I believe a political party is a coalition designed to obtain and exercise power. The nature of the American constitutional system virtually dictates that power be obtained and exercised through two a party system. Any deviation from this fundamental principle of American politics leaves those who deviate impotent. That was the underlying assumption of the reply to which I referred you in the other thread.
Some time ago I wrote a reply explaining my understanding of why the American political system is a two-party system and only functions as a two-party system. There is no realistic exercise of political power outside the two-party system.
Here is that reply:
Governing is about exercising power. Political parties are about appropriating that power to one's own purpose. The founding fathers created a government containing many checks and balances in an effort to frustrate human tendency to consolidate power in one tyrant or, on the other hand, to concede power to the mob. Political parties in America are designed to overcome the checks and balances put by the framers into the Constitution.
The peculiar architecture of the American federal system with its bicameral legislatures, tripartite "coequal" branches of government, staggered elections for various branches, Constitutional limitations of government power especially freedom of the press and speech, are designed to make government impotent in the absence of a general consensus. The purpose of political parties is to provide that consensus for its constituents' point of view, to provide a consensus about how power should be wielded across the various competing entities of government.
The peculiar architecture of the American federal political winner take all system with its checks and balances means that it functions properly as a two-party system. Any successful attempt to form a third political party invariably condemns the political party from which it shoots off and to which it is most closely ideologically aligned to oblivion. Since it is human nature to entertain incessant arguments over the proper application of political power, political parties in America have developed a survival mechanism, they co-opt the principle grievances of the splinter group and make the dissidents' platform their own. This has been the history of political parties in America since the beginning. When a new ideology becomes popular, one party or the other seeks to absorb it.
If the party misjudges the public mood and embraces a splinter ideology in an effort to co-opt when that ideology is too radical to be palatable to the general public, the party loses the next election because it moves out of the mainstream. If the party misjudges the other way and declines to co-opt a movement which happens to be of sufficient strength, the party loses the next election because it has fractured its base. If a party attempts to absorb views of the other party, or approaching that of the other party, it risks losing the next election by alienating its own base. If it fails to absorb views approaching the ideology of the other party, it risks losing the next election by isolating itself to its own base.
Political parties are eternally faced with the same dilemma: should the party dilute its core message to attract less ideologically motivated voters or should it confine itself to a pure message and energize its core constituents? In attempting to solve these tensions, political parties are like amoebas or yeasts, everlastingly dividing or growing.
