I’ve always believed that ideals should be defended with idealism. But like all pithy sayings there is more to the question than just a truism. Ideals are just what they imply, the ideal, the perfect, the apparitional goal that we try to achieve knowing that perfection is unobtainable.
This is made all the murkier when one is engaged in the pursuit of politics. As practiced in the United States politics is a zero sum game. There is only one winner in any contest and that winner goes on to be able to choose the policy that they support for 2 or 4 or even 6 years.
Depending on the number of their caucus and their numbers in the other Houses of government they may very well be able to have it all their way, as we are seeing right now in Virginia. There control of the Governors mansion and both Houses of the Assembly are allowing Republicans to pass a whole raft of anti-choice legislation, probably including a so-called “Personhood” bill that would affectively outlaw abortion in the Commonwealth.
Knowing this, there is a school of thought that says “win at any cost”. It has a lot of adherents because the last 25 years of American politics have shown that it some medium term effectiveness. Republicans have done whatever they can to win, no matter how ugly, no matter how overall harmful to our notion of democracy, because the people who win elections get to make the policy.
It has led them to a place where they are basically viewed as sharks in suits. Sure they win, but at the cost of any kind of coherence or pretense that they are working for the betterment of the nation. Still, those that see them as the way to enact a policy that favors their views, whether that is tax policy or social policy, don’t care about that, they care about getting what they want and the hell with the rest of us.
I am not a huge fan of the idea of winning at any cost. I excoriated a poster here for basically spreading a complete lie about Republicans committing voter fraud. The defense was that Republicans do the same to us, but my argument was that we can win without engaging in a lie they framed.
The situation with the proposed Operation Hilarity is a little different (though reasonable people can disagree). Instead of lying it is using the rules set up by the Republicans to make their political lives more miserable.
There is no doubt that extending the primary process on for the GOP is going to increase the chances of re-electing our Democratic President. There is also no argument that as flawed as many of us (myself included) find him, he will be immeasurably better than any Republican running.
The premise is one that is within the rules of the game, but I have my doubts about its ability to be affective. It was tried in small scale last cycle, when the Democratic primary in Michigan was basically not going to matter because of moving the date up. There was a push to have Dems in the Great Lakes State vote for Romney then, since they really would not have much say in whom the Democratic nominee was. To my recollection it didn’t make an impact.
The question as to whether this is morally or ethically a bad idea is one that I think is hard to unravel. It comes down to where you draw the line on ideology. Is it better ideologically to make a stand on the issue of elections or some other issue like marriage equality or choice?
If one is really tied up with the idea that there is a prescribed way to contest an election there is always the strong chance that the other side will not follow those ideals and wind up in control where other core issues will suffer.
On the other hand if one is all about winning and then applying the ideals you have a good chance to do so, at the possible cost of being seen to rule rather than govern, and constantly having to deal with a divisive and bile filled campaign season.
Reality seems to say that we actually need both the down and dirty street fighting and the idealistic strains if we want to move to a nation that has the ideals we think of as Liberal or Progressive. Kos is right when he says that we must win in order to keep things from getting worse. The folks who are objecting to the plan are also right when they say that we risk becoming like the Republicans if we stoop to their level of win at any cost thinking.
Yeah, I just said both sides were correct, sue me, I am a complex person and this is a complex issue.
To tear ourselves apart over something like this is one of things that makes being a liberal so frustrating. It comes down to this very simple fact, if you don’t like the idea of Operation Hilarity, don’t participate. You can argue all you want that it is a bad idea, but what the hell? Every large group of people is going to have bad ideas from time to time.
What you have to remember is that it seems like a good idea to those proposing it, even if they miss some aspects that you feel are obvious. As an example Jane Hampsher over at FDL made common cause with Grover Norquist to try to get Rahm Emmanuel ousted as Chief of Staff.
In the idea that he was a real problem for anyone who wanted a more liberal policy out of this White House was completely correct. The way that she went about it, by allying with someone who is basically anathema to any liberal was a giant mistake.
Jane focused completely on the goal, forgetting that even if she achieved it there would be consequences down the road from the way that it was achieved.
Operation Hilarity has the potential for similar problems. It is distasteful to push this kind of chaos, it leaves a kind of slimy feeling to think about going in and causing problems for people trying to make their choice for the GOP nominee, yet it is not against the rules at all. The State Republican parties made these rules specifically to have a broader input into their nominating selection, so making a choice in terms of who we’d rather have as the GOP candidate is something they asked for.
So is this the end of the world? Is Kos somehow betraying our ideals? No, because no one can betray your ideals for you. For all that we think about Daily Kos as a community, it is still made up of individuals and they all have to make up their minds on all choices themselves.
So if you think that OH is a good idea, support it, if you don’t, don’t support it. In the end it is one campaign tactic in a huge campaign season. If it works, rest assured that Republicans will take steps to prevent it in the future. Over all it is probably not going to have a huge impact one way or the other.
For all that it is going to piss off Republicans it is not going to energize them in the fall when they have to turn out for the (almost certainly) inevitable nominee Mitt Romney. If the unlikely happens and they do nominate Rick Santorum, it will not help them with independents who will find him abhorrent.
Pick your ideals and defend them with ideology, but for heavens sake, everyone, lets look at the big picture when doing so, eh?
The floor is yours.