Posted on 03/06/2013 11:42:06 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has formed a super PAC to help pro-immigration Republicans fight back against primary challengers. “If someone has voted for immigration reform and gets a primary challenger, we’ll go after them. We’ll go after challengers,” he said.
The super PAC, called Republicans for Immigration Reform, would also consider attacking immigration hard-liners who vote against reform. From The Hill:
But if anti-immigration Republicans face their own primary challenges, Gutierrez said, he’d take a hard look at spending against them as well.
“We focus primarily on ‘take the vote now and we’ll support you.’ Those who don’t take the vote who get attacked by primary challengers who would have voted for it — that’s a very interesting question,” he said. “That’s also a possibility.”
This is the latest example of Republican in-fighting over the direction of the party, which is primarily playing out as primary side-taking....
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
All a third party would get you is more Democrats in office.
Almost every other country has more than two parties.
I used to have a lot of respect for Rove. Now not so much.
No other country has an Electoral College.
“No other country has an Electoral College.”
Which has absolutely nothing to do with electing a Senator or Congressman.
Those elections are State, not Federal.
Yeah, but there is no point in electing ‘Pubbies any more.
Let us remember that the original intention was that the President of the United States was to be more of a caretaker, and that the House would be the controller of taxes and general function of the government. The Electoral College was simply a tool to ensure that big states didn’t own the Presidency in the end.
So we might as well just stew while the Democrat-Lites pick apart our country.
They approve of illegal activity. They may be Republicans but they’re not conservatives.
Paid, purpo$eful de$truction of the Republican Party.
De$truction from within.
And ju$t who do you think are the Payma$ter$??
If they can’t get a majority of Republican primary voters, how do you expect a conservative to get a majority of all the voters?
“Third party time.”
“All a third party would get you is more Democrats in office.”
Is there a difference? I honestly can’t tell the difference between the GOP leadership and the Democrats...except one is more competent.
Yes, and they are all Parliamentary systems. They are quite different. In some systems seats are apportioned based on percent of the total vote. So if the Green Party can win 15% of the vote they would get some seats in the Parliament. This frequently results in no single party having control of the chamber, and thus the 15% can be leveraged into some real power if they go into coalition with another party that has 40% of the chamber.
Our system doesn't do that. We have individual elections that are won in most cases by "first past the post". In some cases a majority is needed.
Thus for any third party to be efective they must first target and win individual districts. If say the American Freedom Party formed it would first have to figure out where it could win. It's axiomatic that it would not win in Dem districts, so essentially all you would be doing is having a civil war in GOP districts - which would result in split votes and the Dems quite likely winning a district they could never win in a two way race.
Primaries are the American systems method for ensuring that the Conservative viewpoint is represented by the GOP in elections.
Because of how our system is organized we will always tend towards two parties.
Sorry, not all other countries use the parliamentary system.
Almost half the countries on Earth use another form of government:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_system_of_government
The chart, unfortunately doesn't really explain about the type of Republic, it's focused on the executive.
I will be more specific. Most of the other advanced Democracies are parlimentary, and in particular the ones that are famous for having 3 or more parties. Here are some expamples:
Canada
Israel
Japan
Great Britain
France
Germany
Italy
Those are the countries I am most familiar with. I'm not saying that they all have the exact same rules, but none of them are much like ours, and they are comparitively much more like each other.
In Canada only the House of Commons is elected. Senators are appointed. The House elects by district (called ridings).
So there House is a lot like our House in terms of the mechanics of elections (single individual per district is elected, first past the post race), but because it is a parliamentary system the Prime Minister is chosen by the House, and a majority (not a plurality) of MP's is needed to elect him, so third parties can get real clout.
If a bunch of Western States elected Freedom Party candidates it would have no impact on who was POTUS, but I guess it could make the organization of the house interesting. The Speaker could be a coalition candidate. Canada does have more than two parties in Parliament
In Germany any party that gets 5% nationwide gets some seats in Parliament, even if they don't win a district. Here is the Wikipedia entry on it
Bundestag The Reichstag building, seat of the Bundestag The Bundestag (Federal Diet) is elected for a four year term and consists of 598 or more members elected by a means of mixed member proportional representation, which Germans call "personalised proportional representation." 299 members represent single-seat constituencies and are elected by a First Past the Post electoral system. Parties that obtain fewer constituency seats than their national share of the vote are allotted seats from party lists to make up the difference. In contrast, parties that obtain more constituency seats than their national share of the vote are allowed to keep these so-called overhang seats.
In the current parliament (elected in 2009) there are 24 overhang seats, giving the Bundestag a total of 622 members. A party must receive either five percent of the national vote or win at least three directly elected seats to be eligible for non-constituency seats in the Bundestag. This rule, often called the "five percent hurdle", was incorporated into Germany's election law to prevent political fragmentation and strong minor parties. The first Bundestag elections were held in the Federal Republic of Germany ("West Germany") on 14 August 1949.
So that was my main point. Most of the countries that have 3rd parties have pretty different electoral systems that tend to foster 3rd parties (Germany) or at least make them potentially relevant (Canada). Our system seems to favor two parties.
Those elections are State, not Federal.
The parties are organized to elect Presidents.
The Electoral College has been the driving force behind politics in this country since its founding. Everyone knew that the office of the president shaped the course of the nation just as the chief executive does in every country.
Because the Electoral College is not a purely democratic system (one man, one vote, majority rules) it has forced special interest factions that in a parliamentary system would form an independent political party to join in to tight coalitions in a single party to enable them to garner enough votes in the Electoral college to elect a president.
You can still have successful third party candidates at local levels but the higher in politics you go the harder it is to get elected from a third party because the system has evolved to limit third party access to the ballot. State laws have been written to put hurdles the way of third parties.
Every thing has been organized to force special interest to choose a side and join one or the other major parties so that the major parties will have the numbers to elect a president. The President has the power to move the party’s goals forward. The Presidency is the prize the drives the two party system.
Interesting insight. Good comment, I have to think about it for a while, but it seems correct.
Yup. Why bother anyway since they treat their base nearly as badly as the Dims do.
I've often noticed that if you remove the 'D' and the 'R' after their names you can hardly tell the difference any more. Talk about two-birds of a feather.
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