Of the sorry trends in 21st-century American politics, none may be more troubling to the cause of responsible lawmaking than the elections of one-note ideologues in growing numbers.
My dear Dad used to say Americans don’t deserve democracy. He could see that most are too lazy to follow the news and do the homework that should carry every vote. His alarm would be deeper today, if he could see how easily opinions turn on one word flashed on television.
Partly as the result, more and more elective offices are being filled by One-Noters. They run successfully on one side of one issue. They get elected on one promise. Elect me, and abortion will cease. Elect me, and unions will be gone. Elect me, and our southern borders will be closed tight. Elect me, and your taxes will shrink. Elect me, and we’ll keep the minorities in their place.
As One-Noters run and win, homework is meaningless. Whichever candidate has your side of your pet issue gets your vote. No reading, no care or feel for the national interest. He or she is with you on the big one. That’s all that matters.
What we get then is a Congress or legislature barely able to keep the doors of government open, while the tough issues are left floating in committees or fumbled away between house and senate. The one-note minorities are not elected to win; they are elected to make sure no one else wins. The Tea Party proved itself able to win a flock of House seats, then managed to hamstrung the Congress until it closed 2012 as the least productive in history, with a favorable rating from the public no better than 10 percent.
The One-Noters are easy prey for big money. Billionaires have no trouble tracking them by their issue. The big PACs may then spread support to elect them in blocs, all right wing but each too bound up in its own issue to work common ground for the greater good. One-Noters become likely targets in divide-and-conquer maneuvers. Two masters of this game with different approaches are Karl Rove and Grover Norquist.
Norquist works but one issue. He has roped virtually every Republican in Congress into signing his no-tax pledge. It’s shameful how easily this traps both the congressman and his constituency into the one-note mold. The pledge becomes first consideration in every vote the legislator casts. Do they know for sure that there are no tax implications at all in the bill? Every signer is working with one hand tied behind his/her back, which leaves a constituency of thinking people with half-baked representation. Worse, it’s distorted representation.
Rove has become the unrivaled handler of billionaires and their super PACs. Any billionaire with a pet peeve about government can count on Rove to find the combination of legislators, candidates and media buys that will give the chosen remedy its best shot, most often skirting any concern for damage or danger it may entail. Rove has just one motive: power. Even people who knew him as far back as high school in Utah remember the ego that fed his hunger for power.
The supreme One-Noter of the last four years, surely as focused as Norquist, has been and is the Senate Minority Leader, Kentucky racist Mitch McConnell, who has made one aim his sole focus and purpose: to limit the first black president to one term in office. Such pomposity disgraces his humanity, his state and the Congress itself.
Frank Mensel – October 2012