I think Ireland is a rather unique circumstance, there are two squishy right-of-center parties that agree on 90% of the issues but hate each others guts and refuse to work together or form any kind of government together because they are still butt hurt over something that happening during Irish Independence or whatever, and as a result they split the conservative vote and the leftists are able to form a government.
What fieldmarshaldj is talking about is something more akin to modern day Poland, where the two "major" parties in the country (the Law and Justice Party and the Civic Platform Party) are both conservative. They agree on 80%-90% of the issues, the main difference is the Law and Justice Party is anti-EU and Civic Platform Party is pro-EU. Voters basically get to choose between having a conservative government or having an even more conservative government (the more conservative, anti-EU party is currently in power) Left-wing parties exist in Poland as an alternative (the Democratic Left Alliance is an example) but they are minor third parties that win only a handful of seats at the local level. It's a win-win scenario for us.
I agree that would be pretty refreshing if the RATS were NEVER taken over by the William Jennings Bryan wing of the party and we had a Polish-style government from the 20th century onward. Just imagine no 1913 progressive era, no FDR court-packing scheme, no Earl Warren Supreme Court, and no "Great Society". If both parties were basically conservative, I imagine disgruntled lefties in this country would have done what they did in 1924 and formed a permanent left-wing third party in the U.S. (probably named the "Progressive Party) to oppose the Republicans and the Democrats in every election, but they wouldn't able to do much harm if they were like the Liberal Democrats in the UK and didn't have the ability to ever get in power. Most likely they'd try to push both of the "major" parties in the U.S. to the left.
>> Though who knows BACK IN THE DAY I might have been in favor of tariffs. Back in the day businessmen supported protectionism.When thing I don't get is Bourbon foreign policy, how'd the dems go from manifest destiny to non-interventionist? That was a true "switch". <<
The RATs are "non-interventionist" and "anti-war" on paper, but when they actually get in power in another story. Both Woodrow Wilson and FDR swore up and down that they'd keep us out of war, then got us into World War I and World War II, respectively. Bob Dole had a great line at a debate pointing out every major war of the 20th century was started by a Democrat. Even Obama continued AND EXPANDED every single Bush military effort and foreign policy initiative that he vehemently campaigned against and pledged to abolish.
On tariffs, however, that might indeed be a true example where "the two parties switched sides" from where they were in the 19th century. I've heard Pat Buchanan and others complain that back in the day, the Democrats were the ones pushing free trade and the GOP was the one promoting protectionism. Ironically in the late 19th century it was the ONLY major issue they fought over, since the whole civil war era stuff was old news and the Republicans couldn't get any more mileage out of "waving the bloody shirt" and reminding voters that the DemonRats were the party of slavery and treason. By the 1880s it was old news. That's one of the reasons I don't think both parties remaining right-of-center would have resulted in a situation like in Ireland where they squabble over something that happened a century ago.
Vote splitting per say is not much of an issue with Ireland’s proportional representation.
The leftists have never formed the Government in Ireland but Fine Gael, in the rare occasion they were in power, always had to be in coalition with Labour. Fianna Fail had to rely on the Greens last time they were in charge.
Now the first in history there is a Fine Gael minority government (not a coalition other than a few independents in the cabinet) being supported on confidence matters by Fianna Fail (they abstained in the PM vote allowing the new homo PM to win).
Irish civil war is the reason yeah, our civil war is the same reason Southern conservatives stayed in the rat party so long but at least there was the racial issue to keep them apart. In Ireland today the only difference seems to be cultural/cosmetic. FF is more populist than FG, long history of corruption. It’s like I don’t know Jeb Bush (FG) vs. Chris Christie (FF). Enough dime store analysis!
As for Poland, one dude who seemed to know what he was talking about made the Polish parties sound more like the Irish ones than 2 truly conservative parties, Civic Platform loves the EU and Law and Justice IIRC has a poor fiscal record and is otherwise worse than Civic platform which wasn’t that great itself really. That according to this guy. I’ll see later if I can find that post. Still better than the left.
In this country if the dems stayed none-socialist you would 100% have had the Progressive party. And the GOP/Dems would be forced to merge (or adopt the Aussie instant runoff) to beat them or else one party or the other would have shrunk to the point of near irrelevancy like the old UK Liberals did after being supplanted by Labour. UK was practically a two-party system again from the end of WW2 until the right wing of Labour broke off to form the Social Democrats, immediately teaming with and soon merging with the Liberals.
An aside but what happened to the UK Liberal party after classical liberal Gladstone (Cleveland) was extremely similar to what happened with the rats at the same time period. Except over there far left unions went and formed there own party and overtook the Liberals.
With so many idiots in this country I don’t see how the left could have been kept from having one of the major parties.
The Republicans were always aligned with enterprise and American industry heavily favored tariffs back in the day, farmers (exporters) opposed them. When it was clear free trade was better for a modern economy is when the Republicans became free trade.
Now only a few niche industries favor protectionism, like textiles. Some of the freepers loudest for protectionism today would have been railing against it back when it was bad for the cotton industry.
Grover C and the Bourbons were (unlike Wilson and modern rats) I believable genuinely non-interventionist, quite a change from manifest destiny I don’t know the nuances of why that occurred. Cleveland pulled Harrison’s Hawaii annexation treaty (and given what Hawaii became turns out he was right to do it! Though at time I’m sure I’d have agreed with Harrison)