The State of American Discourse, pt 2. : "Crossing over" in primaries

Michigan primary today.  Big exciting stuff.  Neck and neck race, the media would have you believe.  It's times like these, when the system doesn't function as we expect it to (i.e. everyone just votes for the winner of New Hampshire and we phone it in for the rest of the primaries) that things start to get crazy.  Those of us who love the messy process of politics embrace and celebrate the chaos.  Some of us seek to create even more chaos.  You saw it in 2008 with Rush Limbaugh encouraging Republicans to vote for Clinton to prolong the primary process and you're seeing it today in Michigan going the other direction.

I should point out right away that this issue, like voter fraud, is something that can be used to easily rile people up but doesn't actually occur on a large enough scale to be significant.  Yes, there will be Democrats who vote for Santorum today to give Romney less time for his general campaign - or  better yet make the unelectable Santorum the Republican candidate - but most Democrats will stay home or cast a symbolic vote for Obama.  Which is why you won't hear any long-term talk about changing primary rules in states to prevent this, but it is fun to debate the ethics.

It's easy to see that this is weak politics, everybody knows that.  Attempting to influence politics by selecting a candidate in a primary that you would never dream of voting for in a general election, while perfectly legal in Michigan, is a weak political game.  It goes against the whole purpose of democracy, which is to allow people to select the leaders they desire.  If you are a Democrat and you vote for Santorum today, you are behaving wrongly.  This is the same to me as redistricting fights, or attempts to disenfranchise voters, neither of which I will ever understand.  Yes, I understand the desire to have your party stay in power, but you choose a party because you believe that their views are what's best for the area they represent.  If you believe so strongly in what they're doing, why not let the strength of their arguments influence the election instead of political trickery?

The question gets more complicated, though, when you get into this article I read today:
'Romney blasts Santorum for 'dirty trick' calls to Michigan Dems encouraging vote in GOP primary'
Two important notes first:
1) I don't normally get my coverage from Fox News (though I don't rule them out either - all voices are important) but this popped up on my Google News feed.
2) How have editors not figured out at this point to avoid phrases like "blasts Santorum"?  Come on, guys.  We know you know what it means.

So now Rick Santorum is (supposedly) sending robo-calls to Democrats, explicitly courting them to cross over.  His campaign is itself engaging in sabotage of the Republican primary.  And doing it in they shady political way of waiting until the night before so that there isn't time for your opponents to use this information against you.  Everything about it is easy to villianize, especially if you're in the Romney camp.  Yet if you think about it, if this is actually happening and not just a smear from the Romney folks, Santorum's not doing anything wrong.  Rick Santorum is asking people to vote for Rick Santorum.  Yes, he's asking people who wouldn't normally vote for him, but what's so wrong with that?  Americans are frustrated with the deadlock and have been since way before this past year; what's so bad about a Republican asking Democrats to engage in some bi-partisanship?  Of course, it should be noted that for the most part this is a political ploy to capitalize on the trickery of others.  Still I can't find any argument that would make it unethical for Santorum to court Democrats, even if their reasons for wanting him to win in Michigan are so vastly different.  Democrats shouldn't be crossing over in this primary, but why can't a guy ask for a little help wherever he can get it?

The State of American Discourse, pt 1: Mitt Romney's Taxes

I'm not ashamed to admit that I love politics.  By this I mean actual politics (people sharing and debating ideas to determine which course of action best solves society's problems) not what passes for politics today (a bunch of people trying to yell louder than one another).  For this reason I, like many of you, am very disillusioned by the way politics is handled today, both in the media and by the politicians themselves.  But not disillusioned enough to turn away.  I have a curious fascination with it all.  In the same way that film buffs sometimes love bad movies most of all, I am obsessed with bad politics and bad journalism.  So I've decided to make a segment to discuss the many, MANY, MANY times that people remove political discourse from the realm of the useful and transplant it into the world of Shit That Does Not Matter At All, distracting you from what we should be discussing.  So, without further ado...

The Republican primary race.  Mitt Romney is in the lead, as he should be.  Being the most centrist candidate and therefore the most likely to attract independent voters, anyone with the most basic understanding of presidential politics can see why he would emerge as the front runner.  Anyone except Newt Gingrinch, who himself wants to be the front runner.  Unfortunately his stance on the issues and his winning personality have only brought him to third place and he needs an extra push forward to get to the lead.  Or instead of pushing to the lead he could just cut down everyone in front of him.  Let's go with that one.

So his plan has been to pressure Romney into releasing his income tax returns, saying that it's important for voters to not have to face any surprise revelations later in the year.  I love this tactic for its ridiculousness.  Firstly, Romney is a career politician.  He's held multiple elected positions over a long period of time; anything hiding in his tax returns would have come out by now.  Secondly, since when did the party of no taxes start judging a candidate's character off of what he pays in income taxes?  Best of all is just the process of watching a bunch of millionaires who spend most of their time defending millionaires suddenly spar over who is the biggest, elitist and therefore worst millionaire.

Mitt Romney will make his taxes public if he gets the nomination.  He has to; it's the law.  I can understand if Newt doesn't like this process, but it is the way it was before he started running for president.  He wasn't asking anyone to release their tax returns back in Iowa.  Why does he bring it up only when he's finding himself looking up the totem pole with precious little time?  The American primary system is unique.  It's downright bizarre.  But no one was complaining about that during the few months every four years when candidates pretend they care about Iowa.  No one complains as we dart from the Midwest to New England to the South weeding out potential candidates while a state like Hawaii, who is already basically left out of the presidential election by virtue of their late time zone, has no chance of impacting the race considering how late their primary is.

Newt Gingrich is painting this as a matter of integrity.  If Mitt Romney was only more honest, he'd tell us how much money he makes.  Yet Romney is the one behaving with dignity.  He committed to the electoral system we have, with its strengths and weaknesses, and is following its flawed rules.  He could even quell this whole thing by releasing his taxes, where he surely has nothing to hide, but that would be giving in to a bully.  Whereas Newt had no problem with a primary system that favors the voice of some Americans over others until he found a rule that makes it personally harder for him to become president.  Then it's an injustice.  Where's the integrity in that?