Extremists Have Utterly Ruined the GOP: Time for a Multi-Party System

[Sam_Stone]

@gonzomax

Actually he did deregulate the economy and eviscerate labor protections. That was part of who the repubs are. The gay marriage, anti-abortion and other things are not on their platform. Those are just to gather voters. That is the bait and switch they use to compete with the dems.

Could you be specific? Exactly which labor regulations did he eviscerate? How did he deregulate the economy? If you could point to actual bill numbers, that would help.

[Sam_Stone]

@joebuck20

True, opposing a government-run overhaul of the healthcare system, in and of itself, does not constitute extremism. It’s simply the way many on right insist on opposing said-overhaul that wreaks of extremism - comparing health reform to the final solution, calling Obama a Nazi and/or communist, screaming at their represenatives, crying about how the government needs “to keep their hands off my Medicare.” I could go on and on.

So it’s just the heat of the rhetoric that bothers you? If so, then the Democrats are the most extremist party America has every seen, because for the last 8 years they’ve been using rhetoric far more extreme than anything I’ve heard from the Republicans.

[elucidator]

I’ve run this statement through my Radio Shack Ironometer three times, even checked the calibration, and there’s no getting around it: he’s not kidding.

Wow.

[mswas]

@Alessan

So what legislative changes do you propose? Proportional representation?

What good is winning if the party you helped win doesn’t represent you?

[BrainGlutton]

@mswas

What good is winning if the party you helped win doesn’t represent you?

Politics is the art of the possible, half a loaf is better than none, the perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. Put another way: What makes you think a party that really did represent you could win?

[gonzomax]

@Sam_Stone

Could you be specific? Exactly which labor regulations did he eviscerate? How did he deregulate the economy? If you could point to actual bill numbers, that would help.

It is not just done through bills like the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act” which Gramm and some Repubs buried in a last minute appropriation bill 2 weeks before Clinton was gone. But it is done by putting people in charge who deliberately did not do their jobs. OSHA was killed by not doing any regulation. Media was allowed to consolidate by stacking the FCC board and putting Powell in charge. He green lit anything big media wanted.

[mswas]

@BrainGlutton

Politics is the art of the possible, half a loaf is better than none, the perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. Put another way: What makes you think a party that really did represent you could win?

Yeah, I can’t wait until the ‘compromise’ comes out for healthcare where the big insurance companies are subsidized by government funds. That’ll be a fabulous half a loaf to swallow. Kind of like the compromise where public funds were used to create a duopoly that controlled American banking but allowing Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to borrow Federal funds to buy out the insolvent banks. Yeah, good times, good times, glad I’m being ‘represented’.

If the party doesn’t represent me, why should I have any allegiance to it? What is the value of winning if you don’t believe in the agenda of the party?

You didn’t even address the question.

‘I really want a sandwich.’
‘Here have a distributor cap.’

It’s entirely probable that a party that did represent me couldn’t win, at least not for President, but it’s possible that it could win smaller local elections. But even if it couldn’t win that’s not an argument in favor of voting for a party that doesn’t represent me.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam_Stone

So it’s just the heat of the rhetoric that bothers you? If so, then the Democrats are the most extremist party America has every seen, because for the last 8 years they’ve been using rhetoric far more extreme than anything I’ve heard from the Republicans.

:rolleyes: sigh

“Media Push False Equivalency Between Left and Right Rage:”

Nearly every morning for eight years, my husband would go into the shower with the news blaring on the radio, and I could hear him over the rush of water grumbling, “I hate George Bush. I hate George Bush.” And, occasionally, “Won’t somebody kill George Bush?”

Don’t call the Secret Service, Newsmax: My husband was, of course, simply filled with rage that Bush had seized office with fewer votes than Al Gore, invaded a country that had never attacked us, killed thousands of our soldiers and scores of thousands of Iraqis, legalized torture, allowed comprehensive government eavesdropping, shipped jobs overseas, and encouraged Wall Street to enrich the few while impoverishing the rest. You gotta yell something sometimes, and who hasn’t?

The thing about liberals is they do this standing naked in a shower and come out merely wet and spluttering. The thing about rightwingers is they work themselves up into a similar rage, strap on a .45 loaded with dum-dums, and go to political meetings screaming that something must be done about Adolf Obama–or maybe write columns seriously suggesting a military coup “to resolve the ‘Obama problem.’”

And whenever someone points out that the rhetoric on the right could lead to actual violence (as it has, um, a time or two in American history), the Republicans either call you “shameless,” “a disgrace,” or “dangerous,” as House speaker Nancy Pelosi was when she tearfully recalled the deaths of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, or they call you “a nutjob,” as RNC chief Michael Steele tagged New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote that the vitriol out there reminds him of the days just before Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Look, I don’t want to whitewash all the left’s overheated rhetoric. Antiwar demonstrators carried signs depicting George Bush as Hitler, too (maybe a few more at European demos than at American ones, but still, it happened), and the British fictional documentary Death of a President did stage an assassination of Bush. But when it comes to dangerous rhetoric, any media-borne equivalency between conservatives and liberals is transparently ridiculous.

<snip>

Right, left, center, we all have rage and can lash out–verbally, at least–when we believe our way of life or deeply held beliefs are threatened. But by and large, lefty rage (at least the non-Euro kind) rarely goes beyond the shower curtain. We want the right to be proved wrong (as, indeed, recent political and economic events have shown them to be), in the belief that evidence and logic will help justice to prevail. They, on the other hand–and especially since a black man was elected president–are filled with an exclusionary zeal. They don’t want to prove anything about the left so much as they want it removed, defunded, delegitimized, kept off the screen. In a word, killed.

[elucidator]

@mswas

…‘I really want a sandwich.’
‘Here have a distributor cap.’…

“Grandpa? Whats a ‘distributor cap’? Is that like a hat?”

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

:rolleyes: sigh

“Media Push False Equivalency Between Left and Right Rage:”

Interesting opinion. The anecdote about her husband in the shower is what convinced me.

[appleciders]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

That is part of what I (pretty much a Democrat) fear, but maybe not in the way that you meant it.

I think this country needs vigorous, intelligent debate to set good policy. I don’t think that we are getting that type of debate right now. We are debating about death panels and the President’s birth certificate when that is all total nonsense.

I would love to see that kind of total bullshit come from some extremist party–not from the Republicans. From the Republicans I would expect intelligent differences of opinion over just how much taxation is necessary or whether the feds should pay for secondary education for qualified students.

As it is now, we don’t get around to intelligently debating things like this. We waste time with creationism and “You lie!!!”

Put all that crap into a separate, extremist party (and put the goofy anarchists in their own leftist extremist party) and let the GOP and Demos talk about the ideal size of government and corporate regulation.

But you can’t do that in less the parties are “real”-- unless they can actually have some seats in Congress so they can get on the floor and rant and rave like rabid dogs. Otherwise, they won’t join the third and fourth parties–they’ll just continue to sap the strength and dilute the positions of the Democrats and Republicans.

My feeling on the matter is that instant runoff voting might be a good tool to break the two-party stranglehold on the system. It might not show immediate effects, but as people get used to being able to cast their vote for a third (or fourth or fifth) party candidate without feeling like they’re throwing their vote away, we’ll start to see minority parties like the Greens, the Libertarians, and whichever half of the GOP fractures away gain a few seats in Congress. I see some free-market enthusiasts talking about the marketplace of ideas- it seems to me that the market in this country is a monopoly right now.

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@John_Mace

If you have 5 or 6 parties represented in Congress, then more than likely none will have a majority and so several will have to forge a coalition in order to govern. I’m not sure how that’s significantly different from what we have now. Ultimately, you need a majority vote in the House and (usually) a super-majority vote in the Senate.

I’m not sure why so many people are hell bent on looking to Washington for all the solutions. We’re just too big a country to come together on large, social issues. Better to try and get much of that done at the state level, or for some of the smaller states to forge regional coalitions if necessary. I live in CA and we’re the size of a medium to large European country, with an economy to match. We struggled (and failed) to pass health care legislation, so I don’t see how it would be easier to do so in DC.

Actually I think coalitions could be an improvement, as long as they’re not too ironclad. If the coalition gets too out of line with one parties goals they can simply switch to a more agreeable coalition. That could offer a check aganst Bush level extremism.

[BrainGlutton]

@appleciders

My feeling on the matter is that instant runoff voting might be a good tool to break the two-party stranglehold on the system.

Also consider electoral fusion.

[Sam_Stone]

It’s hard to see how coalitions will work in the U.S. In Parliamentary systems where parties generally vote as a bloc, you can put together coalitions. How exactly is that supposed to work in the U.S. system, when everyone has a free vote all the time?

[BrainGlutton]

@John_Mace

Interesting opinion. The anecdote about her husband in the shower is what convinced me.

You can’t deny that it is only the RW, lately, that has been guilty of “eliminationism.”

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Ravenman

I think the rumors of the death of the GOP are greatly exaggerated. I think the Dems have their work cut out for them in hanging onto the House next year, and my guess is the Dems will lose 3-6 seats in the Senate. No fracturing of the Republicans is needed for this to happen.

Personally, although I am more-or-less a Democrat, I don’t want it to die. I just wish it could jettison all the birthers, deathers, teabaggers, Rushers, Hannitites, Beckers and all the rest of the rocks-for-brains haters. I don’t think that will happen, but I also don’t think the GOP will cease to exist.

The proposition behind my OP is: what if all the loony fringes could have their own party (or parties) so that the GOP could move toward honest, reasoned advocacy of smaller government/lower taxes and whatever else were the fundamental planks of their platform before they were (partially voluntarily) hijacked by the hysterical theocracy-fans and the dangerous racists and xenophobes?

The GOP can’t just split unilaterally, however. As someone else pointed out upthread, they would be soundly trounced by a unified Democratic party if they were to do so. In my little dreamworld both the GOP and the Demos would (have to?) split into smaller parties that more closely represent their diverse constituencies.

The Moral Majority could have their own far-right nut-job party, the bored,white suburbanite, Starbucks window-smashing Anarchists could have their own far-left nut-job party, there could be a few more parties inside of those margins, and then the traditional core Democratic and Republican parties.

I think this could be achieved with Proportional Representation, but I’m not sure if that will ever fly in the USA. I wonder if there is any other way this might come about?

[BrainGlutton]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

The Moral Majority could have their own far-right nut-job party, the bored,white suburbanite, Starbucks window-smashing Anarchists could have their own far-left nut-job party, there could be a few more parties inside of those margins, and then the traditional core Democratic and Republican parties.

I think it would look more like this.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Fiveyearlurker

There are a lot of people (I’m thinking economically conservative and socially liberal) that aren’t well represented by either party right now. But, they have a better chance by working within the two party system and trying to alter the existing parties than they do of actually forming a third competitive party.

True, they probably have a better chance trying to alter their own extant party, but how far can they move a party that represents such wide-ranging factions?

For example, it would not really be fair to European Center-Left style Democrats (i.e. more liberal that than most U.S. Demos, but not extremist) if economically conservative Democrats managed to move the entire Democratic party so far to the right that they might as well be Republicans. Same thing if the mirror-image swing were to happen to the GOP.

But it seems that it already has happened to the GOP, while the Demos seek to avoid such an extremist hijacking by staying centrist and milquetoast. Both of these things are unsatisfactory. Everybody loses except the far-right.

A viable third party made-up of centrists–most likely socially-liberal, fiscally conservative folks–would be great. But to get there we would probably have to abandon our staunch two-party ways.

1. That won’t be easy to do.

2. If we do ever manage to break through the RepubliCrat stranglehold maybe we should do it “whole-hog” and really open it up with 4,5,6 or more parties.

[hobscrk777]

Some interesting news pieces supporting the premise that Republicans increasingly have no tolerance for moderates within their party:

Sen Snowe faces retribution from fellow Republicans after her healthcare vote yesterday.

Republicans advocate “flushing” Lindsey Graham (R-SC) out of the GOP because of his moderate votes on Sotomayor’s confirmation and energy legislation.

[RTFirefly]

@Sam_Stone

Opposing a radical government overhaul of the entire health care system does not make you an extremist, you know.

Please describe the radical changes that the American health care system would undergo under the House bill, or the HELP bill, or the Finance Committee bill.

Neither does opposing the spending of almost 1 trillion dollars on liberal pet projects under the guise of an economic ‘stimulus’.

Please identify that “almost 1 trillion dollars on liberal pet projects” in a $800B stimulus bill, of which about 1/3 was tax cuts to try to please the GOP.

Sam, you used to be conservative, but still a voice of reason. Here, you’re simply spouting right-wing cant. You fail to recognize extremism as its words are coming off your keyboard.