George Will’s Stunted Philosophy
Like most of America’s bankrupt and horribly myopic intelligentsia which has contributed in no small measure in pushing the foreign and domestic policies of the Unites States to the extreme right, George Will is not happy that the tried and true tactics of diversion, obfuscation and irrelevant pontification by the Republican party is bouncing off Americans in this election cycle. The current financial crisis has right-wing conservatives and their deregulation drivel on its heels, and the total confusion surrounding the campaign of senator John McCain does not have a “rational” explanation for a group that has had its way for eight years in shaping political discourse in this country. So, it comes as no surprise that George Will is a little bit troubled that politics as usual may not manifest itself this November. For a party that has always relied on raising the specter of fear and taxes, this year is an unusual one in the sense that the very robust discussions that took place during the Democratic primaries pretty much brought to foe the likely issues that were going to be raised in the course of the campaign. In addition, they were totally unprepared for the kind of discipline and organization that Barack Obama brought to the political scene and assumed that a barrage of character assassination campaign in the month of October, the so-called “October surprise”, would gloss over the total poverty of ideas of the party. The enthusiasm of the voting public in this years election caught the Republican party off guard, hence the surge of voters heading to the polls in the states where early voting is permitted is a cause for alarm.
So George Will is certainly not happy that people are able to vote early because of the “potential” for fraud. In his words:
“So what is wrong with early voting? Even leaving aside the large matter of increased potential for fraud in voting by absentee ballots, there are two costs to early voting.
First, for tens of millions of early voters, the campaign process of informing and persuading is effectively truncated. Now, there is evidence that early voters are more partisan and informed than other voters and hence are less likely than the rest of the electorate to be swayed by events late in an election season. Nevertheless, early voting increasingly affects the rhythms of campaigns, forcing the front-loading of arguments.”
The immediate fallacy of this premise is the assumption that he forgets that the campaign cycle in American politics lasts for almost two years and within that period, people have had ample time to form their opinions about a candidate and for those that have not, the last two weeks of September is certainly good enough to decide who to vote for. It could be that he is worried, like most Republicans, that early voters are not susceptible to intimidation, misinformation and misdirection, divide and conquer tactics, and outright disenfranchisement that has become the stock-in-trade of the party over the years.
But the actual fear of George Will and his ultra-conservative clique is exposed when he argues that
The second problem with early voting is that one of its supposed benefits is actually a subtraction from civic health. The benefit is that it makes voting easier-indeed, essentially effortless. But surely the quality of the electoral turnout declines when the quantity is increased by “convenience voting.”
In other words, in a year when there is the possibility that Americans will turn out in record-breaking numbers to exercise their civic duty, the outcome cannot be favorable to the Republican party in particular and conservative in general.
When senator Obama and his campaign describe the Republican party as being out of touch, there is a tendency to view that as a mere campaign slogan. But when George Will scornfully states that people who engage in early voting are “slothful”, we begin to realize that there may be a world of truth to the “out of touch” tag. According to Will,
A word describes most of the people who will vote only if a ballot is shoved through their mail slot: “slothful.” What kind of people will not bestir themselves to exercise their franchise if doing so requires them to get off their couches and visit neighborhood polling places? People who are barely interested, and hence probably are barely informed.
This apparent disdain for the 95 95 percent of the American society who struggle to make ends meet by working multiple jobs in order to pay their bills is a reason why the defeat suffered by the Republican party this November will be monumental. There are a host of reasons why people may not be able to stay in line for upwards of six to nine hours just to vote. There are elderly folks who are bed-ridden for instance, who still want to cast their ballot for a candidate of their choice. If Mr Will could only come down from his high pedestal for a minute, we are sure he will discover a myriad of reasons why most people may not have a couch to get off of in the first place. Such high falutin elitism as displayed by George Will is offensive, to say the least.