A reader whose natural calling is obviously something in the spin-doctoring line, offers a take on the post-bombing Spanish election I hadn’t seen before:
“Derb—I agree that Spain surrendered with an election, but I don’t think that was the intention of the voters. Look at the voter registration for what I mean.
“In Europe, Socialist party membership outnumbers non-Socialist ‘conservative’ party membership by leaps and bounds. The only reason non-Socialist parties ever win elections over there is because the Socialists mostly stay home on election day. When Osama’s boys blew up those trains, the Spanish people said to themselves, ‘We won’t let these terrorists keep us away from the polls!’ There was a huge voter turnout in that election.
“The huge voter turnout helped the Socialists. Face it, most people don’t really care about politics. They’re not going to change their voting preference for a bunch of terrorists, that would be caving in to them. Because of the high Socialist turnout, the Socialists won. They promptly surrendered, as Socialists are apt to do if it hurts civilization. Because of all the Socialist voters who refused to be intimitated by terrorists, terrorists actually won.”
[Derb] Interesting. It’s definitely true, in any case, that “most people don’t really care about politics.” If matters were otherwise, National Review’s circulation figures would be up there in the stratosphere with the numbers for Golf Digest, Cosmo Girl and Michigan Living. Which they are… not.