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Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Local Elections with Lasting National Import

What’s at stake this November is the president’s vision for remaking America.

Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” That may have been true in Tip O’Neill’s day, but some elections are decisively on national issues — and the congressional elections this year are overwhelmingly national, just as the elections of 1860 were dominated by one national issue, namely slavery.

In 1860, some abolitionists split the anti-slavery vote by running their own candidate — who had no chance of winning — instead of supporting Abraham Lincoln, who was not pure enough for some abolitionists. Lincoln got just 40 percent of the vote, though that turned out to be enough to win in a crowded field.

But what a gamble with the fate of millions of human beings held as slaves! And for what? Symbolic political purity?

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have been saying this for years. Look locally. We are in a Hell of a mess because of electing liberal Democrats who encourage welfare payments for votes instead of supporting businesses, employment, and raising the tax base. Instead when the tax base declines, they raise taxes.