Comic for 8/29/12

[d murphy]

reactions to jennifer keeping the pregnancy?

[razmoudah]

None to that, just to your blog comments. I hate to say this, but for a Republican or Democrat in the current political climate it is political suicide to deviate from the party line in anything where it means potentially agreeing with the opposite party. The people in the system have stopped valuing compromise, and now only value hard-liners. Thus the reason I won't vote for anyone who publicly declares to be a part of either Party.

[d murphy]

that's not entirely true. but it's very close to it. it largely depends on the public opinion of the area where they are running. for example in massachusetts both elizabeth warren and scott brown claim to be pro-choice. warren's a bit further left in this regard, but both candidates are engaged in a pro-choice stance as it's the predominant viewpoint of the massacusetts population. similarly, joe biden's views on the patriot act are very conservative. i saw a ton of people recently get annoyed with obama for not repealing it and it struck me as hillariously odd as it's one of the biggest political positions of his vice president. basically only a handful of issues matter and they vary greatly as you move regionally across the country (i'm fairly certain there are some elections in the south where both candidates oppose gay marriage), but so long as you agree with most of your party's issues you can make small concessions based on the regional attitudes of the area you represent or if the issue has minor impact compared to larger concerns of the voters.

[razmoudah]

In regards to getting elected you're right, in regards to ever getting anything done in DC you're wrong. The problem is that there are very few people who are aware of this discrepancy in the system, yet it is this very discrepancy that has caused most of the problems we're having with the government today.

[d murphy]

that's a more or less fair assessment. in general politicians who dissent from a party possition are more likely to vote against a piece of legislation the rest of their party supports than with a piece of legislation their party doesn't support (and they rarely put forward legislation their party doesn't support, though biden did draw up something very similar to the patriot act before the mostly gop supported patriot act went through). a lot of politics these days seems more about preventing change than creating it.

[razmoudah]

Which is probably the biggest discrepancy of all, as all of the politicians will say that a change is needed, and say a whole lot about how they're going to change things, and yet once they get in office they suddenly become to timid to actually try and make the changes they said they would.