Lately I have been watching the political ads on TV and I have been making some observations. A lot of the things said in these ads play on the emotions or internal feelings of people and, I might add, the ignorance of many. Using the media and strong words, campaigns are distorting the true meanings of words and making them into bad words to make things sound negative. Or they make negative things sound positive in a sort of Orwellian double-speak effort.
The first one that has really gotten me lately in the media is a couple of Democratic candidates (it is irrelevant where they are from or what they are running for) who have been running ads about lobbyists. They are talking about how bad lobbyists are and how we need to stop listening to the special interests of the lobbyists. After studying this fairly extensively, I have something to say about it.
Lobbyist groups I would dare to say are the reason we as regular citizens still have some direct influence over our politicians. Lobbyist groups do have lots of money, yes. Lobbyist groups are powerful groups that have the ear of the lawmakers. But did you know that you, yes you yourself personally, are represented by at least one lobbyist group all the time? It pretty much does not matter how old or young, rich or poor, or what your occupation, there is a lobbyist group representing your interests and fighting for YOU in Washington, in the state capital, wherever.
Even students are represented by lobbyists groups. OSU has a couple taskforces: one for federal and one for state affairs. There are many others too, but the point is these are lobbyists. Maybe they are not as powerful as some, so I will give you a more well known one: the American Association of Retired People. That's right, AARP is a special interest group, a lobbyist group that was meant to fight for the rights and interests of elderly people in the United States. The organization AAA is the same thing. These are lobbyists, these are special interests, and yet they have done many good things. No one would dispute this. Lobbyist groups keep democracy in full swing and keep the government accountable. In a system dominated by only two parties (unlike almost any other democracy in the world) interests groups make sure the minorities do not get shoved out of the system.
There is another ad out there that just galls me personally and I believe it is based on another gross misunderstanding of past events. The ad starts out: "Some votes weren't counted, and we got a mess" and the images on screen refer to the 2000 presidential elections. Apparently people still will not let go of a decision made almost 8 years ago. The Supreme Court decision in the case of Bush v. Gore still seems to just eat at some liberal naysayers. Does anyone really remember anymore why that case even started? Sure we know the outcome; recounting of votes in Florida stopped and Bush was declared the winner of the election.
People are still up in arms over what they feel was George W. Bush's political wrangling and that he used the Supreme Court to further his own political goals. But does anyone know why it became a court case in the first place? Al Gore got it put before the Supreme Court, not George Bush. And the decision was about as close to unanimous as a controversial decision can get: 7-2. The court was far less conservative than it is now and still a strong majority sided that the recount should stop. Why is this even an issue anymore? The problem was not that votes were not counted, the controversy was over a RE-count of votes that had already been recorded. Liberals, get over it. It is 8 years in the past, time to move on. You talk about change and moving on from the past, practice what you preach.
The last one I am going to touch on is a personal issue that bothers me more than any other political issue. This one is something that, again, is in a couple of democratic candidates' ads. This one has to do with "protecting a woman's right to choose". When you put it in those terms, it does not sound bad at all does it? But what exactly is being protected? What is being protected is a woman's "right" to choose to kill an unborn child. They are "protecting a woman's right to choose" by taking away an unborn child's right to life. It all sounds different though, does it not, when they sanitize it in the media and in political ads?
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