Five Best Friday Columns
Mickey Edwards in The New York Times on how political parties have too much power The former Oklahoma Republican Congressman writes about the problems with party politics, from the existence of primaries to rampant redistricting. "In some ways our system has come to resemble those multi-party parliamentary systems in which the tail (relatively small groups of hard-liners) is able to wag the dog."
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Timothy Egan in The New York Times on Romney's extreme position on public land "The public land endowment of the United States is one of the greatest perks of this democracy," Egan writes. Romney doesn't understand that and has supported efforts to end federal control over large parts of the West so that states can industrialize. People of all political leanings have "expressed astonishment that Romney had sided with his party’s most extreme fringe."
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Jonathan Weil in Bloomberg View on treating banks like restaurants New York restaurants must post their health grading on the front window, and customers can see report cards online. "With banks, you can’t get report cards like this from regulators." FDIC chairman Sheila Bair's new book details supervisory ratings of Citibank, but there's no easy way for the public to see that sort of info about all the banks. "Let’s eliminate the secrecy."
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Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post on "skewed" polls Conservatives seem to think polls are skewed toward Obama because they overrepresent Democrats. "So why is Romney acting like a man who’s behind rather than comfortably ahead? Because he’s smart enough to know that the conspiracy theory is nuts." GOP should be more worried that the polls are true, and more Americans choose to be Democrats.
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Craig Unger in Salon on how Karl Rove is losing it Rove may be GOP boss, but it's clear he's lost it with this election. His Todd Akin/murder comment reopened a schism between the GOP and the Tea Party, "which has begun to see him as a ruthless party boss." "If the Svengali-like party boss behind Romney has fallen to such depths, it should come as no surprise that the candidate himself has performed so poorly."
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Photo by Al_HikesAZ via flickr
