The past several days I have been inundated with phone calls featuring the “voice” of certain politicians telling me to vote for “person xyz” or to vote for “person abc”. On television and radio there is nothing but political advertisements asking me to do the same thing. The commonality in all these solicitations and advertisements is that I should vote for a particular candidate because they are more “extreme” on issues important to me than the other candidate(s).
This is an election year in the United States so the solicitations are something most Americans have little choice but to endure. The thing that strikes me the most in my state is that we have two candidates running to become the Republican Party’s nominee for governor who have flip-flopped on so many important positions that you really do not know if they are being honest when they say they will do certain things once they are elected.
- Both candidates in the past have supported issues that no Republican would dare support like abortion and relaxed immigration laws. Both candidates have even supported and donated money to left-wing politicians like Al Gore. However, both candidates now portray themselves now as diehard Conservatives.
I’m sure this phenomenon is common in other states so I’ll try to shed some light into why politicians seem to change their stance so much during election campaigns.
The typical American election year consists of a primary stage and a general election stage. During the primary stage candidates must appeal to the activists within their party in order to secure their party’s nomination since the activists are the ones who bother to vote during the primary election. Generally, the party activists are the more extreme members within a political party. As a result, the candidate who wants to advance to the general election stage must act like they hold the same views as the party activists.
- In my state’s case, the two candidates running to become the Republican Party’s nominee for governor are actually more like centrists who are pretending to be diehard conservatives. There is a dissonance between what these candidates promise they will do in their ads and what these candidates have actually done in the past because the centrists are pretending to be people who they really are not.
After the primary stage the winner of their party’s nomination tends to shift to the center in an attempt to appeal to a larger audience in the general election. The party activists who supported the candidate tend to get upset because the candidate they supported typically begins to portray themselves as someone who really does not want a lot to do with their party’s extremist elements. As the candidate shifts to the center, the candidate’s positions on certain policy issues change or are re-explained to make it sound more compromising in nature. The candidate does not really worry about how the more extreme members of their party feel because they know these voters have little choice but to vote for them (they cannot vote for the other party because the other party’s candidate is less supportive of the issues the voter believes in). The objective is to win the general election at almost all costs…
The winner of the general election typically sheds their centrist cloak and reverts back to the person who they truly are. We have seen this with Barack Obama. During the primary campaign we saw Obama try to win the support of the more extreme elements of the Democrat Party. During the general election Obama tried to portray himself as a moderate albeit he had a few slip ups (i.e. his “we’re going to share the wealth” comment). After the election Obama reverted back to his true self, which is someone who clearly is not a moderate-not even in his own party is he considered a moderate.
Remember, actions speak louder than words so pay attention with what candidates have done in the past. This will give you a far better indication of what a candidate will do if they are elected or reelected than what they promise they will do.
