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Here is an email I wrote to Stacie Whitacre, and which is adapted here as an open letter addressed to her husband, Vince, who's running for the US Congress (it bounced back; Hotmail's postmaster told me that Stacie's email didn't exist). Of course, I won't have any problem if Stacie answers, but I think it is more appropriate to address this letter to Vince now that it isn't in email format.
Hi Vince,
There are a few points and questions about your campaign that I'd like to make.
1. Remember the power of so-called wedge issues. The GOP uses them frequently to win the vote of non-union working-class conservatives, mostly in the South but not always. You are running in a very Republican district, where Sensenbrenner will certainly have several wedge issues to use against you. In my opinion, the effect of these wedge issues should be countered by developing some wedges of your own, such as the Tyson boycott (assuming a majority or a near-majority of the people in WI-5 support the boycott), rather than by running on managerial issues such as the performance of the economy.
2. Don't be afraid to spin, in the sense of touting an issue using a language that is usually used against it. The whole essence of American conservatism is the abuse of terms that were once considered liberal, such as "freedom," "individualism," "democracy," and "rights." It might help if you try and retake those words, for example by framing the opposition to war in terms of smaller government or in terms of protecting innocent people ("Do you trust the government with your life?").
3. How can you reconcile your assertion that "The United States of America is the greatest nation in the world" with a platform of change? If the USA really is so great, why is there any need to make it much better? As an aside, the USA is not the greatest nation in the world because Canada outperforms it in almost every respect except its head of state being a monarch with no real power, its not having a Harvard or a Princeton, and its lower GDP per capita that cancels out with the lower cost of living.
4. What do you think regarding agricultural subsidies? You don't really say it in the farming portion of his platform. This issue is important because according to The Hunger Site, 24,000 people, of whom 18,000 are children below 5, die every day from hunger. They are mostly subsistence farmers, and a lot of them will survive, albeit still in misery, if more people buy their products. In other words, agricultural subsidies cause people to buy more American crops, i.e. less third-world crops, and thus cause deaths from hunger. The question here is, is American self sufficiency more important than Indian, Vietnamese, Somalian, or Dominican lives?
5. Final comment: what is your position on separation of church and state? More precisely, how would you have voted on condemning Newdow vs. Congress, which declared the "under god" portion of the pledge of allegiance (on which Jesse Ventura said "mandating a pledge of allegiance to a government is something Saddam Hussein would do") unconstitutional, had you been in Congress in June 2002? And moreover, what are you going to do once elected about the creationists' systematic attacks on science and rationality (a good place to start is this article written 6 years ago) in public schools?
The good as well as bad news are that you won't lose or gain any votes because of any reply, or lack thereof, to this email. I can't vote for you because I live approximately 3,000 kilometers from WI-5, and I can't contribute money because I don't have any. I will most probably post the reply to this letter on my site, but I'm not sure that there's anybody who actually reads it, so it can't hurt or help anyone.
Sincerely,
Redeye.
Click here to read Vince's reply to my letter.
Click here to read my reply to his reply.
Click here to read Vince's reply to my reply.
Click here to read my final reply.
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