BUCHANAN: IS THE GOP HEADED FOR THE BONEYARD?

Human Events ^ | November 09, 2012 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[who_would_fardels_bear]

There are a large number of countries that support some form of proportional representation. A particular candidate or party may not get a majority anywhere in the country, but if they garner say 10% of the votes then they are given 10% of the seats in the assembly.

There are a large number of countries that have multiple parties. Israel, Italy, Great Britain, etc.

All of these countries are perceived by conservatives in general (and Freepers in particular) as socialist wastelands that we do not want to copy.

Freepers will come up with all sorts of reasons why proportional voting or multiple parties or parliamentary systems are socialist ploys or communist conspiracies.

They will point to real examples (such as Italy) where multiple parties seems to have contributed in some ways to their relatively chaotic political system. So it will be hard to argue for a change.

There really is little hope. Most conservatives are not fully educated on what's going on in this country. They're too busy working hard to support their families. What they know is what they learned before they went off to college or into the work force. A large part of those conservatives that are educated in politics and current events are too conservative to support any real change to our current political structure. They want a strong Republican Party to fight a weak Democrat Party with nothing else mucking up the simplistic narrative of Good vs. Evil.

The few conservatives that are willing to suggest even moderately novel concepts are lambasted as socialists, commies, libertarians, etc.

I think the only thing that will really work is for all conservatives to bite the bullet, rejoin the Republican Party, and become fully active and engaged members. Contribute as much money as you can as publicly as you can. Go to all the meetings. Volunteer every chance you get and over time take back the reins from the RINOS.

But even this strategy is probably doomed to fail. If conservatives somehow retake the party, we may still lose when we put up a truly conservative candidate against a hard leftist portrayed by the media as a left-leaning moderate.

Somehow we've got to get Asians to become Republicans. I believe that over time the percentage of the population that will be Asian will become rather large. Large enough to balance a generally non-voting Hispanic population.

[teflon9]

Well, we’re headed for socialism, and were a strict two-party nation (some would say a de facto ONE party state, with the party having two wings, but I digress), and there are strict one-party states like Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam that are hard-core socialist, so I don’t think proprtionality or number of parties has much to do with that. Besides, a proportional EC would give true conservatives the luxury of voting for true conservative parties like the Constitution Party (libertarians could do their thing too). This way, if neither of the Demopublican presidential candidates gets the magic 270, the third party can act as kingmaker (e.g. GOP we’ll give you our electoral votes, provided you promise to do X). Seems like a good idea. Besides, we need new political though to break the sclerosis we’re suffering from now.