This is why I can't help but harbor a bit of nostalgic affection for the Grand Old Party, and why I grieved to see what revisionists and neo-revisionists from Reagan to Bush did to conservatism. I really get tears when I see the party of Lincloln in its present condition where the leading spokesmen are Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
Of course the intellectual giant of these three is Joe the Plumber. At least he could spot an opportunity when it hit him on the head. If all you need to know to be a plumber is that shit flows down and payday's Friday, then Joe's gotcha covered. I would love to hear Joe and Sarah P in a conversation about foreign policy or economics. You betcha.
At first I didn't get the Joe the Plumber thing. Then I realized that he had become the symbol of some feeble attempt by the Republicans to reconnect with the common man. How quaint. Get Mr. Clean to be your posterchild, your everyman, and pitch the product to the masses.
Maybe the Republican party will go the way of the Whigs or the Federalists or the Bullmoose Party.
The Poet's Eye has observed that the two party system is too limited. In other words, this country is too big for the both of us. This country is supposedly built on diversity. We have many tastes, ethnicities and beliefs. We need more choices than Ford or GM. (maybe that's a bad analogy right now.) Duality won't work anymore. We need plurality.
This is why I can't help but harbor a bit of nostalgic affection for the Grand Old Party, and why I grieved to see what revisionists and neo-revisionists from Reagan to Bush did to conservatism. I really get tears when I see the party of Lincloln in its present condition where the leading spokesmen are Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
Of course the intellectual giant of these three is Joe the Plumber. At least he could spot an opportunity when it hit him on the head. If all you need to know to be a plumber is that shit flows down and payday's Friday, then Joe's gotcha covered. I would love to hear Joe and Sarah P in a conversation about foreign policy or economics. You betcha.
At first I didn't get the Joe the Plumber thing. Then I realized that he had become the symbol of some feeble attempt by the Republicans to reconnect with the common man. How quaint. Get Mr. Clean to be your posterchild, your everyman, and pitch the product to the masses.
Maybe the Republican party will go the way of the Whigs or the Federalists or the Bullmoose Party.
The Poet's Eye has observed that the two party system is too limited. In other words, this country is too big for the both of us. This country is supposedly built on diversity. We have many tastes, ethnicities and beliefs. We need more choices than Ford or GM. (maybe that's a bad analogy right now.) Duality won't work anymore. We need plurality.