{"id":4922,"date":"2018-01-11T10:55:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T01:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/?p=4922"},"modified":"2018-01-11T10:55:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T01:55:15","slug":"curmudgeon-shares-sanity-maintenance-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/curmudgeon-shares-sanity-maintenance-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Curmudgeon Shares Sanity Maintenance Trick"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I have observe the scene over the decades, I have a few key points I remind my self of regularly:<\/p>\n

1. A Political Party is a Machine to Win Elections for a group of members. When people confuse that with ideology, things go awry.\u00a0 Politicians are specialists in winning elections and then operating government. Like Doctors, or Plumbers. To expect more is to live miserably.<\/p>\n

Parties become coherent and dynamic when either of two things happen.
\n1. A Charismatic Leader Emerges who can deliver votes
\n2. Donors have a unified front to deliver money to achieve focused goals.<\/p>\n

It is fortunate that item one and two cannot co-exist in the same time and space.<\/p>\n

Successful Parties sacrifice ideology to results when necessary.<\/p>\n

After a Charismatic Leader retires, voters usually want a technician politician to maintain the course. This leads to disaster over time as conditions change and technicians rarely adapt.<\/p>\n

\r\n
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div>
\r\n \r\n <\/i>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/span>\r\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have observe the scene over the decades, I have a few key points I remind my self of regularly:<\/p>\n

1. A Political Party is a Machine to Win Elections for a group of members. When people confuse that with ideology, things go awry.\u00a0 Politicians are specialists in winning elections and then operating government. Like Doctors, or Plumbers. To expect more is to live miserably.<\/p>\n

Parties become coherent and dynamic when either of two things happen.
1. A Charismatic Leader Emerges who can deliver votes
2. Donors have a unified front to deliver money to achieve focused goals.<\/p>\n

It is fortunate that item one and two cannot co-exist in the same time and space.<\/p>\n

Successful Parties sacrifice ideology to results when necessary.<\/p>\n

After a Charismatic … Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3898,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4922\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balldiamondball.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}