Will the Tea Party Actually Ditch the GOP?

[KingOrfeo]

From The Nation:

Will the Tea Party Actually Ditch the GOP?

Bob and Barbara Dreyfuss on June 26, 2014 - 12:03 PM ET

There’s talk, all of a sudden (and not-so all of a sudden) about whether or not the Tea Party can or will break with the Republicans and set up its own, third party. Fearful of another Mitt Romney—or, heaven forfend, Jeb Bush or Chris Christie—and sullen and angry over the well-funded establishment GOP’s ability to outfox their Senate primary candidates so far in 2014, the Tea Party is (or, rather, tea parties are) being touted as having the ability to set up a national third party that represents an anti-establishment, anti-Washington agenda. Don’t believe it for a second.

There’s one strain of thought, expressed last night on MSNBC and last year by David Frum, that the departure of the Tea Party faction from the GOP would be a “blessing” for the Republicans. In Frum’s view, expressed via CNN, the exit of the Tea Partiers would free the Republicans to appeal to centrist and moderate voters (and presumably Hispanics):

Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole Republican brand. It’s a very interesting question whether a tea party bolt from the GOP might not just liberate the party to slide back to the political center—and liberate Republicans from identification with the Sarah Palins and the Ted Cruzes who have done so much harm to their hopes over the past three election cycles. … Maybe the right answer to the threat, “Shut down the government or we quit” is: “So sad you feel that way. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Yesterday, on Fox News, a sputtering, nearly incoherent Sarah Palin, reacting to the defeat of the Tea Party’s extremist standard-bearer in Mississippi—and let’s face it, if the Tea Party can’t win in ultra-reactionary, Bible-thumping Mississippi, it doesn’t have much of a future—said:

Well if Republicans are going to act like Democrats, then what’s the use in getting all gung-ho about getting more Republicans in there? We need people who understand the beauty of…. the value of…allowing free market to thrive. Otherwise our country is going to be continued to be over-regulated, driving industry away, driving jobs away. We’re going to be a bankrupt, fundamentally transformed country unless those who know what they’re doing, and aren’t going along just to get along with those in power, it being today the Democrats. That does no good. So yeah if Republicans aren’t going to stand strong on the planks in our platform then it does no good to get all enthused about them anymore.

But even Rush Limbaugh thinks it’s a dumb idea to create a third party or to abandon the GOP:

I have never advocated for a third party, and I’m not advocating for one now. It’s never been the objective, and it’s just not the way to go. They don’t win. It’s an understandable knee-jerk reaction.

Of course, Rush is right, and Sarah’s off-base, though Democrats and liberals can be forgiven for crossing their fingers and hoping that the civil war in the GOP collapses the party into splinters. For Republicans, their problem is that the activist base of the GOP virtually coincides with the Tea Party, and if that faction leaves, the Republicans will be left with a handful of well-behaved evangelicals and some flag-waving, local Chamber of Commerce types.

Senator Thad Cochran’s defeat of a right-wing kook, Chris McDaniel, in Mississippi’s primary is only that latest in a series of bitter defeats for the Tea Partiers, who’ve now placed their bets on unlikely wins in Tennessee and Kansas. And it’s only heightened the anger and resentment inside the GOP over the establishment’s blitzkrieg against the Tea Party, to the point that in Mississippi some radical-right activists are talking about the unlikely prospect of running McDaniel as a write-in candidate:

Wayne Allyn Root, a libertarian commentator and onetime third-party candidate for vice president who is aligned with the Tea Party, wrote on Twitter that if Mr. McDaniel campaigned as a write-in candidate, “I’ll be in Mississippi campaigning by my friend’s side. Take Cochran down in general election.”

McDaniel, who delivered a fiery, “non-concession” speech after the vote, may encourage such foolishness, which might help elect a Democratic senator from Mississippi for the first time in decades. “There are millions of people who feel like strangers in their own party. And there is something strange, something unusual, about a Republican primary that is decided by liberal Democrats,” he said, angrily. “So much for principle!… This is not the party of Reagan! But we’re not done fighting.”

Over at U.S. News and World Report, there’s this:

Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation echoed the former Alaska governor, saying that the tactics used by the establishment candidate proves that the “Republican In Name Only”—or RINO—wing of the party is “willing to do anything to hold on to power,” he wrote in a blog post declaring “war” against the establishment wing of the GOP. “The RINO establishment thinks they can use all kinds of underhanded tricks to win. They also think that conservatives will simply accept the results and fall in line,” he wrote. “The Republican Establishment thinks they have fought back an insurrection from conservatives and now we will meekly fall in line in November and support a RINO who needs Democrats to win? Never.”

 

[Wrong Element]

The sanest person quoted in that story is Rush Limbaugh.

That doesn't speak volumes; it speaks the entire library.

 

[tactful]

What this country needs is more then a two party system, or we'll be in this rut for decades, term limits would help, and why should these leeches make a career out of politics, when that really suck at it, Hey wait a minute.

 

[DooleyDarter]

Term Limits are the cats meow

 

[Liar]

Of course not. It's the same wing that the GOP has always had. It just so happens that we live in the age of media memes, so now they also happened to stumble upon a gag that snowballed into a brand.

 

[KingOrfeo]

What this country needs is more then a two party system, or we'll be in this rut for decades, term limits would help, and why should these leeches make a career out of politics, when that really suck at it, Hey wait a minute.

Term limits and "citizen legislators" are dumb ideas. Government is complicated, it requires careerist professionals, like you'll find running every modern democracy.

Now, if you want to change the electoral system to make it fairer and more representative of a more diverse range of opinions among the public, here's what we need:

1) Electoral fusion.

2) Instant-runoff voting or approval voting.

3) Proportional representation. This last is an extremely radical notion in an American setting, but, if you want a system with more than two viable parties, it's the only way to go. The single-member-district, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system we inherited from Britain (and a radical thing enough it was at the time) does naturally tend to squeeze out all but the two biggest parties (and turn those into multi-tendency big-tent parties with internal divisions).

Now, many fear a PR system would make gridlock even worse by letting radicals of both (or all) extremes into the legislatures. But I think it would produce a system where radicals have voices but moderates rule.

Run this thought experiment: We institute pro-multipartisan reforms, and the main two big-tent political parties respond to that pressure and break up along their natural fault lines. The left wing of the Democrats splits off and merges with the Green Party, and the Working Families Party, etc., to form one big new left-progressive party. The right wing of the GOP, the Tea Party wing, splits off and merges with the Constitution Party and the America First Party to form one big new RW-conservative party. And the remainders of the Democratic and Republican parties merge.

So, now we have a three-party system: The Lefty-Hippie Commie-Socialist Treehugging Bleeding-Heart Moonbat Party; the Bigoted Greedy Heartless Pig-Ignorant Troglodyte Right-Wingnut Party; and the Squishy-Spineless Wishy-Washy Fence-Sitting Centrist Moderate Establishment Mugwump Party. (And, these will be the official names.) And we will assume that in a given legislature (Congress, state, city council) each of these has roughly 30% of the seats (the others going to smaller parties that did not merge with others, such as the Libertarians and the Socialists). And we will assume reasonable party discipline and ideological homogeneity in all three, in the sense that most representatives in a given party's caucus will vote the same way and defend the same positions most of the time.

In this lineup . . . the Mugwumps rule. They are not a majority, but they hold the balance of power by their position. Because there is no majority party, no bill ever gets passed, no thing ever gets done, unless at least two parties support it. And the Moonbats and the Wingnuts will hardly ever agree on anything. Therefore no bill ever will pass unless the Mugwumps support it. They will be in a position to vote with the Moonbats on this issue or the Wingnuts on that issue as it pleases them, and in a position to control all compromise-negotiations from the center. (Remember, we don't have a parliamentary system, so transparty coalitions do not have to be enduring or general, but can be issue-specific.) Unlike in our present system, where the Dems and the Pubs are always fighting over the center while at the same time being pulled away from it by their far-wings, sending the balance of power wobbling back and forth like crazy, sometimes.

Sometimes, OTOH, and very rarely, the Moonbats and Wingnuts might join forces against the establishment Mugwumps, or against The Establishment in general -- but, so what? If there is anything both of those parties can agree on, it is almost certainly the right thing to do.

OTOH, and again unlike in our present system, the extremists will always have a real voice, and can't complain they're being frozen out. They can stand up and defend their ideas in their own terms on the floor and in committees and on C-SPAN -- and sometimes, not often but sometimes, they will succeed in talking the Mugwumps and/or a majority of the public around to their way of thinking, or at least into experimenting with it.

It all makes for a steady course of fully informed moderation, a much more intelligent body politic that always considers all options. A permanently broad, wide Overton Window with a definite center.

Of course, there are many other possible formations into which a post-PR party system might shake out, but they are all center-seeking for the same mechanical reasons.

Most of the world's democracies post-WWII have PR and multiparty systems, and none has yet gone communist or fascist as a result.

For more see the website of FairVote.org.

 

[jeninflorida]

only by more welfare can we fix America

 

[RobDownSouth]

What this country needs is more then a two party system, or we'll be in this rut for decades, term limits would help, and why should these leeches make a career out of politics, when that really suck at it, Hey wait a minute.

More than two parties would result in coalition governments.
Murica's winner-take-all provisions make that unlikely.

 

[cjh]

I'd like to see them split off as a viable party.

Two parties sure as hell ain't worth a shit.

 

[Liar]

Term Limits are the cats meow

Throw old bums out, throw new bums in.

They still be bums.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I'd like to see them split off as a viable party.

Two parties sure as hell ain't worth a shit.

See post #6. If they split off without systemic reforms first, both the GOP and the TP will be losers in almost all elections, because they'll split the opposition to the Dems and neither will have enough votes by itself to win anything.

 

[zipman]

Term limits and "citizen legislators" are dumb ideas. Government is complicated, it requires careerist professionals, like you'll find running every modern democracy.

Now, if you want to change the electoral system to make it fairer and more representative of a more diverse range of opinions among the public, here's what we need:

1) Electoral fusion.

2) Instant-runoff voting or approval voting.

3) Proportional representation. This last is an extremely radical notion in an American setting, but, if you want a system with more than two viable parties, it's the only way to go. The single-member-district, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system we inherited from Britain (and a radical thing enough it was at the time) does naturally tend to squeeze out all but the two biggest parties (and turn those into multi-tendency big-tent parties with internal divisions).

Now, many fear a PR system would make gridlock even worse by letting radicals of both (or all) extremes into the legislatures. But I think it would produce a system where radicals have voices but moderates rule.

Run this thought experiment: We institute pro-multipartisan reforms, and the main two big-tent political parties respond to that pressure and break up along their natural fault lines. The left wing of the Democrats splits off and merges with the Green Party, and the Working Families Party, etc., to form one big new left-progressive party. The right wing of the GOP, the Tea Party wing, splits off and merges with the Constitution Party and the America First Party to form one big new RW-conservative party. And the remainders of the Democratic and Republican parties merge.

So, now we have a three-party system: The Lefty-Hippie Commie-Socialist Treehugging Bleeding-Heart Moonbat Party; the Bigoted Greedy Heartless Pig-Ignorant Troglodyte Right-Wingnut Party; and the Squishy-Spineless Wishy-Washy Fence-Sitting Centrist Moderate Establishment Mugwump Party. (And, these will be the official names.) And we will assume that in a given legislature (Congress, state, city council) each of these has roughly 30% of the seats (the others going to smaller parties that did not merge with others, such as the Libertarians and the Socialists). And we will assume reasonable party discipline and ideological homogeneity in all three, in the sense that most representatives in a given party's caucus will vote the same way and defend the same positions most of the time.

In this lineup . . . the Mugwumps rule. They are not a majority, but they hold the balance of power by their position. Because there is no majority party, no bill ever gets passed, no thing ever gets done, unless at least two parties support it. And the Moonbats and the Wingnuts will hardly ever agree on anything. Therefore no bill ever will pass unless the Mugwumps support it. They will be in a position to vote with the Moonbats on this issue or the Wingnuts on that issue as it pleases them, and in a position to control all compromise-negotiations from the center. (Remember, we don't have a parliamentary system, so transparty coalitions do not have to be enduring or general, but can be issue-specific.) Unlike in our present system, where the Dems and the Pubs are always fighting over the center while at the same time being pulled away from it by their far-wings, sending the balance of power wobbling back and forth like crazy, sometimes.

Sometimes, OTOH, and very rarely, the Moonbats and Wingnuts might join forces against the establishment Mugwumps, or against The Establishment in general -- but, so what? If there is anything both of those parties can agree on, it is almost certainly the right thing to do.

OTOH, and again unlike in our present system, the extremists will always have a real voice, and can't complain they're being frozen out. They can stand up and defend their ideas in their own terms on the floor and in committees and on C-SPAN -- and sometimes, not often but sometimes, they will succeed in talking the Mugwumps and/or a majority of the public around to their way of thinking, or at least into experimenting with it.

It all makes for a steady course of fully informed moderation, a much more intelligent body politic that always considers all options. A permanently broad, wide Overton Window with a definite center.

Of course, there are many other possible formations into which a post-PR party system might shake out, but they are all center-seeking for the same mechanical reasons.

Most of the world's democracies post-WWII have PR and multiparty systems, and none has yet gone communist or fascist as a result.

For more see the website of FairVote.org.

I don't think term limits are dumb. I think looking at the approval ratings of congress and the % of politicians re-elected is more than enough of a justification for them.

I think calling term limits "dumb" is dumb.

 

[cjh]

See post #6. If they split off without systemic reforms first, both the GOP and the TP will be losers in almost all elections, because they'll split the opposition to the Dems and neither will have enough votes by itself to win anything.

Point taken.

That might allow the blue dog Democrats to return, though.

 

[KingOrfeo]

More than two parties would result in coalition governments.

Coalition government is something that only can happen or needs to happen in parliamentary systems. In our separation-of-powers system, multiparty coalitions would be issue-specific rather than enduring -- e.g., the Libertarians or the Greens or the Socialists would have their own separate caucus and vote with the Pubs on some bills and the Dems on others.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I don't think term limits are dumb. I think looking at the approval ratings of congress and the % of politicians re-elected is more than enough of a justification for them.

Americans generally think poorly of Congress as a whole but well of their own Congresscritters -- that's why they keep re-electing them. Hard to see how term limits would improve that picture.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Point taken.

That might allow the blue dog Democrats to return, though.

Yes, there is a downside.

 

[phrodeau]

The vice-chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party just offed himself.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...BlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

 

[cjh]

Yes, there is a downside.

Heh.

characters

 

[RobDownSouth]

The vice-chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party just offed himself.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...BlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories

That was in the other thread about the election. The guy was a family friend of cjh. Small world.

 

[Wrong Element]

I don't think term limits are dumb. I think looking at the approval ratings of congress and the % of politicians re-elected is more than enough of a justification for them.

I think calling term limits "dumb" is dumb.

I'm not really in favor of term limits, though I guess I'm not wildly opposed.

One of the things that's happened in Ohio (8 year max on both the lower house and the state senate) is that once you've won the last election you're able to win, you usually begin looking for your new job right away, often times not bothering to serve out your last term. The party then appoints your replacement, meaning that the replacement faces for the voters for the first time with all the advantages of incumbency.


The other problem with enacting term limits for the House of Representatives is that most districts are not competitive for both parties. Tell John Boehner, who represents the ultra-red Cincinnati northern suburbs, that he has to go, and he'll be replaced by someone just like him, though likely not orange.

Much more useful would be redistricting reform. The more our representatives have to pay attention to the middle, the better off we'll all be.

 

[phrodeau]

That was in the other thread about the election. The guy was a family friend of cjh. Small world.

Everyone has a close friend in politics if they want one.

 

[Wrong Element]

See post #6. If they split off without systemic reforms first, both the GOP and the TP will be losers in almost all elections, because they'll split the opposition to the Dems and neither will have enough votes by itself to win anything.

I expected the far right to run someone in 2012, on the grounds of Mitt Romney having started Obamacare and not being a conventional Christian, but it never happened. That's a good indication that there are pretty strong forces that prevent the base of a party from literally leaving that party behind.

Once the "Tea Party" ran a national election as a third party and finished a resounding third, it would put an end to its pathetic insistence that it represents "We the People," and they would crawl back home to the GOP.

It might not be the worst thing for the Republicans either. I've said many times that the GOP won't change until they get an unmistakable ass-kicking, but their base is so big that it's structurally impossible for them to ever lose by as much as Mondale and McGovern did. If the Tea Party split off, they would get that ass-kicking once and for all. Then, maybe they would become serious people again.