Election Season Sorrow

So far this summer, the midterm congressional campaigns have been interesting to say the least. The Tea Party has emerged as a legitimate player in voter opinion, and their participation has elicited high tensions amongst Americans over political issues. Voter discouragement no doubt stems from the so called "jobless recovery", but no doubt some of the loss of support Obama is receiving from his "liberal" base, stems from the fact that his change promising campaign has turned into a status quo administration, no matter what right-wing pundits would have you think. The truth of the matter is we'd be doing far better off if President Obama was truly a socialist. Maybe then we'd reverse the current system where legislators are scared not to bail out our largest multinationals and banks, but agonize and delay and finally, barely give some assistance to out of work common folks, struggling to make it in one of the most opulent countries in history.
Sharon Angle and Harry Reid squaring off in Nevada has actually ended up a close race as of this writing. This is likely because Senator Reid is at that age where men typically put their foot in their mouth regularly. Of course this could be disastrous for democrats to lose their senate majority leader to a candidate representing the extreme right-wing of the republican party. Not saying Harry Reid is worth his weight in tofu, but Candidate Angle's views are quite scary, such as ending public education! Yikes!
Joe Miller went on Fox News Sunday and said that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional. Then when asked later to defend that position, he deferred to conservative talking points about balancing the federal budget and slashing debt. When press a second time he responded with the same talking points. Joe Miller is currently poised to win one of Alaska's senate seats from incumbent Lisa Murkowski.
Of course there's Rand Paul vs. Jack Conway in Kentucky. Rand Paul made waves earlier this year with an appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program, in which Mr. Paul claimed he felt the final clause of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents businesses from discriminating against people because of race, was unconstitutional and violated that business' rights as property owners. Paul has articulated other views that are contradictory to his alleged political ethos. For instance, candidate Paul claimed he felt the Islamic cultural center planned for a move to three blocks from ground zero should have to move. This sentiment is, unfortunately, increasingly prevalent since September 11, 2001 and the perceptions surrounding Islam, since the perpetrators were Muslim. But this twice violates the owner's First Amendment rights. First it violates their right to freedom of religion. Telling certain faiths where and when and how they can do things utterly violates this right. Second, it violates the owner's property rights, which of course one would assume Mr. Paul might take a stand on this issue. But he took the easy road, pandering to the overwhelmingly rural constituency he hopes to sweep, and their racial and spiritual fears.
All in all, it should be interesting to see if the Tea Party can actually succeed in establishing itself as a political entity, or if they'll just succeed in tearing the republican party apart.