[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What would replace the GOP? (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 3/20/2016 8:00:31 PM EDT
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There is a lot of talk regarding the GOP collapsing due to people leaving over a brokered convention What do you think the end result would be?
Besides the new party that would form I imagine the Democratic Party would experience some hardship as well. I know too many people who are Socially Conservative, Pro-Gun, Pro-Military etc but they enjoy those gibsmedats. If the newly formed party was truly for small government these people would have no place. Maybe the Dems would have to restructure? I don't know but I am curious what the GOP collapsing would really look like. |
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Before you can start talking about a new right-wing party you have to really understand the current one. The republican party is not a monolithic group, but is made up of multiple partially overlapping factions. You've got to find a way to bind all those factions together in a tightly-knit coalition that you can count on at the polls, because if you lose the support of one of those factions the jig is up.
The reason the GOP collapsed is because they lost the support of the nationalist authoritarians. The nationalist authoritarians grew significantly in strength as a reaction to the Obama regime, and the GOP failed to understand that they even existed, let alone how to earn their support. Now the factions are all squabbling amongst themselves and by the looks of it whatever emerges isn't going to have sufficient strength to defeat the democrats in November. It's not an intractable problem, but right now there are too many strong personalities sparring publicly in the scramble for delegates for there to be any realistic hope of building a new party. Too many strategists on either side would just view any olive branches as some sort of trick. Any call for unity or dialog would just be seen as a transparent tactic to get everyone to coalesce around their guy instead of the other guy. Whatever the results of this cycle, a new party will likely have to wait until after the election. |
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First of all you really ought to introduce a concept from Westminster parliamentary systems: party discipline. If some jackass congressman or senator starts fucking up large, there should be a mechanism to forcibly boot him or her from the party and primary their useless asses. Then when some corn lord starts tacking on farming subsidies to military spending bills you've got something to smack him with. Right now the best you've got is withholding committee positions, and that's not a big enough stick.
I'm going to write the rest of this with pleasing (or at least placating) a constitutional conservative in mind. Pretty easy to appeal to nationalist authoritarians. Build the wall, enforce the immigration laws on the books, deport the illegals, fine those who employ them, cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities, and pressure state governments to rein them in. Reform the military procurement process so that you can actually get useful hardware on time and under budget. Should be easier with the aforementioned party discipline mechanism: the Speaker of the House just threatens any congress critter thinking of holding up procurement unless F-87 widgets get made in his district with the boot. That way things get built in the way that's cheapest, not in the way that hands out the most pork. Evangelicals can be satisfied largely by symbolic actions. Having a president that talks and behaves like a moral person is a good start. Recent Supreme Court rulings have complicated matters on substantive actions to satisfy them however. Obergefell v. Hodges created a right to marry where none existed before, so now it's not possible to push gay marriage to the states where it actually belongs, and it opened the way to the federal government forcing churches and religious institutions to violate their own beliefs. It might not be actually happening right now, but rest assured the leftists are certainly salivating at the thought. So that's one area where actual policy could be formed to satisfy evangelicals. The risk of course is alienating libertarians in the process. Ultimately a minefield with two factions having two incompatible core belief systems, with activist judges making everything far more convoluted than necessary. Democrat-lites are going to be hard to appeal to without alienating everyone else. You've basically got to protect their beloved big-government programs without big-government taxes. So far that has meant running stupidly large deficits. Ted Cruz's social security plan seems to be a good place to start, and you may as well throw in Carson's healthcare savings account plan. But Trump isn't entirely off the mark here either, as growing the economy is going to have to be part of the solution, as is using the federal government's oligopsony power to strong-arm suppliers. With other compassionate spending programs perhaps the solution is to use the Commerce Clause as an excuse to increase the transparency and provide more complete information about the charity marketplace. Yes, charity is a marketplace and free market economic principles apply there just as much as anywhere else. When you give money to a charity you expect them to perform a service on your behalf. You're contracting out do-gooding. Since private entities competing for your dollars do a better job of just about everything than government taking your dollars by force, it's reasonable to believe that private charities can do a better job of do-gooding than the government. The trouble is, is that there's poor information about charities. They're opaque; you can't tell how much good your dollar is doing. There is an actual constitutional role for government here in regulating markets, or what I would prefer, allowing markets to regulate themselves by promoting transparency. All these charities have to file with the IRS - the federal government already has a wealth of information on them. Take that information and make it free and easy for potential donators to see. Contract Amazon or Google to make a one-stop easy to use website that allows people to search for a cause they want to support with their charitable donations, and give them a list of charities that cover that cause with rankings for efficiency with respect to overhead. Promote voluntary charitable donation while simultaneously downsizing welfare programs. Use party discipline to make sure the two don't get de-linked. Evangelicals ought to eat that up as lots of charities are religious in origin, and democrat-lites get to feel good about helping people without having to pay taxes for it. Libertarians can be satisfied by not trying to enforce morality from a top-down federal perspective, but leaving such things to the states as much as possible. Reduce federal drug laws as much as possible while allowing the states the time necessary to update their own as they see fit. Decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, but don't interfere with states that want to maintain their own laws against selling it commercially. A particularly gifted orator could also sell libertarians on the aforementioned charity website scheme Famous libertarian Penn Jillette has had a lot to say about charity as a substitute for taxation and welfare, so I think it might fly. Mostly appealing to libertarians will be about striking the right a balance between them and the evangelicals. Country club republicans are happy so long as they personally profit. The trouble is, is that they want to use government power to personally profit quickly and risk-free, usually at some other group's expense. Threaten their bottom line by cutting their pork or drying up their cheap labor and some of them will bolt. Thankfully there's a lot of overlap between factions, so some of them might stick around for ideological reasons even if their pocketbooks are hurting. Best way to placate them is to help their bottom line by pledging to lower corporate taxes and gut federal regulatory bodies that make it a pain in the arse to do business. Lots of different ways to do that, but some of these folks are bound to jump ship anyway if their personal pork project gets axed. |
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If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Quoted:
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. |
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Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. Quoted:
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. 
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. Thank you for that incisive comment. Now I have all the constructive feedback I need to refine my ideas. |
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Thank you for that incisive comment. Now I have all the constructive feedback I need to refine my ideas. Quoted:
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SNIP THE GREAT TEXT BLOB OF 2016 Thank you for that incisive comment. Now I have all the constructive feedback I need to refine my ideas. I'm guessing he means it's a dumb idea because that isn't how politics in a republic work. You may be looking for a parliamentary system. I, personally, don't give two shits what a representative from Virginia thinks. That's Virginia's problem. |
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I'm guessing he means it's a dumb idea because that isn't how politics in a republic work. You may be looking for a parliamentary system. I, personally, don't give two shits what a representative from Virginia thinks. That's Virginia's problem. Quoted:
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SNIP THE GREAT TEXT BLOB OF 2016 Thank you for that incisive comment. Now I have all the constructive feedback I need to refine my ideas. I'm guessing he means it's a dumb idea because that isn't how politics in a republic work. You may be looking for a parliamentary system. I, personally, don't give two shits what a representative from Virginia thinks. That's Virginia's problem. Without some mechanism for punishing bad actors, how do you fix the problem of representatives not doing what you tell them to? Third-party candidates are a joke. There is little or no mechanism for recall. The best you guys have been able to do so far is to have the Tea Party primary some people. That took herculean effort, and half of the replacements turned bad damned near instantly. And as to "that isn't how politics in a republic work", as far as I'm aware there is no legislation defining how political parties can extend or revoke membership. That's an internal matter to the party, and there's no reason not to use the party's brand power as a stick to keep individual dickheads from fucking over the whole party. |
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There is a lot of talk regarding the GOP collapsing due to people leaving over a brokered convention The idea that one of the major parties will "collapse" or disappear is a fantasy of those who know little or nothing of how politics actually works. Those parties have written the election laws to give themselves enormous advantages. Those parties have donor networks which most people can't imagine. Neither is going anywhere. Presidential candidates come and go. Presidents come and go. The apparatchiks and the donors remain. |
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Faction is a symptom of your problem, and so long as it exists, it will be used as a cover for corruption.
The problem we have today is that the federal government has been giving itself power not defined in the Constitution for the last 75 years. So you have a place where lawlessness and trillions of dollars meet... That means corruption. Now this isn't much of a problem, The Constitution is designed to deal with this very quickly and efficiently. It gives congress the authority to control spending and impeach anyone who works in the federal government. Congressmen, senators, presidents, judges and all non elected civil servants, anyone who swears a oath to serve. The problem we have right now is that faction, and the corruption that comes with it has pervaded every facit of government. To place blame is to admit complicity. |
| Universal sufferance + demographics are the problem. No changes to the party system are going to compensate for the fact that the shitbirds living off the public teat outnumber the producers now and will continue to vote themselves ever increasing free shit. There's really no way around that as long as the FSA's vote counts as much as those who actually contribute to society. You can restructure the political parties all you want and it will ultimately make no difference. |
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The two-party system forces people into ideological straitjackets. People might be more comfortable in a multi-party system.
For that to happen, we'd have to abolish single-member congressional districts and first-past-the-post (plurality) elections. One way to do this would be for all Representatives within a state to be elected at-large, and the seats allocated in proportion to party votes. Then, coalitions would be formed after the elections and not before the elections, as is the case now. |
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Universal sufferance + demographics are the problem. No changes to the party system are going to compensate for the fact that the shitbirds living off the public teat outnumber the producers now and will continue to vote themselves ever increasing free shit. There's really no way around that as long as the FSA's vote counts as much as those who actually contribute to society. You can restructure the political parties all you want and it will ultimately make no difference. I agree that universal suffrage without any qualification was a mistake. But there's no way to reverse it now short of disenfranchising everyone and having nothing but show votes. That's what's going to happen if you stay on the path you're on. Eventually, probably within our lifetimes, the democrats will gain unassailable control over the executive branch and will continue to expand its power to the point where the other branches are merely for show and kept around just to give the masses the impression that they have some say. It may very well be too late to change anything, but there's no way to know for sure and until there is you should at the very least try to reform the system. If it's too late then it doesn't matter what you do, but if it isn't too late then you have some chance to save the last, best hope of man on Earth before the sun sets on a thousand years of darkness. |
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Without some mechanism for punishing bad actors, how do you fix the problem of representatives not doing what you tell them to? Third-party candidates are a joke. There is little or no mechanism for recall. The best you guys have been able to do so far is to have the Tea Party primary some people. That took herculean effort, and half of the replacements turned bad damned near instantly. And as to "that isn't how politics in a republic work", as far as I'm aware there is no legislation defining how political parties can extend or revoke membership. That's an internal matter to the party, and there's no reason not to use the party's brand power as a stick to keep individual dickheads from fucking over the whole party. Quoted:
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SNIP THE GREAT TEXT BLOB OF 2016 Thank you for that incisive comment. Now I have all the constructive feedback I need to refine my ideas. I'm guessing he means it's a dumb idea because that isn't how politics in a republic work. You may be looking for a parliamentary system. I, personally, don't give two shits what a representative from Virginia thinks. That's Virginia's problem. Without some mechanism for punishing bad actors, how do you fix the problem of representatives not doing what you tell them to? Third-party candidates are a joke. There is little or no mechanism for recall. The best you guys have been able to do so far is to have the Tea Party primary some people. That took herculean effort, and half of the replacements turned bad damned near instantly. And as to "that isn't how politics in a republic work", as far as I'm aware there is no legislation defining how political parties can extend or revoke membership. That's an internal matter to the party, and there's no reason not to use the party's brand power as a stick to keep individual dickheads from fucking over the whole party. Ideally, in the system our Founders designed? Legislators dare not propose despotic shit for fear that they'll return home to a group of armed, pissed free men. Today? Fuck if I know. |
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Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. Quoted:
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. One term and your out. Back to the masses, like the original intent of government. |
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Before you can start talking about a new right-wing party you have to really understand the current one. The republican party is not a monolithic group, but is made up of multiple partially overlapping factions. You've got to find a way to bind all those factions together in a tightly-knit coalition that you can count on at the polls, because if you lose the support of one of those factions the jig is up. The reason the GOP collapsed is because they lost the support of the nationalist authoritarians. The nationalist authoritarians grew significantly in strength as a reaction to the Obama regime, and the GOP failed to understand that they even existed, let alone how to earn their support. Now the factions are all squabbling amongst themselves and by the looks of it whatever emerges isn't going to have sufficient strength to defeat the democrats in November. It's not an intractable problem, but right now there are too many strong personalities sparring publicly in the scramble for delegates for there to be any realistic hope of building a new party. Too many strategists on either side would just view any olive branches as some sort of trick. Any call for unity or dialog would just be seen as a transparent tactic to get everyone to coalesce around their guy instead of the other guy. Whatever the results of this cycle, a new party will likely have to wait until after the election. "Nationalist Authoritarian" is liberal speak for Law abiding, Constitution believing Americans. Or as Savage puts it. Americans who believe in, borders, language and culture. 
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One term and your out. Back to the masses, like the original intent of government. Quoted:
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. One term and your out. Back to the masses, like the original intent of government. Yes. And with the current medium of communication, no funded campaigns. No running for Congress either. You get elected by your neighbors and District on a nomination only term of service. Voluntold. Do your 2 years, and come home. |
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There is a lot of talk regarding the GOP collapsing due to people leaving over a brokered convention What do you think the end result would be? Besides the new party that would form I imagine the Democratic Party would experience some hardship as well. I know too many people who are Socially Conservative, Pro-Gun, Pro-Military etc but they enjoy those gibsmedats. If the newly formed party was truly for small government these people would have no place. Maybe the Dems would have to restructure? I don't know but I am curious what the GOP collapsing would really look like. The GOP is going nowhere... |
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Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. Quoted:
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Do away with parties. If I could have my way, I would ban then outright. Any organization that encourages people to hate their neighbors, fight among each other, and divide the Nation is inherently subversive to the fabric of our great Nation. Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. The issue you're repeatedly overlooking is the people in charge of the party are the problem, so I fail to see how handing them even more power is going to solve it; we're already seeing them outright considering stealing the nomination from a current front runner candidate even if he earns the necessary delegates. |
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Everyone knows the Parties are private organizations that can change their rules on a whim, right?
They are just a means to circumvent the checks and balances of government, while making government-schooled peasants think they actually have a vote in the Democratic process of our Republican form of government, while the money buys the choices for us. Look, silly peasant, you get to choose between Pepsi and Coke. Lucky! 
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cAogcHfBw-s/UKDzFPWg7pI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/mjqB2ioMxPA/s1600/536367_10151219065527976_1950713588_n.jpg We can go our own separate ways in a peaceful manner, or we can make the blood run knee deep in the streets forcing our will upon each other... We want Nevada to store our nuclear waste and blow stuff up. Except for that shithole Assvegas the rest of the state is pretty good. |
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First of all you really ought to introduce a concept from Westminster parliamentary systems: party discipline. If some jackass congressman or senator starts fucking up large, there should be a mechanism to forcibly boot him or her from the party and primary their useless asses. Then when some corn lord starts tacking on farming subsidies to military spending bills you've got something to smack him with. Right now the best you've got is withholding committee positions, and that's not a big enough stick. I'm going to write the rest of this with pleasing (or at least placating) a constitutional conservative in mind. <snip> I agree in principle with what you wrote. The devil is always in the details, and who gets to yield the stick? Who has the power to decide a party member has crossed the line? The majority or Minority leader in each house, depending on which party is in power? That would make the situation even worse than it is today, in my opinion. They (establishment) would have the means to squash anyone they disagreed with. Cruse would have been ousted for daring to stand up to Obama. |
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The best thing we could do is get Congress the fuck out of DC most of the time.
We use secure telecom shit to beam TS and higher stuff all over the world, no reason why Rep. FuckNugget and Sen. Asswipe couldn't "represent" their constituents from offices within the geographic boundaries of their voting districts. Keep the vote seekers as close to the voters as possible, as much as possible. Have Congress actually meet a few times a year, and otherwise they keep their asses at home. I would mandate 250 days per calendar year withing the confines of their elected district. A system like this would make gigantic strides in curbing corruption and special interest influencing and have our representatives much more likely to represent our will instead of colluding with other politicians, AND would have the added benefit of making a huge part our government infrastructure much safer from any sort of attack. |
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Yes. And with the current medium of communication, no funded campaigns. No running for Congress either. You get elected by your neighbors and District on a nomination only term of service. Voluntold. Do your 2 years, and come home. Quoted:
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Without parties you don't have national platforms, and without national platforms the only thing congress critters are going to agree on is that they like voting for pork for their districts and pay raises. You'd have nothing but mushy-middle national policies with bridges and highways to nowhere tacked onto everything. What you need is party discipline: some way of forcing individual representatives to actually support a published national platform that their voters know they have agreed to abide by. That way voters can know with a higher level of confidence what their representatives will actually do once elected. First step to achieving that discipline is adopting a mechanism for ejecting non-compliant representatives from the party. The party can't eject the representative from office, but by ejecting them from the party they can brand them as faithless and untrustworthy, and can greatly diminish their re-election chances, and all the benefits that come with re-election. They'd be a lame duck, just waiting to be primary'd. The problem would be ensuring you don't just trade one principle agent problem for another: there would have to be party governance that decides the platform and the criteria for ejection. One term and your out. Back to the masses, like the original intent of government. Yes. And with the current medium of communication, no funded campaigns. No running for Congress either. You get elected by your neighbors and District on a nomination only term of service. Voluntold. Do your 2 years, and come home. Neat. I've got a competitor that I'd love to send to Congress so he couldn't do his job for the next 2 years. Time to organize a campaign grassroots movement to spread the word that he'd be a great Congressman. |