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.
That is somewhat inaccurate. The Republican Party was THE tariff Party until the gloBULLists took it over in the mid 20th century. I stopped reading at that pint.
He is finally coming around on trade and tariffs and starting to see it Trump’s way. It has taken a while.
I am ashamed to admit this, but my first ever vote as a dumb kid was for George McGovern in ‘72. I never repeated that mistake, though I did vote for Arlen Spectre (not a typo), which is the same thing as voting for a ‘Rat.
From 1972 to 1988, I was totally apolitical, and didn’t vote at all.
I am proud to have voted for Perot twice as a protest. Like millions of others, the excitement of the Perot phenomenon brought me out of my apathy. Perot, it turns out, was the prototype for the Trump movement.
Both major party candidates sucked in 1992. The notion that Perot put Clinton in the White House is BS spread by people who can’t accept the fact that GHWB was a bad, bad choice (and Reagan’s biggest mistake), IMHO.
I voted for W twice because Algore and Kerry are both repulsive.
I voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 primary (he was the only one left other than no-name at that point), and Palin in the general. I voted for Romney because he wasn’t Obama.
I was an early supporter of Cruz in 2016, but that support evaporated after Iowa. Though I had some misgivings about Trump early on, it became increasingly clear over time that he was the only one on the R side who had a chance to beat The Wicked Witch of Chappaqua. It is now totally obvious that he was the right man for the job at that point in history, and ‘till the day I die, I will never regret that vote.
Today, if I can’t stand the Republican, I will consider the third party alternatives, if any. I will never vote for any DemocRat.
Sure.
I would unhesitatingly vote for a Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Pro-Private Property, Pro-Free Enterprise, Pro-Death Penalty, Pro-Limited Government, Pro-Fair Tax Democrat over a liberal swamp dwelling RINO any day.
But I’m more likely to find a unicorn than I am to find that Democrat.
And everybody knows there no such thing As Unicorns.
Yes exactly, I just read about Truman’s 1948 spiel in 2000 and noted it was near identical to the garbage Al Gore was saying.
As far as I can see the democrats were always in favor of immigration and pandered for the votes of new citizens. The exception being their broad support for the Chinese exclusion act.
Swing voters traditionally are not politically intelligent and when the economy is bad they vote for the party out of power, simple as that.
Only a schizophrenic or idiot would split his ticket today. I probably have more respect for a committed commie than some slack-jawed fence sitter.
I can give you a pass on Simon since it was before the internet made it easy to look up voting records. But if you had you would have noticed that as awful Percy was (American Conservative Union lifetime rating 30% same as IL Dem Senator Dixon at the time, 50% for 1984) Simon was a hardcore leftist (ACU lifetime at the time, 6%) not to mention wanted Bob Byrd back as a Majority Leader. I remember fondly how my late grandma detested that bow-tied freak. Basically it was just like Mark Kirk vs. Suckworth except Simon could walk and wasn’t pregnant with a change of life baby.
I was a just a wee HS freshman in 1998 but I recall being glad Poshard won the rat nomination, my libtard teacher was only “reluctantly” supporting him over Ryan and I recall a young Black student parroting his mother in decrying how shocking it was that the man opposed abortion! How uncivilized!
Of course I had no idea what RINO Disaster Ryan would be or I would likely backed Poshard. Redistricting however would have given me serious pause as the Governor elected that year was gonna preside over it and the GOP taking back the State House to enable full control was a district possibility. Alas while Ryan won the rats kept the State House in both 1998 and 2000 and won redistricting by drawing a name out of a hat, there may never be a Republican legislature here again.
You make good points. I was so pissed at Percy that I naively ignored the gravity of control of the senate.
Poshard v Ryan was another low point in illannoy. We are still paying for it.
Percy would have pulled it out if not for his despicable Israel hating causing the AIPAC to pour money into the Simon campaign.
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