Sarah Palin's Cleavage

David Easton in A Systems Analysis of Political Life writes "As a concept, cleavage therefore refers to these two different dimensions: Diversity of opinions, attitudes, or culture and conflict among potential support groups" (p. 235). What dimensions of cleavage, then, is Sarah Palin channeling?

The list is lengthy: (1) big government, (2) the environment, (3) militarism, (4) the media, (5) abortion, (6) taxation, (7) fundamentalist religion, (8) universal health care, (9) same-sex marriage, (10) creationism, (11) gun rights, (12) off-shore oil drilling, (13) global warming skepticism and more.

David Easton thinks that cleavages can either strengthen a country through open discussion and debate or weaken the political system through unresolvable conflict. What do you think?

Recently, Barney Frank (D-NY, liberal) and Ron Paul (R-TX, Libertarian) wrote a Huffington Post article calling for reductions in military spending. Last year, I played golf with a Libertarian tradesman and Ron Paul supporter. It was amazing how much we agreed on and how interesting the discussion was to me. The essence of a strong democracy is to be able to reason, discuss, debate and move forward. I question whether that is possible with the current makeup of the Republican party. Also, see the interesting discussion between Nassim Taleb (Libertarian) and Nouriel Roubini on PBS. From this perspective, Libertariansim is making a strong contribution to American democracy. The Tea Party movement and the Republican party, on the other hand, seem intent on weakening the political system through "unresolvable conflict".

P.S. If you thought this post was about another dimension of cleavage, you can find plenty of that elsewhere on the Internet!