Greg Lehrer reads Skip Oliver's column

Not only does he defend the "sanity" of rank-and-file Republicans but he doesn't see a Republican victory in a couple of days as the end of America as we have known it.

Photo by visuals on Unsplash

Skip’s post this week got a lot of positive revues. Some, however, asked if it wasn’t just some of the same old general partisan “smoke.” Greg Lehrer felt that our political conversations should be more focused. He shares, with me, the view that the majority of people are closer than not to agreement on the very issues that are being spun for their inflammatory appeal, accusing the other side of positions that few (percentage wise) loopactually hold.

I’m copying Greg’s comments. Many of you may disagree with him that Republicans are just as “normal” and moderate as the reasonable people on the other side who also shade one way or the other on key issues. I suspect they are.

A two-party system cannot afford to go “off the rails” in either direction if it seeks to win support of the majority of the electorate. I probably can out orate with the best, if the game is point scoring and outrage. I don’t think Skip hit that stride, but he does, and does well, play the Democratic Party playbook, suggesting that at least those Republicans who may win office and could control Congress are genuinely radical.

Actually, my position is a bit different from either Skip or Greg. I don’t think we are debating the right and weightier questions. And, it seems to me, that many who are exercising their right to express partisan sentiments, might, before they speak, be in better command of basic facts.

Maybe we just don’t believe in our ability to understand questions of foreign affairs, and domestic economic issues. That’s a mistaken view. We can and we must.

I will put in one word for the Democrats before turning this column over to Greg. Their radicals are exploring and weighing the merits of some interesting new ideas. They may sound radical, but they are, when examined, coherent. They may be simplistic. Possibly, they are based on arguable “facts.”

I think it is right to evaluated radical (in the sense of not familiar) ideas with suspicion. When forecasting outcomes, we are never able to see and include all the relevant factors. So we get “bitten” by a slew of unintended consequences. Reasoning conservatives know better —- their call to slow down should be heeded, but not always, I believe, should their parallel call to stay with things as they are.

To put it bluntly, I’m not frightened by the prospect of a Republican controlled Congress. And when, in a couple of years, the circus again comes to town, I believe that the Trump sideshow will be far from the main tent.

Here’s what Grey had to say.

Both “sides” can always cherry pick the worst of the other side. That’s too easy. And that is what this line of thinking bears out.

My point is, the age-old game of politics for radio, TV and journalists, is to take the fringe of the “other side” and pretend that everyone on that “side” agrees with those views. Take abortion, most Americans on both sides of the argument believe it should be legal. Most Americans on both sides also believe an unborn baby that can survive on it’s own should not be allowed to be aborted. For the most part you wouldn’t know that listening to both sides talk. Our fearless leaders could have made a law at any time with a law somewhere in between the two sides. Instead, they want the issue to beat each other up with.

Take immigration. Most people want to let people immigrate into our country. Most of have ancestors that came here! But they also want to know WHO is coming in, and talk about what limits should be in place. But you’re either a “racist” to say that, or you “hate your country” depending what side of the issue you are on. Our country could have fixed this long ago. Meanwhile, all sides currently agree the border is a mess. Why haven’t they fixed it? Again, they want the issue. My personal favorite for the most hypocritical and shameless issue is our country’s deficit spending. Both parties literally switch playbooks on this issue. When the congressional majorities or the white house change hands, it’s almost word for word the same critiques used in reverse. We could go on and on with the issues. Global warming, cancel culture, campaign finance, or the latest one, democracy(!).

I believe most Americans just kind of let this go as noise most of the time. But when you step into a more partisan atmosphere like today, it just gets uglier. People want to tune out and just go back to their comfort zone. But with a war in Europe, inflation, and sky-high prices for energy, people can’t tune out and now want someone to blame. Then we all see the shameless squabbling and we want to vomit. Those who follow politics and the issues all have their pet issue or core beliefs, but until something changes, we will be barking at each other for a while longer!

Some day we can discuss all this again! I enjoy watching the political tactics both sides use. The crappy part is when we as political followers end up in the same place more often than not. Which is realizing how shameless for power both “sides” become at times. It ends up turning most people off.

However, a good partisan argument is fun sometimes . I just can’t reason out why so much of academia and federal government employees these days are 95% one political persuasion! (Not to lump academia in with govt workers, it just seems to be the two easiest one-sided industries I could think of, with most of the media and tech CO’s a close third)

Running a small business and being self-employed, I can tell you what a different perspective it is than have many of the politicians spouting on TV who never had to “make payroll”.

Thanks, Greg. I’ll weigh in sometime soon on the 95% question. We are seeing, and I think for good reason, a divide developing between college educated and non-college educated. But this is likely way too simple a distinction to be useful.