Posted on 08/19/2018 9:08:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
There once was a time in American history – in fact perhaps for the bulk of it– when cross-party voting was nothing special but rather the norm. Electoral results would vary wildly as voters deviated wildly from their partisan loyalties and even the power of party on our elected representatives was far weaker.
Nowadays the mere thought of cross-party voting baffles the minds of most on either side of the aisle, as if it were an unspeakable heresy or like a Yankees fan hoping one game that the Red Sox win it.
Part of the reason for this is that the impact of party-line voting has changed as the parties have become more ideologically homogenous. In past decades you could very well vote for a truly pro-Second Amendment and pro-life Democrat or a pro-regulation and pro-welfare-state Republican. In 2018 our parties hold their cards and Overton windows much tighter, for example as we see with regular sieges and fierce purges against remaining pro-life Democrats.
Indeed, the increasing ideological lockstep of our political parties is also a reflection of how our parties have gone from big-tent coalitions, less a representation of beliefs but more of location and culture, to truly seemingly ideas-based organizations.
For example, for much of the Democratic Party’s 20thcentury history, it was based on an urban machine network that essentially supported the communities it was based in through patronage, mutual aid, and protection, particularly for the waves of immigrants that came to our shores during America’s industrial growth years.
In contrast, the Republican Party retained a high-brow core that also united with farmers, businessmen, and the intellectual elites, with its ever-shifting bases also including prohibitionists, isolationists, civil rights advocates, pro-immigration champions, and others.
All of this seems incredible to us today when we think that once upon a time it was the Democrats who were the party of those who wanted to promote, for example, God in our public life, immigration restriction, and an aggressive American foreign policy and it was Republicans who fought for secularism and trust-busting.
As for how this is all relevant to our current debates? It is a historical reminder that our two-party system is constantly evolving and changing, as the natural ‘market’ reaction of the political big tents to the underlying passions and beliefs of the electorate turn and morph.
On one hand, the ideological unity of our political parties makes them much more coherent organizing vehicles for certain worldviews and policy goals. However, I believe the negative effects are far more, due specifically to the way human nature works.
As we’ve seen in other countries, where often parties are less big-tent but more ideological, the organizations experience extraordinary instability in terms of their ability to keep power and relevance in the public square as the issues of today may become irrelevant tomorrow, leading to extensive renaming, rebranding, and reorganizing.
Furthermore, groupthink is powerful and real. When a party adopts a certain ideological stand clearly, it inherently causes the people within it to be pushed to conform to a series of tenets that in the end, few may fully agree with but with whom voicing disagreement is difficult.
This effect stifles debate and disconnects our discourse and policymaking process from actually looking rationally at the most effective laws, regulations, and norms to promote and implement, as well as reflecting what the population actually wants to see done.
We end up with a disconcerted and distorted discourse, with the worst potential results being like in the Soviet Union where the elites would battle endlessly over the tiniest, and fundamentally most irrelevant, ideological line in the treatises of their ‘great leaders and thinkers.
In the Soviet Union, this process became so twisted that entire completely imagined paradigms arose out of it, such as the pseudoscience of Lysenkoism, as the power of groupthink and towing the line took its course.
Ideology has meaning and it seems our current political climate is giving it more power. However, in the end, the world is extraordinarily complex and always changing, making a combination of fundamental values and pragmatic analysis and implementation the best in my opinion – and indeed historically what our country and its people have embraced.
The idea of Conservative Democrats or Progressive Republicans seem like oxymorons to us in our current political climate but there still may be a day when those terms go from the dustbin of history to reality once again. In the meantime, our newly empowered parties who have seemingly won their own internal battles now participate in what is fundamentally a flawed and losing for the country, war against each other.
After all, President Donald Trump smashed ideological orthodoxy to pieces when he ran and won the GOP nomination. Even the most seemingly set-in-stone things can be surprisingly brittle and hollow.
Vote for a Democrat? Sure. Except Harry Truman died a long ways back.
I have, one time, trying to get the lying Cornyn out of office.
I will never again vote for another democrat.
The last dem I voted for was Zell Miller(twice) for Governor of Georgia.
But now, until the day I die, it will be straight Republican. That’s for damn sure.
The last ones I voted for were Joe Lieberman over Lowell Weicker, and Glenn Poshard (pro-life/pro-gun) for governor of Illinois over George Ryan (lying criminal). Now we are going back nearly 20 years. I vote third party regularly when the Republican is a Bruce Rauner or Christine Todd-Whitman type.
A Vote to Raise My Taxes "ABSOLUTLY" (Pelosi as Speaker Again??). You've Got to be Kidding Me!!
Always respected POTUS Truman, then I read what he said about his GOP opponent Dewey and Republicans in general.
He could have worked for CNN or MSNBC if they existed back then.
I supported JFK against Nixon, although I was too young to vote. By 1968 I supported Nixon, and have voted Republican ever since. However, if the GOP abandons Trump, I will go Libertarian.
Voted first time in 72, never for any democrat at any level. Have voted for a few lying RINO bastards based on their campaign promises but never a democrat.
“Conservative Democrats or Progressive Republicans”
The first term can exist, the second one cannot. The problem is with the “progressive” part. It allows no room for dissenting thought or action. It balloons until it takes over the entire entity. There is no give and take or sharing of ideas and consideration of an opponant’s opinion, like the first term suggests. A progressive republican is a RINO and they are entirely in the enemy camp with only the moniker as a disguise to fool the uninformed.
Why start now?
Nope, but I’ve definitely left certain races blank on the ballot.
Marco Stinking Rubio.
Yeah but voting third party is a waste of time, as they have zero chances of getting elected. Holding your nose and voting for the R is a better solution imho.
In a country of limited government, distributed power, with limited central-government spending, and maximum local control? Yes, I might consider all parties.
In our present system of massive Fed.gov debt and spending, with top-down collectivism and enforced “social justice,” and with the American global empire in place? No way. I won’t even vote for an average Republican.
In CA we have a Primary System that puts the top two Primary Winners on the General Election Ballot.
In November of 2016 we ended up with Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez on the Ballot for Senator.
For the first time in my Life I Voted for a Democrat, Loretta Sanchez. Sanchez is dumb as a Rock but Harris is as dangerous as being hit in the Head with that same Rock.
I voted for a Democrat once - in the Democrat primary, to get rid of the much worse of the two (Cynthia McKinney). Then I voted for the Republican in the general election, even though I knew he or she wouldn’t win.
I’ve been saying for decades that I will never vote for a Democrat. I’ve been chided and berated about my position and told I should vote for the person, not the party. But that all seems to have stopped now that normal people understand what a vile evil disgusting organization the Democratic Party really is. Because, if you’re a Democrat, you’re either ignorant or you know full and well about the party you represent. Either way, I would never vote for a Democrat. I just understood what Democrats were about long before most people did. When I go to my grave it will be with a clear conscience, having never once voted for a Democrat.
The last time I voted for a Democrat was when Lyndon Johnson came to my campus and said he would not send our boys to fight in S. Vietnam if S. Vietnam wouldn’t use their own boys to defend their own country. Guess what he did after he was elected.
If I lived in Florida, I would definitely vote for Marco Rubio. I don’t know what you got against him? I like him
Not today, but when I lived in the South in the pre-Reagan 70s, it was still almost all Democrat. I was one of only two Republicans in the entire precinct, and often there would be no GOP candidate on the ballot for certain offices. In those cases, the primary served as the general election. I voted for one Democrat Congressman in particular, the late Earl Hutto, who represented the Florida panhandle district that douchebag Joe “Deliverance Banjo Boy” Scarborough later won. Hutto was a member of a now extinct political class, pro-military Southern Democrats who were patriotic and loved America.
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