Arizona's attack has been front-radicalization of the terms of political debate in our democracy. Usually thick tone, if not apocalyptic, deliberately simplistic seems to dominate the American political debate. In radio, debates, speeches, rallies and TV cross slurs, insults and even threats. Many wonder if the United States, which was always considered a civil paradise because of the maturity of its society and its institutions, today is not purely and simply an "uncivil" society.The phenomenon is not confined to America. In fact, Spain offers a good example of a vociferous policy, reduced to slogans, devoid of arguments and where no facts or data have or are manipulated with impunity. Interestingly, a country that has sold the world a shift from consensus, is, at least since the March 11, 2004, installed in an environment of constant tension.
What accounts for the polarization? Traditionally, parties with the possibility of ruling came racing through the center of the political spectrum, the so-called "median voter" model citizen in every election adjudicated rationally vote for each match after having weighed the quality of government action undertaken The electoral program presented and the credibility of candidates.
However, the median voter partisan loyalty is not very high, which poses a problem for parties, which, like companies do with brands, they have to use methods of voter loyalty. Here begins the slide toward the advertising policy, a path where ideology plays an essential role because it reinforces the identification of voters with political parties.
As the car ads where they talk about the price or features, but the pleasure of driving, parties need voters willing to vote for them not only when they do well, but when they do wrong, which will only if their ideology prevents them from changing to vote. Hence the need to polarize. In the United States, George W.
Bush won by a few votes in the 2000 election running for the center, but razed in 2004 when he followed the strategy of Karl Rove and built a speech deliberately intended to take a vote on the religious right, usually abstention. The problem now is that the radical right represents a kind of genius who refuses to return to the lamp, pull Republicans to the right and force Democrats to choose between moderate and compete for the center or find a similar effect by left, which may further radicalize political life.
Has something similar happened in Spain?
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