Posted on 02/03/2016 11:04:01 AM PST by Kaslin
The campaigns will be eager to tell you the meaning of Ted Cruz's victory and the virtual tie between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Iowa last night, but the larger significance of this election has been clear for months: The two major parties are paper tigers.
My old boss, the late Ben Wattenberg, was a conservative Democrat who worked for decades to keep his party from drifting leftward. In the end, he failed. But he fought a valiant fight. He helped found the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which was a kind of precursor to the Democratic Leadership Council, the "New Democrat" organization that helped Bill Clinton burnish his image as a more conservative, "different kind of Democrat."
I remember asking Ben on more than one occasion why the Democratic Party would allow this or that thing to happen. He'd always respond pretty much the same way. "What Democratic Party? The Democratic Party is a dozen people with fax machines."
Ben's point was that the image of the Democratic Party as some formidable organization with legions of political henchmen and bosses capable of imposing their will on the rank-and-file was a leftover from a bygone era.
I think about my conversations with Ben a lot these days. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, who isn't even a member of the Democratic Party, is the runaway favorite of the party's liberal base. Donald Trump, an ideologically unmoored billionaire who has changed his party registration five times since 1987 and donated substantial sums to Democrats, has been the Republican front-runner since this summer.
When the leading Republican is arguably a more loyal Democrat than the Democratic sweetheart, it certainly seems silly to talk about either party as particularly powerful organizations. Does anyone quake in fear of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? How about the Republican National Committee's Reince Priebus? Ted Cruz is reviled by his fellow Republicans, and yet they haven't been able to stop his rise. Jeb Bush is a darling of the Old Guard, and yet it hasn't been able to prevent his fall.
Politics, the saying goes, is downstream of culture. Well, our culture has been losing faith in large institutions for a very long time.
In June, Gallup found that only three major institutions still captured the confidence of a majority of Americans. More than 70 percent said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military. Small business and the police garnered 64 percent and 52 percent, respectively. Organized religion, the presidency, Congress, the courts, the schools, the medical system, the media and the rest were all underwater or simply in the toilet.
It's no wonder the parties are not immune to such trends. In fact, the parties were ahead of the curve.
The primary system, which took power out of smoke-filled rooms and handed it to voters, was a self-inflicted wound from which party bosses have never recovered.
Once upon a time, earmarks and other perks encouraged partisan loyalty up and down the food chain. But party leaders stripped themselves of these prerogatives, like soldiers tearing off their stripes.
As party power has declined, the relative strength of special interests has grown. Outside groups often have more money and flexibility than the parties.
And yet, news of the parties' demise hasn't really reached the voters. The ranks of people describing themselves as independents have been swelling for decades, at least partly on the mistaken belief that breaking from the parties is a bold act of rebellion, when in reality they're kicking a dead donkey -- or elephant.
The real source of power in politics resides in personalities, not parties. It's been hard to see this until recently because the personalities of old were career politicians -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama -- hiding behind the partisan light show like the man behind the Wizard of Oz.
Whether or not Trump and Sanders go on to win the nomination, they've already played a historic role. They've exposed the parties as the weaklings they've long been.
Republicans seem disjointed - especially in this unusual campaign but democrat, once elected, march in lockstep like a battalion of North Korean killer robots.
Just look at their conduct snd voting records when Piglosi and Reid were running the House and Senate.
I can only hope that the power of political parties is declining; it certainly needs to.
As George Washington once said: “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
There is absolutely no Republican Leadership under Priebus, it’s anarchy, no direction, nobody knows what the party even stands for anymore, except for how they allow the media to define them.
I just want to know whose incriminating pictures Preibus has to have kept his job for so long.
I’ve taught my kids, never, ever, ever, ever vote for a Democrat for anything — city council, town librarian, whatever. Once elected, the party bosses will pull their strings and they’ll fall in line. They always do.
What to do, citoyens?
True.
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is a prime example.
As a US Representative from a fairly conservative upstate NY district she was not openly supportive of expanded gun control legislation.
If she had supported more gun control she would likely have been voted out of office in that district.
Then she was coronated to replace Hillary Clinton in the US Senate when Hillary became Secretary of State.
Once that happened Gillibrand immediately fell in line with the democrat party ultra-liberals. She now votes the straight leftist democrat position on gun control and other issues.
That’s the difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Democrats actually do maintain their discipline and they keep each other in line. In terms of Organizational Effectiveness they run rings around the Republicans.
I dunno. Win six coin tosses? Rubio rockets out of nowhere to near-second place? Seems like they’re doing a pretty good job to me.
Thanks for the Washington quote. I’m with you, so I’m in the same party that Washington was.
Thanks for the quote. I am going to enter it into my notebook of quotes.
Right on target!
And it is not just the political parties that has been exposed, it is the whole massive fawning commentariat that has now been exposed as hollow and meaningless.
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