Distraction on the far right....
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Distraction on the far left...
June 7, 2010: They are thee equivalent of a dangerous seductress. They prey upon reasonable candidates, enticing them into extreme public policy positions. They are closed political primaries.
Whether they be Republican or Democratic, closed primaries have taken on a dangerous role in driving partisan politics by forcing candidates to the very edges of their parties in order to garner enough votes to win. That's because only the loyalist foot soldiers traditionally turn up to vote in the primary.
During the 2006 August primary only 160,000 voters turned out compared to 238,000 who showed up to vote in the November general election. In 2008, there were 193,533 votes cast in the primary compared to 327,341 that cast ballots just ten weeks later.
Due to the fact that a smaller percentage of voters show up to vote in partisan primaries, it has the effect of making candidates swing wildly to the fringes in order to make themselves appealing to hard core party line voters who dominate primary turnout.
Alaska's Governor Sean Parnell is a perfect example of the fringed tail wagging the dog.
Last week he vetoed $3 million out of the State's budget that would have provided health coverage for 1,300 Alaskan children and 200 pregnant women. He vetoed the money to satisfy one of the far right's favorite groups, the Alaska Family Council.
Because pro-life voters dominate the GOP primary, and many are one issue voters, Parnell stooped to cheap politics in order to throw a bone to the group.
In response, the group sent out a mass mailing praising Parnell and blaming activist judges for the governor's veto.
"It is an outright crime that health coverage for low-income families and pregnant teens has to be overshadowed and deluded by a zealous and activist court that will stop at nothing to enshrine abortion and have your tax dollars pay for it. Governor Parnell deserves a round of applause for standing firm on this issue."
Standing firm on the issue?This is the kind of delusional public policy you get when politicians without backbones cave into their respective parties fringe pressures.
First, as we all learned as children, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Reducing the availability for preventative health care coverage will simply drive costs into others areas like uncompensated care for hospitals and higher Medicaid bills.
Second, Parnell vetoed the entire amount rather than just a fraction ($384,000) that was supposedly spent on abortion services. If he would have been at all reasonable about the issue, he would have been equipped with the facts when he vetoed the money, instead of waiting for two days before his administration could gin up what the real cost was.
Parnell basically did a no look cut to please the far right.
According to a Department of Health fact sheet, the Denali Kid Care program spends a total of $216 million per year. The amount of abortion related services equaled less than two tenths of one percent of the total spend by state government.
Third, while groups on both the far right and far left talk about fairness and liberty, the reality is Alaska's constitution prohibits the kind of discrimination that Parnell and his Family Council friends want to be enshrined in public policy.
The same goes for the far left. Their attachments to organized labor and environmental groups are just as damaging as groups like the Family Council. Their extreme agendas force candidates to tack far left to appease both donors and voters.
In return, what the rest of us get is a government that is dominated by those whose decision making process ignores fairness and liberty and sticks taxpayers with the bill for frivolous lawsuits challenging abortion rights and higher taxes because of anti-development positions.
In Alaska, the blanket primary system has already been ruled unconstitutional because it denies political parties the right to nominate their own candidate.
Agreed.
But taxpayers should not be paying for closed primaries.
In Alaska, the state assumes the responsibility of paying for the closed primary system, which is wrong. If the individual political parties want to close their primaries, they should bare the costs.
The closed primary system is broken. The only thing we get out of it are weak kneed politicians like the governor, who cave into special interests to get votes.
In California they are considering Proposition 14 which would make primaries open and non-partisan. Under this system, voters would be given a ballot with all names on it, and the top two vote getters would then face each other in the general election.
The Golden State has long been the poster child of dysfunctional politics, but given how angry voters have become, opening the primary to all voters has significant support.
Proposition 14 is a measure that Alaskans should consider if they believe the current system is broken. However, the idea will never see a ballot because it requires action from the same people who extort the closed primary system to their own advantage.
To say the most, Alaska needs open primaries.
To say the least, Alaskans should not be paying for closed primaries.
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