Am I the only person who's a little bit surprised at the man-handling of the electoral process that the political parties have been engaged in this year? After McCain-Feingold was upheld dozens of stories were written about how the decision was going to weaken the role of the political parties. But it seems that the parties themselves didn't acknowledge their supposed death, and lately they've been working as hard or harder than ever. Consider just this very incomplete list: redistricting in Texas, dropping rich smiling faces into big races (say someone named Coors), funneling money to extremist candidates (say, just as a for instance, men named Nader and Sharpton) who will supposedly weaken and embarrass the other side, trying to push the governor of New Jersey into an even early unplanned retirement, getting members of the other party to switch parties, continuing the long-standing tradition of machine politics in the Chicago congressional delegation, the weird acid trip the Illinois Republicans apparently took together when selecting their US Senate nominee ... I could go on and on. And lately they don't even bother to hide it. In this story on an upcoming US House primary in Southern Louisiana we see that the Republican party is openly backing Billy Tauzin III (R-Nepotism) who is being challenged by State Senator Craig Romero (R-New Iberia). One can certainly say that all of this is par for the course. But it's interesting that it appears that the weakening of centralized party management that many predicted in the wake of McCain-Feingold doesn't appear to have occurred. I suppose one could perhaps even make an argument that it has strengthened the hand of the parties. Perhaps with more active actors in the process they are less willing to leave certain things to chance (ummm, primary elections) than they were before. Posted by armand at August 18, 2004 01:25 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics
I would have to agree with your assessment, political parties (at least dems and repubs) are as powerful as ever. If you notice, there aren't any less political ads being run this year than in past presidential elections, they're just being run by the 527s, the MoveOn.Org and Swiftboat Vets. I can bet that even though George Soros is limited in the money he's been able to donate to the dems directly, he'll have no trouble getting a phone call through to Kerry whenever he wants. Peter Jennings did a story about the unlimited spending allowed in another loophole in campaign finance, that there's no restrictions on campaign spending at the political conventions; so there was plenty of Moet and Dom to go around in Boston as well as a $300,000 fireworks show for one congresswoman from Massachusettes (I don't recall the name) that are perfectly legal. We'll see the same thing in New York. When voting, choose either the ABA, China and Hollywood or choose oil and Haliburton. You get Merck and Pfeizer free with either choice.
Morris
Tiny point - there aren't any women in Massachusett's congressional delegation.
Posted by: armand at August 18, 2004 02:30 PM | PERMALINKMy bad, you're right...it's Nancy Pelosi, Time Warner threw her a big bash. Here's the link: http://www.middleeast.org/launch/redirect.cgi?num=407&a=32