That is our history, for sure. That is our challenge, too. The "Two Big Tents" theory is simply not working very well. What we have at the end of the day is a center-LEFT government that for all practical purposes is no different than the socialist coalition parliaments of the EU.
This is, IMNVHO, much exacerbated by the popular election of the Senate. Perhaps we can squeeze a bit more life out of the moribund two-party deal by repealing that 17th Amendment.
I'll back Cruz. But what I am not hearing are the plans for structural reforms that will reset the course toward constitutional government and redress the state/federal imbalance.
Perhaps if the RINOs had a strong Conservative Party to keep them honest, that would help. On the other side of the aisle, the Centrist Democrats would have to accept and respond to their Socialist and Marxist roots.
This is the move FDR made when running for Governor of New York State, that is bringing the Socialists and Communist Parties into the Democrats' Big Tent to defeat the Republicans. On a national level, this political move has managed to keep them on the short end of the tally ever since, with very brief interludes of sanity. IOW, The Center/LEFT coalition has been increasingly running the country toward Socialism since the 1930's..
The 17th amendment is a huge problem because it entrenches the two party system. By having Senators accountable to the people, just like Congressmen, rather than the states their interests are no different and the Congress might as well be only one house.
We’ve seen in the last 20-30 years a shift away from two big tent parties. The Democrats have, once and for all, rid themselves of blue dog conservatives. The ideological battle in the Democrat Party isn’t between conservative and liberal but between fascists, socialists and communists. The battle is entirely on the left for them. The GOP now resembles what the Democrats used to look like. Our battle is between moderate, left of center types and conservatives. Like the old Democrats, the moderate to liberals control though they have to throw bones to conservatives once in awhile. The conservative error was not uniting Republican and Democrat conservatives in one party 75 years ago.
The writing is on the wall for us conservatives already. In just 20 years the Christian evangelical movement is completely dead. The government schools are churning out a generation of ignoramuses who don’t know how to think unless they’re told what is acceptable. The schools have been bad for a century, they have gotten exponentially worse in the last generation. With the Republicans slowly pushing conservative away and with our ranks dying off, in 25 years we may not exist as a political force anymore. That’s why this election is so important. A Walker or Cruz victory could put off that death another couple decades.