The American political system, thus far, was never designed for third parties. The Founding Fathers wanted a clean break from Great Britain and didn't adopted the Parliamentary System. In a very glaring Enlightenment-era case of supreme naivete, they actually believed that there was only a need for one party. Within fifteen years of the ratification of the Constitution, two now existed.
The problem with third parties is that they are usually predicated on a particular issue the other two parties don't have. What happens is that one party or the other co-opts that issue and the third party falls apart. The point of me saying all this is that it's highly unlikely that a third party will result from Specter joining the Democrats. Third parties have short shelf lives in this country anyway, and rarely last longer than one election cycle.
People like me wish we would have a Parliamentary System, because I think it allows every point of view a greater say and forces factions to form coalitions with each other so that government is fairer. But that will probably never happen in this country.
A theory being advanced on the Huffington Post about the real reason Democrats wanted Arlen Specter on their side. About eight minutes in I was convinced.
The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a “wake-up call.” His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against! For a long time, the loudest and most powerful voices in the conservative world have told us that people like Specter aren’t real Republicans – that they don’t belong in the party. Now he’s gone, and with him the last Republican leverage within any of the elected branches of government.
cabaretic said:
The American political system, thus far, was never designed for third parties. The Founding Fathers wanted a clean break from Great Britain and didn't adopted the Parliamentary System. In a very glaring Enlightenment-era case of supreme naivete, they actually believed that there was only a need for one party. Within fifteen years of the ratification of the Constitution, two now existed.
Actually the Founding Fathers didn't want any political parties to form since they viewed that the good of the party would out weigh good ideas for the nation. Washington in his farewell address specifically warned against the dangers of forming political party's, however he was too late.
cabaretic said:
The American political system, thus far, was never designed for third parties. The Founding Fathers wanted a clean break from Great Britain and didn't adopted the Parliamentary System. In a very glaring Enlightenment-era case of supreme naivete, they actually believed that there was only a need for one party. Within fifteen years of the ratification of the Constitution, two now existed.
Actually the Founding Fathers didn't want any political parties to form since they viewed that the good of the party would out weigh good ideas for the nation. Washington in his farewell address specifically warned against the dangers of forming political party's, however he was too late.
I would not shed a tear for the death of party-based politics, but I think that organizing around common ideas in order to form voting blocs is a natural occurrence in representative democracies and parliamentary governance. In other words, it's a nice idea, but if we tried to kill it, it would come back like a drug-resistant bacteria.
Homme
Los Angeles, CA
January 2009
APR 28, 2009 04:19 PM