The Transformation of Michele Bachmann
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on August 8th, 2011 4:38 am by HL
The Transformation of Michele Bachmann
Today’s must-read piece: Ryan Lizza profiles Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).
“Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared.”
Voters Don’t Choose Divided Government
Hendrick Hertzberg disputes the notes that American voters “choose” divided government noting that someone wishing for divided government “would split his or her ticket in Presidential years. Ticket-splitters are a small minority and always have been–fewer than twenty per cent throughout most of American history, including during the past couple of decades.”
“Voters don’t choose divided government. It’s chosen for them by a system, unique in the democratic world, of multiple overlapping elections held at different intervals in which different electorates fill different offices, none of whose occupants have ultimate responsibility. The electorate of 2008 chose Obama and the Democrats. The electorate of 2010–consisting mainly of McCain voters, and smaller by forty-five million–chose the Republicans. Hardly anybody voted as they did out of a desire for ‘divided government,’ as opposed to a desire for a government that would embody their own political and ideological leanings.”
