North Star Writers Group

We're in the home stretch of the 2006 campaign season, and as best as I can figure, these are the themes of the two parties' approaches to winning voters:

Republicans: We're Not As Bad As The Democrats Would Be!

Democrats: If You Liked Seinfeld, You'll Love Our Campaign About Nothing!

Not exactly the most positive, assertive slogans indicating the big idea or two that defines each party. Yet it seems to be where each party is. The GOP has been reduced to arguing against the alternative, rather than for themselves. And while they're right that Democrats getting any power back would be disastrous, it's hardly the strongest motivation. Voting just to stick it to the opposition is the liberals' schtick, especially where President Bush is concerned. There used to be a saying in politics that you can't beat something with nothing, but the Democrats are certainly trying to prove that axiom wrong. Maybe it's because the something they're offering is the same tired leftism that voters have been rejecting since 1994.

Perhaps a more truthful pair of slogans is in order:

Republicans: When it comes to all talk and no action, at least the U.N. is still worse!

Democrats: Everything (and we mean everything) is BushHitler's fault!

The GOP is supposed to be the home of conservatism, but I can’t seem to find anything conservative about them anymore. They seem almost determined to become increasingly liberal so as to fill the vacuum left by the Democrats as they fall further into the far left's clutches (and please the biased mainstream media). Apparently they think a little lip service and some fear mongering regarding the alternative is enough to make conservatives sigh, pull the lever and accept two more years of slouching leftward. They may have calculated correctly this time, but one day they'll wake up in the minority as their former conservative base will be gone. And the liberal media will keep lying, saying the GOP wasn't liberal enough, when in fact its move to the left was precisely the reason it lost conservative support.

As for the Democrats, they pretty much have to turn Bush into the boogeyman. It’s been so long since their socialist beliefs have moved anyone. Even Bill Clinton, the last Democrat to win anything significant, did so by sounding as conservative as he could. They simply cannot be honest about what they really believe without sounding like Marx or Lenin and scaring the crap out of people. So they invent a Bush caricature with no basis whatsoever in the truth, and pin everything bad that occurs, including weather (Katrina), Carter's and Clinton's failures (Iran, N. Korea), etc. on him. Like the GOP, perhaps this will work one time, but Bush is not running in 2008, nor 2006, for that matter. Who will be the big bad enemy for Democrats to use to stoke their base and distract from their communist principles then?

There cannot be two emptier vessels than the major political parties right now. Neither will say what it really believes, which is something to the left of what either will publicly admit to, much less embrace. And the only way either can drum up "support" is to scare its respective bases over how awful and/or evil the other one would be. Perhaps together they're telling the truth, however inadvertently. Both of them are awful and/or evil. When you can't even rile up the rank-and-file, that tells you just how bad things have gotten and how far things have fallen.

Political parties are supposed to coalesce around core ideas, serve as a vessel to get folks elected who believe in those ideas and then help implement those ideas as policies. But in 2006, you couldn't find an idea if you tried. The last thing you're going to see in the next two weeks is anything close to a real issue-driven debate. Perhaps there actually is an inadvertent honesty in all this, in that it shows the one and only core idea that truly drives both parties: acquiring and maintaining power at all costs.

Is this really the best we can do?

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