The two-party system is entrenched, true, but the two parties shift like sands
in the tide. For example, in the latter decades of the 19th Century, the
Democrats were today's Republicans, and the Republicans were the good guys.
(Sorry, a little partisan bias showing.) The sands are shifting again. It
doesn't seem like it, but the current Republican Party is becoming more and
more radical, which will result in more and more marginalization. If you look
back at U.S. history, you'll see many examples of radicalization of political
parties, but the one thing that holds true for all of the examples is that they
don't last very long. Of course one of those examples led to the American Civil
War, but I don't think we've got an issue like slavery on the table this time.
The great unanswered question of the 2012 election is where are the moderate
Republicans going? There are a lot of sensible, centrist Republicans in this
country, and they have been largely silent for the past few years. What are
they doing? For whom are they going to vote?Will Olympia Snowe, who quit the
Senate in disgust over partisan bickering, vote for Mitt Romney? I don't like
the predict these things, but if the election results show 3-6 percentage
points margin of victory more than the closing polls showed, we may have our
answer.
--Bob
On Oct 19, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Mike Lazzari wrote:
> The two-party system will remain entrenched and we are doomed to
> repeating the 2000 fiasco until we change our voting method to a 1st
> choice-2nd choice or similar scheme. Doesn't Aus have something like
> that? Read this article from Science News from back in 2002.
--
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