The strategy of tension does not respond to an ethical or moral position. Those who use it claiming to be the defenders of the essence and purity of values, but the fact is that the political confrontation is only a tactic designed to win elections. Its purpose is twofold: to mobilize the electorate next and at the same time, encourage abstention from rival party voters and moderates.This type of strategy is not new and has been widely used in the United States. In 1800, during the election campaign between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, a contemporary newspaper warned that if Jefferson was elected president, murder, rape and adultery would be permissible. Years later, in 1828, the candidate Andrew Jackson, one of the founders of the Democratic Party suffered a brutal campaign of vilification.
Received so much abuse, for example, being the son of a prostitute. Or more recently, under President Bill Clinton, the political action committee of the Republican Party recommended referring to the president using the adjectives of "pathetic", "sick", "traitor" or "corrupt." The Spanish right was imported into our country, this strategy because there is something that unites the U.S.
and Spain: the majority of citizens feel closer to the progressive parties. In Spain, if you look in the CIS surveys, we see that society is mostly center-left. Something similar happens in the U.S.. José María Maravall has analyzed polls by CBS / New York Times for the period 1992-2007 and noted that only two of the 104 samples, the Republicans had an advantage over the Democrats (the political confrontation, 2008, Taurus).
Therefore, in the U.S. and Spanish cases the strategy of tension is intended that the right can win elections in a society where the majority does not share their values. This confrontation will only disappear once you reach power. However, the risk of using this strategy is twofold. On the one hand, the hardness of the arguments may be so high that some may feel disturbed entitled to commit an atrocity.
Furthermore, this strategy closes all doors to any agreement or common ground on key issues for a democracy, such as the renewal of the Constitutional Court or a global pact to end the crisis. Moreover, democracy becomes weaker, since the political debate is brutish. Why listen to the arguments of liberals when, in the words of Karl Rove, "the liberals look to the United States and see the Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags and Cambodia's deadly land?".
No comments:
Post a Comment