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| I love kos, but I really don't understand how he's going around the country selling a book about politics when he apparently hasn't a damn clue what political groups actually are. Okay, let little old me take a wild stab at why the Sierra Club endorsed (gasp) the Republican Lincoln Chafee instead of the Democratic challenger for Senate. I would guess that it might have something to do with Chafee's overwhelming support for environmental issues. In the blurb kos links to, he says Chafee only had a 20% pro-environment rating in 2004. That means he only voted for one of five pro-environmental bills. In 2005, Chaffee voted for 16 out of 19. He's supported both pro-environment bills offered so far in 2006, which means you could say he has a 100% pro-environment rating for the year... of course, like kos's quoted statistic, that would be mind-numbingly deceptive. The reason I'm pissed about rhetoric like this is because kos is being glaringly hypocritical. It's clear that the NRA prefers a Republican majority in the Senate, but that didn't seem to stop kos and many others from hyping Howard Dean's NRA support on a near-daily basis during the 2004 primaries. I'm not saying vote for Chaffee. I certainly want a Democrat in that seat instead of him. But it's pathetic and stupid to bitch about a political organization devoted to one particular issue supporting a candidate that is most likely to support those issues just because that person is a Republican. That Democrats support the environment on an overall scale is irrelevant: the purpose of The Sierra club is not to get Democrats elected. That's the job of the Democratic Party. No matter how many posts and books kos writes, the purpose of left-leaning political groups, just like right-leaning ones, is not to generically get partisan politicians elected. It's to elect politicians that support the goals of that group. The Sierra Club wants votes for environmental policy; their job is to support the politicans they feel will give them that. The Democratic Party's job is to present the case of their candidate to the Sierra Club. But no, I'm sure calling them "moronic" will work just as well. | | | | |
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