Political Nous

Harken unto me:
We have imported into this Ireland of ours, the 26 counties, a political ideology based on majoritarianism with a first past the post electoral system which in its degraded form means that when you have achieved a majority you must crush the opposition by denying them any significant forum or publicity and in effect to de-platform them. This dismal strategy does not even work in America or Britain, still less will it work for Proportional Representation which allows for independents and single issue candidates. When Matty McGrath and other T.D.s demand that amendments to proposed abortion legislation be considered and there is not a peep, a chirp or a tweet from any of the media, what we are seeing is a denial of oxygen to a group that is outside the political consensus or is taken to be. This is bad political judgement and will end in tears. Take for instance the mandatory referral by one doctor to another who will perform an abortion. The obvious point of this is to draw the whole medical profession into the provision of abortion even those who are conscientiously opposed. So keen are they on this that no one seems to have noticed that to refer someone you must know the doctor to whom you refer. What is to prevent the objecting doctor from refusing and letting activists know what surgeries to go to witness at? Is that what Varadkar and Harris want? It’s what they are going to get.

Prediction:
Watch Fine Gael when they reach a certain critical mass, if they ever do, begin to float the idea that P.R. is the cause of divisiveness and political stagnation. Fianna Fail did it in their day. They failed then when the public was less malliable and less moidered by social media.

Observation: One in Four first preference votes went to Peter Casey. The election was won on the first count by Michael D. Higgins, a visionary politician to whom I once gave my seventh preference in a general election. I regret that.

Anyway, the tallymen were there watching the count and must have been noting the Second Preferences. I think there may have been a lot of them for Peter Casey because there is no talk about it. I gave him mine. The media attempted to quash any notion of a Trumpian backlash but strangely they have nothing to say about 2nd.prefs. They’d know less as my mother used to say.

Prediction:
Watch rural T.D.s peeling away from the tight formation.