Queue on 30/10/2013 at 16:33
Yeah, but you have great weather.
... and can you imagine me somehow falling into the line of succession. I'D RUIN YOU ALL!
DDL on 30/10/2013 at 17:01
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
But the weird thing here is: this politician seriously thinks he needs to determine his point of view *after* he got elected. While I always thought that views and plans were set before the elections. That's a big difference.
This is not uncommon. Voters don't usually have a huge range of choices (at best it might be "centre right, far right, crazy far right, or just plain crazy"), and in the US it's basically "red or blue".
You vote for the person whose pre-stated views and policies are the most appealing to you (or, more realistically, are the least repellant), and who is also most likely to LISTEN to your views. Politicians don't just go sit in a bubble as soon as they're elected, they're constantly getting feedback on what their voters want them to do, and often altering their position to reflect that (because they want to get reelected eventually, right?). This usually is pretty close to their standard position, anyway (It's far less common for a staunchly conservative politician to suddenly go full-liberal based on voter feedback, not least because liberals are not their voter-base, but it can happen).
Politicians having a preformed, fixed set of policies and attitudes is not the norm. It's pretty rarely that an elected official
genuinely follows their actual conscience/personal views on an issue rather than acting based on focus-group derived voter feedback. Or the party line.
Gryzemuis on 30/10/2013 at 17:15
Quote Posted by DDL
Politicians having a preformed, fixed set of policies and attitudes is not the norm.
I understand why you can't have a preformed policy on everything.
But regarding something like slavery, they should have an opinion before they get elected.
The fact that this guy picks slavery as the example, shows how he is willing to change his opinion on literally anything.
Maybe it's to do with the fact that the US (and the UK too, I believe) have geographic elections (state, county, whatever you call it). And that it's a winner-takes-all system. The winner has to represent the whole area he got voted in, not only his own voters, but also the people who voted for the other guy. In my country we don't have that nonsense.
DDL on 30/10/2013 at 17:27
Bit facetious, there. "Obviously you can't have a preformed opinion on everything, but at least you should have one on X" (where X is whatever I want to use for my argument here).
Where do you draw the line? Slavery? Baby murder? Hanging? Windfarms? Parking restrictions after 9.00am (grrr those fucking parking restrictions).
And it's beside the point, really: if an elected official becomes aware that his voter base are honest to god clamouring for something totally batshit insane, they should either:
Endorse this viewpoint, and work for their constituents (because either they secretly want to do that anyway, or because they're a hopeless sockpuppet)
or
Resign.
It shouldn't really matter what the actual issue is. An issue that wasn't already expressly ammended out of the constitution would probably be a better choice, admittedly.
Anyway, the netherlands isn't THAT awesome: you guys have Geert Wilders. At least in the UK the extreeeeeeme racist crazies have zero chance of getting any power.
Er..
So far, anyway. :(
Edit: this post is intended to be light-hearted, and no offense is intended
