Couldn’t happen to a nastier political movement:
the better evidence of how the Democratic Party could come to blows comes from California, which right now rivals China for one-party control. Never mind the three Democratic state senators all heading for the hoosegow for corruption: the bigger story is how Democratic ethnic factions are viciously turning on one another.
So it’s a race war! What a surprise (not really, considering what racists these people are).
Plus, for lagniappe, there’s their war against tech, even when it’s leftie tech.
I guess some people tip cows, others tip cars. When they’re not p00ping on them.
That’s the problem with identity politics. Some people just don’t fit in convenient little boxes, and those that do don’t always have the same interests as other people in other boxes. The trick is to give them all a common (make believe) enemy so that they believe they all have the same interests. In becoming a one party state, California removed even the threat of a political enemy. So now the people in these separate boxes are looking after their own separate interests. Human nature wins again.
It’s also the problem with funding all everyone’s wants and desires off the same common revenue stream. It turns into a zero sum game where you get more by taking away from someone else.
Perhaps you people should be pushing for term limits in the Senate. I do not think cronyism in the Senate is a specific problem of a specific party or a specific state.
I think the idea of repealing the 17th amendment would resolve the problem nicely.
Yep- because Senators beloved of the state machine should be assured of primary-free seats for life. Why, just look at how much more Arlen Specter could’ve done…
Specter was a fairly significant outlier in my opinion, but you could be right. I do believe the Senators from my own state would behave differently if they knew the state legislature could initiate a recall; certainly the whole lobbying process and the corporate campaign contribution game would be played very differently.
Specter wasn’t any kind of outlier. Consider the number of races in ’10 -14 where the RNC either withheld support or actively threw support to the Democrat when a non-RNC candidate won a primary… and then add in the fact that without the 17th the voters would’ve had no recourse to a Specter, a Castle, a Scorfezza in the first place. Then consider that, without the 17th, we’d have massive gun control (the original AWB’s passed with substantial Republican support; it wasn’t until after the Massacre of ’94 that the Republican Party came to Jesus on the issue), no-brakes immigration (remember 2006?) and god knows what else.
This-appointment of representatives instead of election- is basically how the EU is run, and I’m not seeing competence and libertarianism breaking out over there.
Yeah Jiminator I have to go with Dave P. on this one. The legislatures of states like California and Massachussetts would always choose Liawatha Warren types for the Senate.
The only recalls you’d see is if they didn’t vote straight down the Party Line.
Your right that the money game might be a little different but not much – look how the RNC establishment torpedoed any candidate they didn’t like.
This is a particular problem with a one party state, where the party in charge uses identity politics to maintain power. Once there is no real opposition, the constituent groups start to turn on each other. In California, the party in question is the Democratic one.
Remember when Howard grabbed Leonard to prevent him from breaking up the girl fight between Penny and the new actress/waitress in the building? The republicans are Leonard and there is no Howard.
Too bad we can’t figure out how to give the democrats a time out!
As a conservative/libertarian leaning person living in the SF Bay Area, I don’t get too many joys in life. However, one of my joys is based on the the fact that everyone else assumes you are a liberal lefty like themselves. It doesn’t dawn on them that someone may have different ideas than their own. Anyway, one of my guilty pleasures is stoking liberal outrage and turning it back on another group of lefties. It’s terribly easy to do with people who follow an incoherent emotion-based philosophy that changes faster than the weather.
You are a bad, bad man. And for that, I lift a glass in toast to you.
The democrat party is a coalition of special interests that when not unified by opposition to a common enemy will naturally tear each other apart.
Haven’t you noticed….the Democratics create enemies if none exist.
Dang it mpthompson, that was my favorite activity when I lived in the City, it is a pleasure I have missed since I moved to Idaho.
Keep up the good work!