In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates a woman and an African-American while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

I maintain that the two party system is front loaded to favor party hacks and incumbents from the two parties.

This is true. But is there any other way it could happen. It takes connections, relationships and years of work to attain the powerbase to attain the highest political office.

The system itself effectively prevents a meaningful third party challenge.

Both parties are in reality coalitions of what in other countries smaller parties. The Democrats are Greens, Christian Socialist, and Communist. The Republicans are Nationalist, Liberals and others I can’t think of at the moment because the Europeans don’t really have any real far right parties.

Does it feel better when it is a republican giving away $30 billion dollars instead of a democrat?

Not really, but we have a better chance of slowing down the bleeding on the inside where we can have influence than on the outside where we are considered a right wing fringe group.

I once flirted with the Libertarian Party because I favor small un-intrusive government. I soon learned that they had zero chance of ever even getting a member elected to city council let alone Federal office. People hear Libertarian and all they think of is “Pot Smoker”.

If you want spending restraint and smaller government the Republicans are your only hope and the only way you are going to achieve that is from the inside. We have to get other like minded people to join the party and push from the inside.

We can not achieve our goals by saying the parties are the same we have to get inside and make them different.

Unless they're like Ward Churchill and make up some ethnicity that grants them "victim" status.

That's always been one of the most amusing aspects of liberal academia to me. Many of the largely white and affluent college professors go out of their ways to find some aspect of "victimhood" in their heritage. If they can't, many will just make something up.

I remember a sociology professor I had in college who very deliberately (and very hilariously) dropped her 'r's in order to sound more Cajun. Anything to avoid being an Anglo-Saxon.

It's their version of "street cred". It's like a hip hop performer making up a past as a drug dealer or doing some jail time in order to sell more albums.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man.

This is really the point of the article. The Angry White Man is in play this year because he has no natural candidate. While it's highly unlikely he'll vote for Obama or Hillary, he isn't enthusiastic about voting for McCain. He'll probably vote for McCain as a vote against the Democrat, but watch out if a third party candidate who appeals to him emerges.

This article also mentions an important issue that's been largely ignored in this campaign: gun control. This is the issue that turned "Angry White Men" out for George W. Bush in 2000 and won him a very close election. It's an issue that is near the top for many, if not most, "Angry White Men", but one to which few other Americans pay much mind.

Once the decision in D.C. v. Heller comes down, watch for this to become a very key, if underreported, issue. If McCain's smart, he'll welcome what I think will be the probable holding, that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual, not "collective", right to keep and bear arms.

If the holding is broad enough, then it may prompt Congress to try and rewrite federal firearms laws in order to preclude their being declared unconstitutional. If that happens, watch for gun control to be as big a grassroots issue this year as immigration was last year.

The two-party system has its drawbacks, but I’ll take it over a multi-party system like Italy’s or Israel’s any day of the week.

Why?

Just aking because I don't see the two party system being very flexible other than the "Big Tent" theory, which doesn't seem to work very well.
Both parties talk the talk but really do not have much patience with those who don't toe the party line.
Isn't that the source of the issue about conservative support for McCain right now?

Wouldn't a multi party (more than two) system be more responsive to different views and offer the option of changing alliances on issues where there is a common interest?

Such as the Shamnesty legislation - there was opposition from both sides but party leaders in both parties pursued their own agendas.

And what was the result of the Shamnesty legislation? It was defeated. Conservatives have influence over the Republican party. If we don't have enough influence right now to dictate who the nominee is, it doesn't follow that we'd have more influence in a multi-party system as a smaller, purely conservative party.

More likely, we'd be facing a dominant center-left coalition that would have the power to ram through its own agenda, which conservatives would be powerless to stop. Remember, conservatives are not a majority. We aren't really even a plurality - McCain-Lieberman style centrists are probably more numerous than conservatives. Rather than having influence over one of two major parties, if there was a multi-party system, we'd probably be the third-largest party with very little clout in Washington, competing for influence in the opposition with the populist right and the radical left parties.

One thing you see in multi-party countries is that the fringe left tends to be given a disproportionate amount of influence. By and large, the only major Communist movements in the West were in mutli-party countries where Communist parties were able to obtain seats in the national legislature, often joining the governing coalition. This trend continues with radical-leftist parties like the Greens which continue to exert a great deal of influence in much of continental Europe.

The legitimacy granted to these radical elements played a strong role in the rise of the Third Way socialism now dominant on the European continent. The governments of multi-party countries like Italy and Germany are far to the left, policy-wise, of their respective populaces, on issues like taxes, welfare, heath care, and the death penalty.

As to this:

Wouldn't a multi party (more than two) system be more responsive to different views and offer the option of changing alliances on issues where there is a common interest?

Yes it would, and that's precisely the state of affairs the Founders wanted to avoid. See Federalist #10, where Madison makes the argument against direct democracy and factionalism.

The two-party system isn't terribly flexible or responsive to the public, but our government is not supposed to be flexible or responsive to the public, either. The idea behind our system of government is to temper the whims of temporary majorities. A multi-party system would undermine that end.

The two-party system isn't terribly flexible or responsive to the public

Your observations and arguments are all reasonable and well accepted rational for the government-political party relationship as it has developed and exists.

Yet the situation remains as it is - the government has come to represent the interests of the government, its office holders and its bureaucrats first, the interests of America and its lawful citizens and residents a distant second and third.

To me the crux of the problem is that the two parties have now become the permanent government - one branch in power and one in temporary exile.
They let us think we have a choice every two or four years but they have installed a system of rules and customs that ensures nothing significant changes. It is just the ins versus the outs. We change from one bunch of abusers to the other, then back again.

Look at the current election as it is developing.
The campaign between the two parties has little to do with how the country will be run. McCain, Obama and Hillary are so alike as to be hard to tell apart.
For all practical purposes, the way they will run the government is almost exactly the same.
The real fight is over which party will have the power and which group of party hacks, friends and cronies will prosper the most in the next four years.

The parties both exist to perpetuate the system and their own power.
There is very little difference between them - just enough to conduct minor squabbles for the benefit of voters and to swing the vote from one to the other occasionally.

There is nothing in the constitution that grants the parties and the professional politicians the right to run the government but since they occupy the seats of power they make the rules.

One example: the accrual of influence and power in congress based on seniority is an insider's way of holding on to the reins of government, of keeping the incumbents in office.
They control the flow of favors, contracts, entitlements, pork that buy financial support and the votes to get reelected.

You refer to the Founding Fathers so I point out that they never envisioned a government of professional politicians who have declared themselves to be the de-facto Royalty of America, granting themselves and their cronies largess from the public treasury and perpetuating their hold on government with the power citizens grant to them and the buying of votes with taxpayer monies.

They envisioned a government led by citizens from different walks of life who would enter public service for a time then return to their lives as ordinary citizens.
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