|
We need more appeals to our reason |
|
|
Sunday, 11 July 2010 |
|
Politics as Usual by Jim Baron Travis Rowley believes that Rhode Island is going through a “conservative revolution” and he is doing his part to hasten it to fruition.
One part of his effort — he is also chairman of the R.I. Young Republicans — is what he calls a “pamphlet,” consciously evoking the patriotic pamphleteers of the American Revolution, called “The Rhode Island Republican” and subtitled “An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.” The cover of the 42-page, glossy-magazine-style publication shows a tiny but determined-looking elephant furiously tugging at one end of a rope, trying to prevent a sneaky-looking donkey from walking Rhode Island off the edge of a cliff.
Politically astute Rhode Islanders will recognize Rowley’s name. He regularly writes commentary pieces for various publications and he penned the 2006 young-man’s-memoir “Out of Ivy,” about how his experiences as an undergraduate at the liberal Brown University helped mold him into a conservative.
Rowley makes no bones about where he stands.
The first sentence of his pamphlet reads: “The only thing that can save the State of Rhode Island is the RIGOP — the RI Republican Party.
But perhaps the tone and overall flavor of the work is best exemplified by a later passage: “Conservatives, the philosophical heart of the Republican Party, represent mainstream America by subscribing to individualism, competition, traditional family values and an allegiance to the Constitution. Progressives, a radical band of socialists vying for control over the Democratic Party, are the true political extremists. You can tell by the lies they speak and how their own party treats them.”
You get the picture; this isn’t going to be fair and balanced even by Fox News standards. But that is fine. This is political polemic, and journalistic standards do not apply. Rowley is writing to make a point, take a stand, and bring you around to his way of thinking.
We need more of this in our political discourse — some long-form thinking that doesn’t, and isn’t meant to, fit on a bumpersticker or in a 30-second soundbite.
I would like to see a Democrat step out on behalf of his or her party (Rowley notes on the inside cover that his manifesto “is not a project of the Rhode Island Republican Party, nor has it been officially endorsed, but GOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione wrote an afterword for it as well as a favorable blurb on the back cover) and write a similar tract. If the Moderate Party fancies itself a player on a par with the other parties, one of their number should do the same. There is nothing stopping individual candidates, either independents or members of one party or another, from following suit. In previous campaigns I remember Cool Moose candidate Robert Healey put out an almost daily series of position papers on just about every issue under the Rhode Island sun.
A big part of the problem with our politics today is that it has become almost entirely an appeal to our passions and emotions, rather than to our reason and rationality. More long-form expository argument would help alleviate that somewhat. You don’t even need a glossy magazine; a tabloid insert in a daily newspaper would be a Jim-Dandy way to get such a message out.
In an interview last week, Rowley told me that his target audience for the Rhode Island Republican is registered Independent voters. In fact he plans to go door-to-door like a candidate distributing copies of the treatise at the homes of Independents. It is clearly an election-year publication; it starts with an appeal to the RI Tea Party to “look to the RIGOP” rather than try to affect change on their own and it ends by asking readers to “look to politicians who understand and espouse the virtues of capitalism, individualism and limited government.”
But the vitriolic tone and over-the-top partisanship of the piece seems better suited toward whipping up and agitating those who already believe the things he says rather than convincing Independents or persuading fence-sitting Democrats. He heaps sometimes fierce scorn and ridicule on Democrats, Progressives, Liberals and the Rhode Island left, terms he seems to use interchangeably.
Referring to what he believes is one more Democrat/Left/Progressive notion (in this case, removing the words “and Providence Plantations from the state’s official name) Rowley says “The temptation for sarcasm is all too palpable.” Yes, and he succumbs to it far too often, as well as childish name-calling. “
For instance:
• “David Segal is a 30-year-old Ivy League graduate and a total moron.” (Segal is the state representative running for Congress in the 1st District.)
• Speaking of the legislation to allow 16-and-17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, Rowley says “the individual most responsible for the attempt to flood the state’s political process with pot-smoking nimrods is Ari Savitsky.” On the next page he delivers the verdict that “Savitsky’s an idiot.”
• National politicians are not immune: “Howard Dean, like most Democrats, is full of crap.”
“It’s not something I decided lightly upon, to call people names and call them what they deserve,” Rowley explained. “It’s a style that I chose strategically. I am assuming that when people read what these people have done and what they are up to, (they will agree) that calling someone an idiot is the least of what they deserve. A lot of people think that it turns people off, I basically conclude that it turns people on.”
Rowley says it is a “myth” that politics has gotten more coarse in recent years. He points out that politics has been a rough-and-tumble game since the beginning of the republic.
He has some other ideas that you might find enlightening or outrageous, but he isn’t shy about sharing them.
Rowley believes it is “unethical and immoral” to enlist and register people to vote, then get them to the polls if they are too apathetic or uninformed to be aware of the issues at stake and candidates seeking the votes. He refers to youth pre-registration and ACORN-style voter registration as “underhanded” and “schemes.”
Sometimes Rowley is just all wet.
He asserts that public employees do not pay taxes, nor do they contribute to their own pension plans, because they are paid with public funds. He likens it to someone on welfare who gives back a small portion of his or her check every month. That of course is nonsense. That money ceased being the public’s when it was paid out to employees for services rendered. And when money is taken from your salary for a specific purpose — taxes, or pension co-pays — you are paying it.
Rowley says The Rhode Island Republican will be available ($20) at bookstores soon, but right now it is only available on Travis Rowley.com. Here’s hoping it will start a trend toward more thought-provoking politics and away from the gotcha of snappy one-liners and attack ads in our political debate.
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 11 August 2010 )
|
|
|
|
|
|
Horoscope
