When Henry Louis Mencken (who died in 1956) observed that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public", he must have had in his mind visions of Florida in the twenty-first century. He probably foresaw butterfly ballots with tailing chads flying all the way to Washington and being ignored by five political appointees, sitting in the Supreme Court, who imposed upon the rest of us an incompetent, ignorant and less than truthful politician, as an appointed President.
And if this wasn't scary enough, he might have envisioned Tallahassee and the nincompoops that inhabit the Florida Legislature. I doubt that even he could have believed that the majority Republicans would defy their party and move up the primary date, risking the loss of half their delegates to the national convention. They were, of course, eagerly supported by their Democratic colleagues that stood to lose all their delegates.
That was the same body of political hacks that offered us a very expensive "tax cut" that was embraced by the Florida public. We are going to pay for it not only by higher fees on just about everything, but also by diminishing services in every field, from police protection to education. On second thought, is it possible that the Republicans gleefully engineered the cuts in education as a furtherance of their political agenda: an uneducated, ill informed and egocentric public is more likely to vote for Republican candidates.
While the American public may be less than intelligent, the leadership of the Democratic party must be the bottom of the barrel. Every political pundit in the country is aware of the importance of electoral Florida, but the Democratic Party is oblivious to this fact. If they keep alienating the Democratic Florida voters, the Republicans may carry the state, and the general election, and validate the cynical wisdom of H. L. Mencken.
No comments:
Post a Comment