Matisyahu's Blog

Once again we have conservatives in the US complain when they don’t get the outcome they wanted (link) while being being obscenely hypocritical in the process. Does anyone remember almost two decades ago when conservatives were touting the merits of democracy regarding same sex marriage and how it should be left up to the voter in the form of the state by state referendums that took place? yeah, I remember that, funny how conservatives love to ride the tide of populism when they believe they’ll get the result they want but then decry it when they don’t get what they want – enter Rick Santorum and his never ending avalanch of half baked recons and those who engage in apologietics everytime he opens his mouth.

His grizzle and whinge comes from a position that conservatives have gerrymandered states within an inch of their life to the point now that the question isn’t a toss up between Democrats or Republicans but now it is between a horrible candidate vs a deplorable candidate in a heavily gerrymandered Republican district (aka the actual election occurs at the primaries because who ever ends up winning that is a shoo-in to represent that area). The one saving grace in all this is the fact that there are a few states that have the ability to bypass this organised undermining of democracy in favour of binding referendums where the people are able to make their input known regarding a standalone policy. What has happened so far has been conservatives assuming that ‘the state is red so therefore it is going to go the way we want it to’ ignores the fact that politics isn’t a binary aka “if I vote for this party it doesn’t mean I agree with all the party policies’.

Now, this has been particularly interesting when it came to traditionally ‘red states’ who have voted for reproductive rights in the recent referendums. With the these referendums what it shows is that the number of politically social conservatives are a minority with a fair amount of crossover between those who are libertarian leaning but vote Republican along with those who vote Democratic. This is where I think alliances can be built as we’ve seen in New Zealand where ACT and the Green Party have worked on legislation around drug reform and more which both parties have common cause. In the case of the US there is also the ability to move the envelop and bypass gerrymandering in favour of getting people behind population legislation and what I hope is that the recent abortion wins are an indication of future changes such as dealing with gerrymandering resulting in competitive districts that force the encumbered to do more than just stand up right, maintain a pulse then throw some red meat to their base.

Side note: Here is an article of conservatives boasting when the referendum goes their way (link) (link), I didn’t hear them complaining about how ‘this isn’t a way to run a country’ when they were on the winning side. It’s almost like it’s a variation of the Trumpian “if we win then the election was legitimate, if we lose then the election was rigged”.