Another party to cater to the "religious right." It's the alliance with them that continually pushes the GOP into "culture wars" that a younger generation of voters finds distasteful.
Long term, you couldn't. The system in America is set up to where there can only be 2 successful parties in the long term.
That's one of the reasons I would advocate for changing the first past the post system. This would be my alternative for the federal level... One issue that I see is a problem with apportionment, specifically that our elected officials represent too many people. A related topic is the lack of representation given to smaller parties than the Democrats and Republicans. According to the academic literature, small parties tend to be discounted when a country uses "first past the post" (majority vote of a single member district) election rules. One fairly simple change could serve to bring apportionment to levels enjoyed by other countries as well as to bring smaller parties into Congress and thus into the national conversation and legislative decision making process. Legislative scholars use a general rule of thumb that the number of representatives should be roughly equivalent to the cube root of the population being represented. With the population of the United States at over 320 million, this rule would result in about 684 members of Congress, compared to the 535 we have today (435 House members and 100 Senators). I would add 150 House members, but elect them as the representatives of parties, rather than of particular districts. The way it would work is much the same way as legislative elections do in Germany. In addition to the representative for their district, voters would vote for a party. The parties would provide lists of people to serve as party representatives, who would then be apportioned according to the national vote such that the House of Representatives would contain roughly equivalent proportions of each party reaching a floor level of support (Germany and New Zealand set this level at 5%). In this type of system, smaller parties end up with a voice in the legislature that they are not afforded today. Many in this country seem to feel as if their voices are not represented by Democrats and Republicans. Those who support the TEA Party, Libertarian Party, or Green Party find their issues ignored by the major parties and may feel forced to vote for people who don't represent their interests. Electing people to represent party interests will help to bring those parties' interests into the national conversation and could force the major parties to build coalitions with others.
It has nothing to do with America. It has to do with (human) nature. If you look into history, nothing dominates forever. Whatever is in power, generally speaking, eventually gets eroded away. When it comes to the discussion at hand, I find it ridiculous when people state we need third party system or "the republican party" is dead. There will always be two parties. One might erode away and another rise in its place, but the same demons will always be there.
I'd just point out that Bush and Paul have a combined something like 6% of the GOP Primary vote. Neither of them are standard-bearers for any significant number of people. You would need additional parties to represent the Conservative Conservative Party (Cruz) and Crazy People Party (Trump). The War Monger Party might overlap with some of these, but it's also a bit distinct there.
Well, I didn't say the republican party is dead. Of course, it will die someday and be replaced by another party in a new two-party dynamic. But, having only 2 power brokers really isn't a human thing. Parliamentary systems do a good job of supporting multiple parties. One of the two biggest parties tend to have an opportunity to form a coalition government, but smaller parties have more power than they do in the US by being able to ally themselves however is most advantageous. That makes them viable parties and you can arrange something like the 4 party system Haymitch envisioned. In the US, 2 of those parties would either shrink into oblivion or merge with whoever is most similar.
Yeah, I was just trying to split big gov't conservatives from small gov't conservatives, but that's probably not the way to most equitable way to divide up the conservative voting base.
the Euro system with multiple parties, coalitions, back room dealings and convoluted weighted voting is really no better in my opinion.
Thank you. The parliamentary messes that exist in some European countries and Israel make me appreciate the two party system we have despite it's flaws.
Agreed - watching countries like Greece and Israel regularly have to dissolve their governments and hold early elections doesn't seem like a particularly effective alternative to what we have.
I wouldn't want to see votes of no confidence every single month from a certain block of congressmen.
Yeah but parliamentary systems work just fine in other countries. The UK still largely follows an orderly three party system (with the Scottish recently revolting and voting in the SNP as a 4th party) But again, the Conservatives have a majority government and the UK has only had two instances of a non-majority since WWII. Canada has a parliamentary system that's a 3 party system (sometimes 4 if Quebec votes in the Bloc) and again, they're pretty stable as well. The same can be said for Australia as well. Our system guarantees "stability" but honestly how can you find the current system stable? Our government functions as reliably as bad European coalition governments right now. We're lucky to pass short term budget extensions right now. Plus there are ways around dilemmas like Israel's never ending coalition. Italy instituted bonus seats for the party with the largest vote and killed off their coalition problems. Other countries have higher minimum voting percentages to limit the number of parties. But really if we just get money out of politics, this will fix itself. But too bad that isn't happening any time soon.
As I suspected, the Quinnipiac poll from yesterday was an outlier. Trump maintains a huge lead according to this CNN poll taken Dec 17-21. Assuming he doesn't flame out, Cruz will eventually pass Trump nationally. Just a matter of time. Trump 39% Cruz 18% Carson 10% Rubio 10% Christie 5% Paul 4% Bush 3% Rand Paul's numbers actually increased from 1% to 4%, which means nothing since he has no chance at all. Wouldn't be surprised if he pulled out before Iowa. Why wait?
I think Paul is in for a while. He made the Kentucky GOP changes the rules for him and run a caucus instead of their normal primary (so he wouldn't have to drop his Senate seat), so he probably owes it to them to at least stay in the race for that. Also, if by some miracle, the GOP establishment is able to kill Trump and Cruz' candidacy, he becomes the default most outsider-y candidate left. Since none of this is issue based, there's a chance those votes would filter to him over Bush/Rubio/Christie.
It's nuts that Trump has pulled the Overton Window so far over, Cruz looks reasonable. Maybe the tea partiers should thank him for making them look mainstreamable.
Being that he's the best candidate the Republicans have this time around, it's best that he last as long as possible. Garbage candidates like Bush and Christie should drop out though. They have nothing positive to bring to the table.....it would be good if Trump and Carson would drop out too, but since they somehow have decent poll numbers I get why they are staying in.
