Me and My R(N)C

Florida's an interesting state, especially politically. There's something to be said (I'll leave it to you to decide whether it's good or bad) for having the President's brother as your governor. Another quirk of Florida politics is its reliance on a closed-party primary system. In primaries, you can vote only for candidates from your party. There are a million reasons why this is a boneheaded way to do business, but it's also the reason I'm a registered Republican.

Republican candidates for office run the gamut from moderate to creepy-scary conservative. I think it's safer to stay Republican and vote for the most sensible one of the bunch than to vote Democrat in the primary and basically just confirm the one person in the race who's reasonable, which is what seems to happen around here. And since I vote in nearly every election, no matter how small, turns out I am a Republican "Super Voter." (If they only knew...)

So I get this survey from the RNC--the "Republican Party Census Document"--and I have to say that as a survey, it's just about the most biased form I've ever encountered. My inner English teacher just about edited the whole thing and sent it back, but sensible me said I'd just be wasting my time and not to bother. *sigh*

What bothers me about the thing is that it's not looking for what Republicans are thinking--it's written to confirm what's already on the the platform. A sample: "Should students, teachers, principals and administrators be held to higher standards?" Now who's going to argue against high standards? The problem is, "standards" in Republican Party parlance means "giant-ass testing program with which we will compare schools, declare them 'failing,' and open up cracks for vouchers." I have a philosophical problem with that, so I'd say no...but the question is of the "When did you stop beating your wife?" variety, so you can't win no matter what you select.

Here's another: "Do you think U.S. troops should have to serve under United Nations' commanders?" Well, no, because basically, they can't. Baby bro, recently returned from a yearlong hitch in Iraq, explained that U.N. security forces (blue berets) look after U.N. workers. Member nations like ours serving at a U.N. peacekeeping site, like ours are in Bosnia, work together. Commanders from each nation that has provided troops for the peacekeeping force create a consensus command, but troops from those individual nations only take orders from their own individual commanders. Since the U.S. is the biggest dog on the U.N. Security Council anyway, other nations would be far more likely to take orders from one of our commanders than vice versa. Bad question, written precisely to get people riled up over an "issue" that isn't even an issue.

The whole document's just so silly--but the problem is that people don't think anymore. It's far more easy to say "ditto" to someone else, no matter how bass-ackwards their thinking, than it is to work out a problem on your own and state your own case (especially if it's a bit odd or out of the mainstream). That's what scares me about the RNC "Census." If the Democrats had a similar document, I'm sure it would be equally poorly written. Political parties these days have grabbed onto the "you're either with us or you're against us" line, and woe be unto you if you think well enough to see merit on both sides of the aisle.

Don't even get me started on why there weren't any campaign finance or ethics questions on the survey...