One glaring example: Just because anti-immigrant rhetoric was in the GOP early on and again today does not mean it was "always" there. Woodrow Wilson alienated a lot of non-WASP's from the Democrats, and they turned to the Republicans. The Bushes today are pro-immigration Republicans. The GOP has changed repeatedly over time, and if it's meandered back into nativism, that doesn't mean it's always been there rhetorically, even if there have always been a few nativists who voted GOP for other reasons.
And your conclusion, that the grass is "never" greener on the other side is laughable. Why ever borrow reforms then? Adopting the Australian ballot? The rise of democratic systems and universal suffrage around the world? "No, needn't have bothered, underlankers says the grass is never greener." This is obvious drivel.
As for the "two-party system": In a winner-take-all system, you may really end up with multiple one-party districts in federation with each other, If the parties are balanced nationally, it's because people try to make it that way. But if parties are strongly tied to ideology or ethnicity, then they will tend not be of equal size naturally. The present USA system of winner-take-all plurality elections with ideological parties should be expected to give one-party rule in a significant number of states, as it has. Each party has partisans who assume that a similar opportunity awaits on a national level, hence the crowing about a coming majority of one or the other. But in fact, the parties are relatively evenly split nationally, and in the polls, even in one-party strongholds.
A system designed to make representation proportional (a word you failed to use, possibly because it doesn't appear in your historical worldview) would undermine the present assumption in our one-party states, that governance belongs completely to the dominant culture, no matter how many people vote for an alternative. (Note that the rise of the GOP in the South is in part a rebranding of the boll weevils and latter-day Bourbon Democrats dominant in some counties, as the old party aligned more to blacks and populist progressives. That it means a two-party split in the South does not mean those counties aren't one-party still.)
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Date: 4/11/12 20:29 (UTC)One glaring example: Just because anti-immigrant rhetoric was in the GOP early on and again today does not mean it was "always" there. Woodrow Wilson alienated a lot of non-WASP's from the Democrats, and they turned to the Republicans. The Bushes today are pro-immigration Republicans. The GOP has changed repeatedly over time, and if it's meandered back into nativism, that doesn't mean it's always been there rhetorically, even if there have always been a few nativists who voted GOP for other reasons.
And your conclusion, that the grass is "never" greener on the other side is laughable. Why ever borrow reforms then? Adopting the Australian ballot? The rise of democratic systems and universal suffrage around the world? "No, needn't have bothered, underlankers says the grass is never greener." This is obvious drivel.
As for the "two-party system":
In a winner-take-all system, you may really end up with multiple one-party districts in federation with each other, If the parties are balanced nationally, it's because people try to make it that way. But if parties are strongly tied to ideology or ethnicity, then they will tend not be of equal size naturally. The present USA system of winner-take-all plurality elections with ideological parties should be expected to give one-party rule in a significant number of states, as it has. Each party has partisans who assume that a similar opportunity awaits on a national level, hence the crowing about a coming majority of one or the other. But in fact, the parties are relatively evenly split nationally, and in the polls, even in one-party strongholds.
A system designed to make representation proportional (a word you failed to use, possibly because it doesn't appear in your historical worldview) would undermine the present assumption in our one-party states, that governance belongs completely to the dominant culture, no matter how many people vote for an alternative. (Note that the rise of the GOP in the South is in part a rebranding of the boll weevils and latter-day Bourbon Democrats dominant in some counties, as the old party aligned more to blacks and populist progressives. That it means a two-party split in the South does not mean those counties aren't one-party still.)