Around election day on CNN, I watched Anderson Cooper and his panel of analysts discuss the faults of the Republican party this year. One of the analysts made a very convincing and truthful point, bringing up James Madison's opinion towards factions, and discussed how Sarah Palin created, or tried to create, insulting factions.
James Madison had a strong opinion towards keeping checks and balances on factions, but he also had a deeper opinion as well. He believed political factions are inevitable, but the factions should not lead to cases in which the country is no longer united, but divided.
The analyst agreed strongly with Madison's take on keeping the country united; political factions are necessary, but "American" factions are destructive.
The analyst explained how a large part of Sarah Palin's campaign was describing the "real America."
During one of her many similar speeches, Palin said,"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation." Palin is, therefore, drawing the conclusion that people who do not live in these small towns and are not these "hardworking" Americans are not patriotic, and even anti-Americans.
This was indeed a huge mistake on Sarah Palin's part, because any voters that didn't fit her small town American description probably isn't going to vote for her. I agree 100% with the analyst when he discussed how political factions are necessary in order to maintain the terrific government we have today. Trying to create a division amongst people describing some as "real Americans" and others as "anti-Americans" is both insulting and plain old foolish when running a political campaign.
James Madison had a strong opinion towards keeping checks and balances on factions, but he also had a deeper opinion as well. He believed political factions are inevitable, but the factions should not lead to cases in which the country is no longer united, but divided.
The analyst agreed strongly with Madison's take on keeping the country united; political factions are necessary, but "American" factions are destructive.
The analyst explained how a large part of Sarah Palin's campaign was describing the "real America."
During one of her many similar speeches, Palin said,"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation." Palin is, therefore, drawing the conclusion that people who do not live in these small towns and are not these "hardworking" Americans are not patriotic, and even anti-Americans.
This was indeed a huge mistake on Sarah Palin's part, because any voters that didn't fit her small town American description probably isn't going to vote for her. I agree 100% with the analyst when he discussed how political factions are necessary in order to maintain the terrific government we have today. Trying to create a division amongst people describing some as "real Americans" and others as "anti-Americans" is both insulting and plain old foolish when running a political campaign.
CNN related article: http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/21/real-america-two-americas/
1 comment:
i think i saw this segment of the show but I saw it when the guy was talking about factions and how Obama was going to get elected by different factions of people and how he was bringing new groups of people out to vote and had policies in his campaign that favored those factions. The analyst was aruguing that it was going to be a challenge for Obama to unite all this different factions and serve that nation as a whole. Pretty sweet James Madison's words are still being quoted on 21st century television !!
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