Well, they almost certainly wouldn’t couch it in these terms, but: between the people who are rabid all-day bigots, and the ones who are merely fine with institutional bigotry doing its work as long as it doesn’t cause too many problems for themselves and the people they know. While the latter isn’t necessarily a moderate view in the US today, it’s a lot closer than the former, and a lot easier to couch in vague language in which both sides of the fence can hear what they want.
There’s a large middle in the US, relatively speaking. If the GOP or rump GOP has anything left in it besides racist rhetoric after they get through this convulsion, the portion that can pull some of the center to themselves is going to be one that is likely to survive, IMHO. I’ve long voted for Democrats (ok, I was a Nader voter, but in Texas). By and large the Clintons and Obama were centrist candidates, no matter how much the GOP wailed about them. It’s part of what made them very hard to beat, to be honest. W was a centrist-ish GOP candidate in the 2000 election, with a super tight outcome, more contested than any that I know of. 2004 was a different story, but still largely the same race: a nasty, close election.
So, if they split, it will probably be over that. I don’t think everyone who identifies with the party is a bigot, but it’s the major party that bigots gravitate to. They won’t couch it in those terms, they’ll call it un-American or something of that stripe, but I think the successful group will be the one that moves to the center; which should be the ones who reject Trump. Whether they can sell their Barry White impersonation remains to be seen, but I think the white nationalist crowd doesn’t reproduce enough to make Trump’s run anything more than a last gasp for the current iteration of the all-day bigot side of the GOP.
A friend of mine who’s a die-hard Republican with dubious views* came in to work one day eary in the primary season and exclaimed something to the effect of “Trump’s gonna be able to do what Ross Perot couldn’t!” to me. My immediate, and completely serious response was, “Do what, break the Republican party?” He walked off flustered after a short conversation, and I haven’t heard much on the subject since. I still stand by that being the most likely outcome.
*That I can challenge head-on and occasionally prove wrong through very blunt rhetorical means, and he hasn’t stopped being my friend. So, I haven’t stopped being his.
Wait, this may be the GOP’s master plan to retake the Presidency. I am almost serious. Look, they are the minority party, and absent a miracle, will never get the Oval Office. Unless of course, the House gets to vote in the President- one state, one vote. That’s a sure GOP victory.
The Whigs were coming apart at the seams even before 1850, with a lot of regional disputes, (slavery, banking, tariffs, support for canals and railroads, etc.). Slavery became a big enough national issue that the incipient Republicans were able to create a banner around which to rally, but most Whigs simply wandered over to join the Republicans once the party was up and running.
I’m frankly quite tired of being told how well it works everywhere else. It won’t work here - because … constitution.
Look, we all know the electoral college sucks. It seems to be an example of our founding fathers going on a 'shroom binge or something. But you aren’t going to change it by getting more parties - you have to change it and then you can have more parties.
Yes it is. The Teahadistas are already starting to lose control to moderates. I predict that will increase. The extremists will go back to being noisy meddlers and adults will take control once again. In a few years the reformed Republican Party, sans a healthy percentage of nutballs, will re-emerge as a power. In the meantime, Hillary will have had the chance to get the Supremes into serious liberal mode, and when everything gets shuffled in 2020, the Republicans lose their cushy districts.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of multiple parties, but don’t see any way around the electoral college short of amendment. Can’t see Congress or the states getting behind that, and I’m not sanguine that they’d come up with an alternative that is better. A sticky wicket indeed!
Trump certainly played on the anger of the worst and most ignorant teabaggers to poll the numbers he did. However, Trump has no affiliation with anyone, because he has no values but Trump. He does not have a thoughtfully considered core or a serious belief in anything beyond “what is good for me in the next ten minutes?”.
Well, there’s the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It probably doesn’t have the best chances of happening right now. But enough third-party-induced wackiness could bring enough states on board.
You seem to be confused about something, although I’m not too sure what. The Electoral College has to do with electing the President, proportional representation has to do with representation in Congress. I could (and in fact have) come up a system that has proportional representation but keeps the Electoral College. A Constitutional amendment is required, but that’s to get rid of Congressional Districts and apportioning representative to the states. There would need to be a minor change for the EC, but it wouldn’t need to go away.
Yes, that’s why I said there would have to be a minor modification to the EC. You wouldn’t have to throw the whole thing out though. I suspect the person I was responding to confused proportional representation with direct election of the President.
The two party system has done a lot to marginalize the Trumps of the past, and will probably beat him down in the end. Trump can call up enough votes that he’d be a perennial contender in a system that favored multiple parties. Do we really think Trump, Kasich, Clinton, Sanders and Johnson is a slate of options that will produce a final better result. Oh, sure, there’s someone in there that will appeal to any individual voter, but will the final result make more people happy, or less?
But it’d be less than perfect. Let’s say you require a party to get 5% of the congressional vote to get any seats in Congress. A party getting exactly 5% should get 22 seats in a 438 seat House. Assuming that 5% is fairly evenly spread out over the entire country, if you apportioned seats to the states and then assigned seats proportionately, that party would only get about 10 seats. If the party’s support is not evenly spread out, it’s possible it would get much fewer seats. Possibly even none at all.
Maybe.
But I think you may misunderstand the point I was trying to make and that could well be my own fault. I wasn’t suggesting a three-party system is viable and you lay out why.
I think it is clear there is a lot of unhappiness in this country with both of the major parties. At the moment the Democrats are at least paying lip service to the progressive wing of the party by saying they will adopt some of their positions. How long this can go on without concrete results remains to be seen.
The GOP is imploding partly because they have played footsie for so long with the nativists and Christian Right without actually coming through on a lot of the things those groups want. If I were a conservative hoping to save the party I would be looking for a way to remake it into a fiscally conservative party that has strong respect for individual liberty. There are plenty of traditional GOP positions that might appeal to young voters but they have to lighten up on social issues to even have a chance of attracting them. And it would likely take a couple of election cycles before they were strong enough to have a shot at the WH.
The nativist/Christian Right party I mentioned would make a lot of noise but I don’t think they could ever be much more relevant than the Greens or Libertarians are in a normal election. Maybe they could have an impact on the local level in some parts of the country but that would be about it.
