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Salena, thanks for the refresher about the history and recent political fortunes of our main political parties, but the pubbies in DC are navel gazing while the rats are doing a full court press from amnesty and gun grabbing to choking the economy with environmental regulations and class warfare!

Salena has clearly been reading my discussions of political theory in Free Republic. Sure, some of the words are a tad longer than the ones I used, but it's like this ~ since you need 50%+1 vote to win, you'll end up with two very large parties made up of a broad array of factions duking it out over and over and over and over for centuries.

The math behind this is called the "single member district" ~ or, "there can be only one winner".

Even where the Democrats think they have strengths ~ the Senate for example, and big city councils, there are people now in the majority who are seething because the party leadership has cut their boy out of the allocation of seats on the council ~ so they can, of course grow and get the experience you need to end up running successfully for the Senate.

Those people may at some point shift their faction to a position that also favors Republicans if we give some of their demands a hearing.

Democrats do screw other Democrats for short term gain. Republicans do the same to Republicans. That's at the root of the shifts that give each party roughly equal voting strength.

For most of the next year I will be keeping my eye on the estimated 6 million black voters who no longer vote for the Democrats.

That faction ~ virtually all of whom are Americans ~ is waiting on an offer ~ and we will have broken the back of the NE and MId-Atlantic Democrat party!

Nice article Salena. But then there's this:

The Scottish Jurist and Historian Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler published a collection of lectures in 1801. He advanced a theory of democracy based on historical observation: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesses from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. Yes, I know there's a controversy over whether Sir Tytler even existed and, if he did, whether or not he wrote this. But that's completely beside the point.

Here's the bottom line: A democracy can exist only until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesses from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury...

We passed that point some time ago. The takers are looting the makers big time. The government does nothing but encourage this. Obviously, this cannot continue forever.

I have yet to see or hear from a strong Conservative a plan to counteract this. I feel this is a real problem. It may be impossible to solve. How can you "kill" Santa Claus and have the takers feel good about it?