The row that has arisen between rep. and a few of their moderate members over the size of the tax cut highlights an interesting characteristic of today's rep party and to a larger extent the whole of American political culture. It seems to me that over the last year politicans on both sides simply toe the company line. I think I started with Gingrich's rep. house when the use of constanted collective force made life though for slick willy (i think it culminated when the government was forced to shot down). How easy are you with the idea of politicians refusing to debate or question their policies for fear of weakening their parties position? Personally I think things like this and the fact that politics in America has become a choice between pepsi and coke is a disturbing trend.
Moderates are becoming a thing of the past unfortunately. This nation was built on compromise, and when both parties act like petulant children, compromise can't happen. The Republican party began (as you said) to lean further to the far right during the Clinton administration. The Dems thought it was a passing trend until the rhetoric and unity of the growing far right Republicans whipped the more moderate dems in the congressional elections in 2000 and 2002. Faced with joining or fighting that trend, the Dems joined, as shown by the appointment of far left princess Nancy Pelosi into the party leadership. It's a sad time for our government.
I agree totally with this. Moderates are a dying breed these days. It's almost becoming "hey gutless, choose a side already." I hope compromise can somehow still happen with regularity.
I disagree completely. If Clinton had kept his willy in his pants, the moderate Gore would have won. I think you simply don't have a strong, principled moderate in the Dems. And you don't have a liberal Republican who is so attractive that some in the party might risk him (Powell). Because of the lack of strong moderates, the best approach for the Republicans is to talk the conservative talk. I don't think that is an irreversible trend, but mostly just acknowledgement that the individual sometimes matters in history. Just imagine if a guy like Henry Cisneros hadn't XXXXed up. The man would, at worse, be a US Senator from Texas.
iman, I think the use of computers with voting data has resulted on better gerrymandering of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. As a result the number of "safe" seats for the Democrats and Republican has increase dramatically during the past 15 years. Very few seats are competative any more. The increase in the number of non-competative seats in the U.S. House of Representatives has caused both parties to elect candidates with more extreme views then in the past. Democrates are more liberal then they uses to be and Republicans are more conservative then they use to be. I don't think this trend has occured in the Senate where cannot gerrymander districts, and there are still plenty of moderates there.
Gore didn't lose because of Clinton. Gore lost (barely), because he chose to go all or nothing. There are 3 approaches to running a campaign: 1: The big state plan- Win the juicy states with the big pot of electoral votes and don't worry about the little guys. 2: The small state plan- Forget about the big guys, and pile on enough of the minnows to build enough electoral votes for a win. 3: A healthy mix. Most successful politicians go this rout. They target the 3 or 4 most important big states (California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, NY) and campaign as many small states as possible. Gore (who is more of a liberal than a moderate btw), opted to go for #1, and as a result lost a vast majority of the small states (including his own home state). Bush went for # 3, and it worked. If anything, Gore put as much distance between him and Clinton as humanly possible, he just messed up his campaign strategy a bit. McCain is a moderate. Lieberman is a moderate. Powell is a moderate. These are the people who can bring discussion back to the government. With people like Bush, Frist and Pelosi in charge, we'll see nothing more than base allegations, petty arguments and childish behavior in Washington DC.
Since Wellstone is gone where are the liberal Democrats? Most Democrats in power are moderate to conservative.
Funny, come election time we all seem to bitch about having no obvious choices, the lesser of two evils. These parties are like airlines...more alike than different. The only reason we see any of this "division" talk today is not so much one party taking a stand based on fundamentals, but one party telling you, the voter, what the other party isn't doing for you. They define themselves by saying what they are not, but never saying what they are. Ironic that this is the same negative crap that we all see in November. We all say we hate it while it seems to work best.