Sea of Poltical Madness

I don't know what's happening with the views on this blog. Really, mostly there is just 1-2 people "reading" it, at good times 10 or something around here. Now, then a month or so back and there was a huge spike in about 100 (if I remember correctly) views and then the same 1-2 views in a day until today, when another spikes occur with 50 or something like that views. Is someone binge reading these post? What makes ramblings from an incoherent person that can't keep to one single subject seem so interesting that 50 people (or just one person reading 50 posts) decide to stay? I must do something right, a pity I don't know what that is.

Anyway, since there will be no DnD this weekend either I might just use this time to discuss the current scandal in Swedish politics, SD-gate. Yes, that's what they call it. Watergate ruined all political scandals forever. At least it isn't as bad a name like "nannygate" back in 2006. So what is SD-gate? It's the scandal shaking the newst parliamentary party in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats when one of the major newspaper got it's hand on a video concerning the behavior of 3 of their parliamentarians (with 2 of them being quite high-ranking) shouting racial and sexistic slurs culminating in them picking up iron bars to use against some drunk 2 years ago. If that wasn't enough, when confronted about this they denied the chargers until Expressen posted the video. So as consequence they have at the moment lost their economical and judicial spoke persons and today they kicked out their youth party leader (who, compared to the rest of the parlimentary bransch of the party, is seen as rather radical) from their parlimentary staff when he published a debate article urging the party to rethink their line with one of the parlimentarians. This, of course, shall be seen in the light  that the youth radicals and more ideological bransch are fighting against the progressive/compromising leaders who try to avoid the tarnish of full on racist and nazism outburts within the party. Also, it is a consequence from an earlier statement by the party leader keeping a zero tolerance against inappropriate behavior.

Question is the following, how will this affect the public opinion and the election of 2014? Before the scandal SD was on the verge of becoming the thrid largest party and crawling toward 10 %. Will this stop that? Maybe, it might at least stop them from growing anymore and might push them back from the current (if even correctly) 8 % they have in the polls toward stabilizing around 6 %. So it might have damaged them for 2014, but then again it's 2 years till then, a lot can happen and peoples memory are short. So it doesn't matter, the trends shows that if the underlying problem that this party are nurishing from aren't addressed, they will continue to grow and become a main player, maybe not 2014 after the scandal, but they will probably be a threat for the other parties again in 2018. What is more damaging on the other hand are the internal fight between the radicals and the party leaders in the parliament. It looks like the same that happened in the social democrats are happening here. When one of the two sides take over or tries to stage a coup heads will roll. It also happened with the Christian Democrats. If the radicals feel left out they might leave the party for some more extreme one and that could very well push SD down the 4 % line and let them be kicked out of the parliament. Or they might even win ground and make thenselves impossible for the common man to even think about casting a vote for them. And finally, let not forget, how did the newspaper get their hand on the video? Someone inside the party that felt that their leaders were to weak, someone wanted to climb higher on the ladder by pushing away some competition or someone that felt cheated out in something or another? That's at least the internal strife angle, but it could also be that someone hacked in or stole a computer with the film and released it to the press. The interesting one (for me at least) would be the former. Putting it together with the internal strife speculation and we might yet see another party running toward a political suicide.