Divide and Conquer - such a powerful concept

... especially in politics.

Us liberals are especially prone to it as we are willing to at least listen to many viewpoints, but sometimes have trouble when it comes to having a united front. Ralph Nader being my most famous example, I still blame him some for the whole Bush Co. nonsense getting a foothold at all. During the presidential primaries is the time for many view points, but once a party has a candidate, I think it's time to focus on keeping those other people (read: psycho, god-abusing, neo cons) out of power. You have to a make moral compromises and Terri (a Green who votes her conscious) and I debate about this all the time.

Another example is Cindy Shehan who is running for congress against Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, despite her refusal to consider impeaching Bush, is a very popular representative and I think it's safe to say that Shehan has no chance and I wonder if more the point is to impress upon Pelosi that she may want to really reconsider impeachment. However I think there has to be a better way as no doubt BushCo is all for Cindy Shehan running as it's more Divide and Conquer. Encourage the other parties who oppose you to fight among themselves and they won't have the focus to challenge you.

What's ironic this election season is that the Republicans, who are usually very good at uniting, are not at all in agreement as this article in the LA Times talks about:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gop2jan02,0,6857177.story?coll=la-home-center

Now it's still the primaries, so it's shouldn't matter that they can't agree yet as in the past they have shown amazing ability to make all sorts of moral compromises to support the White Man of someone's choice to the point of supporting a candidate who doesn't have their interests in mind at all, but the article talks about historically the party that agrees sooner does better in the election which is something I didn't know. (Sorry for the run on and on sentence.)

I don't know how to do it, but we really should encourage the religious right to split off from the Republicans and form their own party. It may be distasteful to listen to them, but they will have less power if they are not associated with the Republican Party.

And for the first time in a while, the Democratic Party has a plethora of possible candidates most of whom would make an excellent president. Interviews of Democrats in Iowa (hear on NPR) describe being thrilled about not being able to decide who to choose knowing that any of them would be fine.

Let's hope so. I'm leaning towards Obama myself.