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DEDICATED TO FREE THOUGHT AND FREE SPEECH IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD |
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GOING AGAINST THE GREENS |
By Philip Murphy 7-10-04
Need more proof that good intentions sometimes aren‚t enough to get the job done? Just look at the Green Party in America for an example of how not to run a political party, and how to make yourself irrelevant at the same time. On the top of the Green‚s ticket this year is David Cobb, a clear indication of the Green‚s level of dysfunction and lack of direction . Cobb exemplifies the Greens most basic flaws, sheer gutlessness, idiotic devotion to political correctness and intellectual dishonesty. When I first met Cobb last year the revulsion began almost immediately, as soon as he started talking about staying out of the way of the Democrats and backing Al Sharpton, should big Al become the Dem‚s nominee (David, was that impossible scenario even worth mentioning?). Tossing out your principles in order to „build the party‰ by functioning as the Democrats accomplices is a certain recipe for disaster, not a way to attract converts. Cobb‚s moronic choice of VP is another example of the Greens slavish devotion to the concept of making every aspect of everything gender-balanced, no matter how much glaring incompetence gets incorporated into the system in order maintain exact boy-girl parity.
But what about the Greens closer to home? Well, around here in Northern California the dysfunction is right on par with the level of national fuzzy-headedness, with people going full-speed in all the wrong directions. The weakest Democrat by far on the North Coast is Patty the invisible Berg, who‚s non-existent resume and record as assembly woman should make her a prime target for a Green challenger. A wimpy campaigner who‚s main qualification for elected office seems to be the fact that she doesn‚t have a penis, Patty gets a free pass from the Greens mainly because she‚s a girl, and until we have an exactly equal number of boys and girls in the state assembly we have to go easy on the women folk no matter what their record is. So the local Greens weren‚t able to do the do-able, which meant the only other option was to attempt the impossible, namely unseating Mike Thompson from the house of representatives. Forget the fact that Mike has roughly five times the money Patty Berg has in her warchest and that Mike was one of the very few Dems to stand up against the war, the Greens were determined to get rid of a Democrat who has a better voting record by far than Barbara Boxer, who goes unchallenged by the Greens because although she‚s a phony prick she too gets a free pass because she is also unencumbered by a penis. So who did the greens send out to go head-to head with a guy so firmly entrenched that even the Republicans have given up taking a serious shot at? Well, they could have sent the unquestionably qualified and respectable Bill Meyers, but instead by a wide margin picked Pam Elizondo. Pam is in some ways the atypical North Coast Green, warm and fuzzy to the core, but absolutely clueless when it comes to running a campaign, understanding what the real issues are, or finding and exploiting her rival‚s weak points. In fact, Pam is likely to set back the Greens for years to come by furthering solidifying the image of Greens as a bunch of brain-damaged pot heads who are unable to grasp reality let alone deal with it. With Pam‚s „Legalizing dope will solve all the nations ills‰ platform, count on Pam becoming a major embarrassment to Greens the moment she opens her mouth in public, an opportunity to undercut Green credibility the Democrats and their functionaries down at the Press Democrat are surely savoring.
But if dopey women can‚t save the Greens, who will? The greens need to do several things to reverse the giant step backwards they have taken in 2004. First thing on the to-do list is to go for the jugular of the worst enemies of democracy in America, the Democrats. The democratic system cannot work when there is only one party, and these days the Dems are virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans. Even after it has become an undisputable fact that both premises for the Iraq war were totally without merit, the leadership of the senate Democrats (Daschle, Biden, Hillary and Schumer) still stand by their votes for war, which should be enough to convince anyone the Dems are far beyond redemption. All it would take to make the Greens go away is for the Dems to take their job as an opposition party seriously, instead of the current plan which is to cower in fear from the Republicans on nearly every critical issue, and then to insist that any vote not given to them is a wasted vote-or a vote for the Republicans. The Greens primary mission should be to send the message loud and clear to the Dems-„Fix your party or we will do everything possible to destroy you„.
Another thing the Greens have to get through their fuzzy heads is that their party will NEVER do the growing they always dream is coming in the next election cycle if they don‚t understand where those votes (and dollars) are most likely to come from. Instead of being known as the party of un-fundable social programs, the Greens have to look at the last credible third party challenge, the Perot campaign that got nearly one in five votes and helped put Bill Clinton in office. Of course Perot was a crackpot, but the one thing he clearly understood was that people tend to vote their pocketbooks, and that since the Greens have gone Naderless we currently have no credible political party representing the interests of the average taxpayers. About the only thing that will shake a significant number of voters loose from their traditional party affiliations would be a party that made sensible fiscal conservatism it‚s battle cry, instead of offering simple minded solutions like cutting defense spending in half and taxing dope as their panacea for all budget dilemmas.
Pork barrel spending is the soft white underbelly of both the Dems and Republicans, and until the Greens figure this out and learn to exploit it, they‚ll be stuck in the single digits come election day.
Finally, the Greens have to get over their kindergarten level system of organization and functioning, and throw those dumb-ass ten key values over a cliff (how about narrowing it down to these five, true democracy, equality and justice for all, sustainable living and peace?). If the gals have something to say or want to take the lead thatŒs fine, but if they can‚t run with the big dogs then do us all a favor and go bake some cookies, politics is not for the timid or those who need a booster seat to reach the steering wheel. Politics involves passion (hopefully), so dump the „vibe watcher „ crap too, anger and emotion are very useful tools if managed properly. And the stuff that goes on at the state level has to change too, some of the guilty parties here could be perfect replacements for bureaucrats in Stalin‚s Russia, lots of noise but little progress comes from most statewide Green get-togethers. Be the taxpayer‚s friend, the Democrats worst nightmare and cut out the mindless political correctness if you want the Green Party to be something more than the punch line to a joke or a historical footnote, before that chapter gets written (hopefully!).
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