I looked up "hegemony" and found this definition: -- control or dominating influence by one person or group, especially by one political group over society or one nation over others.
RKBA, may I?
jonrick, the Republican nominee for President in 2012 was on board philosophically with everything Obama was on board with, though in a different manner. But Romney was all for Obamacare in principle. He was all for global warming environmentalist hokum, and the great need for government regulation it would entail. He was all for the same gay agenda as the left, down to the "right" to punish the Boy Scouts for refusing to embrace openly gay Scouts and Scout leaders. Romney is philosophically on board with the whole gay agenda. Abortion, gun control, judicial activism -- Romney is philosophically rooted in the same ground as Obama or any other Democrat -- that is, liberal, un-Constitutional use of government to force people to be "moral" the left's way, and honor homosexual marriage, and to go along with total government control of your health care, and the morality of forcing severe eco-friendly regulation on American food and energy production and use. Romney was for as much government there as any Democrat.
And Romney was put there by the GOP, the "Republican" brand, with their full support and blessing.
That's one small way that I would describe what I think RKBA means when he talks about the Uniparty hegemony.
There are millions of Americans who want to vote for the guy who is going to shrink government, reduce the Federal scope, go the opposite direction. What party, what candidate, offers that option?
You have written a very insightful response, which is what I hoped you would do. I see this hegemony as a system of economic rewards given to those who give economic support to a politician’s reelection campaign. It is a cycle of rewards that requires that government grows bigger and bigger. In the hands of the Left, Big Government wants to instigate hard Communism. In the hands of the Republicans, we have Big Government Marxism Light. Both parties are involved in it.
To increase the stakes of the rewards, they create legislation that drives potential campaign contributors to contribute in order to lessen the impact of the legislation on themselves. It is all a money game, with the citizen caught in the corruption of the body politics with loss of freedom.
That was a good reply Finny. I was using the dictionary definition of hegemony. I find it unfortunate that we’re stuck with what is in effect a one party system of government.
While the two factions of the uniparty spend a lot of time and resources yelling and screaming at each other, you notice that the policies of the factions just aren’t all that different. If your underlying belief is that the scope and role of government should be expanded, this isn’t going to bother you much. If you believe the opposite, then you’re pretty much shut out.
While conservative candidates had something of a good run in 2010 and 2011, I think the leadership of both factions of the uniparty are resolved to stamp out conservatism as best they can.