Three Way News

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Sunday, September 24, 2006

A local race (no, not the 5th CD) draws some national attention

A NYT writer is sent to Minnesota to cover the Senate contest and decides the 6th Congressional District race is much more interesting.

As a former public-school math teacher, Ms. Wetterling has an aura of kindliness and good sense, as if she believed in a general social welfare that depends upon all citizens “joining hands,” as a former Republican governor of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen, once put it. But citizens don’t join hands much anymore in Minnesota, nor are they encouraged to. The problem faced by politicians who wish to preserve the social programs enacted by their grandparents is that President Bush has been wildly successful at creating an air of constant crisis, both foreign and domestic. Crisis rhetoric, which is inherently radical rather than conservative, dissolves social stability.

I think that's a pretty interesting observation. It has long been clear how fear mongering helps the Republicans on security politics (even tho they have made a complete hash of security POLICY) but it is more subtle in how it effects domestic politics. The more you can make a person fearful about the state of the world the easier it is to make him think he needs to bomb someone. But it is also true that the more you make someone fearful about things closer to home the easier it is to scapegoat all the groups slightly different from him that really have nothing to do with his daily life, whether they be gays, immigrants, etc.