Scaring the Voters in the Middle – by Nicholas Kristof

I don’t link to much political stuff here. I don’t claim any affiliation to a political party and try to be as independent in my political views as I am when looking at potential investment ideas. I think my distaste of the ideologies by both major parties on many issues is likely shared by a lot of other people, but that the benefits and feelings that come from being part of a specific group are unlikely to bring Darwin-like objectivity into the political discourse any time soon.

In his 2007 USC Law School Commencement Speech, Charlie Munger said: “Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger.”

I didn’t watch much of it, but the clips I did see from the recently-completed Republican National Convention contained plenty of cabbage, though there were certainly some good and important points made as well. I suspect we’ll see the same from the Democrats during their convention, which takes place in my home city this week. The Kristof article excerpted and linked to below goes into a little of the Republican ideology on the issue of abortion. I think the economic ideologies of the advisors and economists giving advice to each party would of more interest to readers of this blog, and maybe someone will write an article on that in the future.

Maybe one day—in a galaxy far, far away—politicians will take the approach that: (1) differences of opinion exist on topic ‘x’ and will continue to exist; and so (2) because of these differences, I need to focus on making the best laws for the country and its people that take those differences into consideration, even if I am firmly on one side or the other as far as my personal opinion is concerned.

Republican leaders in 2012 have a natural winning issue — the limping economy — but they seem determined to scare away centrist voters with extremist positions on everything from abortion to sex education.

Most Americans do not fit perfectly into “pro-choice” or “pro-life” camps. Polls show that about one-fifth want abortion to be legal in all situations, and another one-fifth want abortion to be illegal always. The majority fall somewhere between, and these voters are the ones who decide elections.

Bill Clinton won their support with his pragmatic formula that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Then social conservatives won ground with a shrewd strategic decision to focus the abortion debate where they had the edge.

They fought battles over extremely rare procedures they called “partial-birth abortion.” They called for parental consent when a girl seeks an abortion, and for 24-hour waiting periods before an abortion. In polls, around two out of three Americans favor those kinds of restrictions.

But change the situation, and people are more in favor of abortion rights. Four out of five Americans believe that a woman should be able to get an abortion if her health is endangered, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

So it’s astonishing that Republicans would adopt an absolutist platform condemning abortion without offering an exception even for rape.

Mitt Romney insists that his position on abortion is crystal clear. In fact, his policy is so muddled that he doesn’t seem to know it himself. So, Mr. Romney, let me help you out.

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