Usually it is considered a “Bad Thing[sup]tm[/sup]” to tell someone that they are demanding a litmus test for their candidates.
But thinking on this got me wondering…
A political party is usually founded by people of a like mind. People who say issues A, B and C are of central importance to promote and they are absolutely opposed to X, Y and Z. If enough people agree with this stance they join the party and together they have a better chance of seeing the issues they want promoted and the issues they hate cast down.
Democracy 101 really. Nothing new there.
So why is it if a candidate for that party says they are not really interested in B and C and kind of ok with X is it considered “bad” or a “litmus test” (or RINO/DINO in the US system) if people of that party say they don’t want that candidate representing them?
Isn’t that exactly how it is supposed to work? Aren’t people belonging to a given political party supposed to toe the party line? Is it bad to call them out when they don’t?
The idea that two parties can properly represent a polity of 300+ million people is fanciful. The establishment wants to hold onto their power, so corporate Democrats, for example, will continually chide anyone to their left as being naive children or having unreasonable purity tests. So it goes.
That said, again, why is it wrong to have a “purity test”?
I get what you are saying that 300 million people cannot be divided neatly into two political groups.
But why is it a purity test if Paul Ryan or Bernie Sanders people say, “A, B and C are important to us and if you are not on board there’s the door.”?
If enough people are on board with that isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work? Is it ok for (say) Clinton to deride the “purity test” she thinks constituents were applying to her?
You are missing the context that “litmus tests” always take place within.
So-called political “litmus tests,” are usually applied as a way to narrow the focus of a group, in order to TACTICALLY target a specific goal and go after it. The reason why a given political party will usually employ them, is to make sure that whoever amongst them is elected to office, WILL vote in line with that specific goal. “Litmus tests” are not important for MEMBERS of a political group, they are important only for CANDIDATES put forward by a political group.
This should suggest to anyone, that asking if such tests are “good” or “bad,” misses the point entirely. The only thing that is fundamentally true, is that there are natural consequences to using political “litmus tests” on your candidates, which you must accept, in order to use the tactic. Mainly, when you do set up tests like that, you logically and naturally shrink your BASE. Anyone who was a member of your group until now for reasons unrelated to your “test,” who was willing to put up with your rants about it, will now realize that they can’t vote for your “tested” candidates.
If you are convinced that enough members WILL support your “test” parameters, then the test can have a galvanizing effect, and lead members to get excited about the up coming “battle,” and therefore both vote, and push others around them to vote the same way.
The people using it generally refer to the lesser of two evils argument, or some variety of the golden mean/argument from moderation. One can imagine cases where this makes sense and cases where it doesn’t.
I mentioned the establishment because purity tests rarely go the other way. They’re used to make sure the rabble fall in line. People don’t mention the purity test for being a corporate Democrat, like being pro Wall St., pro fracking, or having a “muscular” foreign policy. Purity test rhetoric only comes into play when an outsider threatens the existing structure. This is true on the right too, as far as I can see.
You’ve got it backwards. The party is supposed to follow its members, not the reverse. It’s the members’ job to call out the party leaders and representatives when they fail to.
What happens if there’s one candidate who supports A and B but not C. Another one supports A and C but not B. And a third who supports B and C but not A. So you kick all three of them out of the party and each of them loses their election.
Then when A, B, and C come up separately for a vote, you lose on each of them by two votes. If you had supported those candidates and gotten them elected, you would have had enough votes to pass all three laws. Instead you passed none.
Litmus tests are great if you’re a liberal running in San Francisco or a conservative running in rural Oklahoma.
In a swing state, Tea Partying your candidates by holding them to rigid purity rules is a recipe for losing elections and handing power to the opposing party.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. If it wasn’t clear, the candidates in my example are not running against each other. They’re all running in different districts. Their opponents belong to a different party and they don’t support A, B, or C. With your support, the candidates I described will win their elections; without your support, they will lose.
So the question is whether you choose to support candidates who are in partial agreement with you against candidates who are not in agreement with you at all. Or do you only support candidates who are in full agreement with you. In your OP, you said you couldn’t see any reason why you would do the former. I was pointing out the possible consequences of the latter as a reason why people might do it.
A litmus test ignores the will of the party–i.e., the people voting. The people should decide by voting what is most important, rather than the party limiting their options. Or, at least, that’s the idea.
Sure, Trump wouldn’t have passed a Republican litmus test. But, the thing is, the party didn’t want those old Republican values. Over half of them wanted what Trump was offering.
Sure, it can be politically advantageous to treat Trump as someone who is hijacking the party, as that allows the violation of party loyalty. But, in actuality, over half of Republicans wanted him.
If you start saying there should be a litmus test, you are kinda saying you need to corral people. That said, they choose to stay part of the party, so they kinda consent to the corralling, so I can’t really object too hard.
I’m with John Mace on this one. Most of the time ‘Litmus Test’ is only used negatively when it’s applied to SCOTUS judges as nominating someone who has essentially pre-decided unheard cases violates the impartial spirit of the judiciary.
Litmus test your own party all you want, sometimes it has the benefit of rallying the base while other times you just piss off the moderates. Like many things political, it all comes down to your viewpoint, one man’s qualification is often another man’s litmus test.
Is there a difference between a litmus test and a deal-breaker?
If a Supreme Court nominee were to say “The Constitution is a living document, SSM is fine, corporations aren’t people, money isn’t speech, but I would overturn Roe v. Wade” is that a litmus test?
Not necessarily, no. It might not be the custom in the USA, but what the OP suggests makes complete sense. The party is created to support specific policies, and whoever don’t support them has no business joining it or staying in it. It’s still “the members” who decide (except for communist parties that followed the democratic centralism model), but the members are expected to support those policies or to be shown the door.
And the poster you were responding to didn’t mention “leaders” he said "Aren’t people belonging to a given political party supposed to toe the party line?" (not the leaders whim).
An American party (well Democrats and Republicans) is an informal gathering of people who vaguely agree on some parts of some fluctuating agenda and possibly share some very general values. And the political landscape makes sure that if you don’t side with one, you’re not going to be elected or represented. So, it makes sense that people would want the parties to defer to their current preferences, but frankly that’s a peculiar wiew of what a political party is supposed to be, and the OP opinion of what a party should be is at least equally valid.
US parties are coalitions, just like what often forms in parliamentary governments. The political structure over here simply means that these coalitions form before an election, whereas parliamentary systems form them afterwards. A “litmus test” can be analogous to a confidence vote, and perhaps deployed under similar circumstances.
Unfortunately our political system guarantees there will only be two political parties. I would be willing to bet if the FFs foresaw how this had to play out they would have done something different.
