Rag Hand

Political Nevada is actually active and has three posts up.
(According to a mutual friend the reason for the delay wasn’t slowness of the authors writing but a technical problem that interfered with his ability to post.)

In his post “Two Party System?” the author makes it clear that he is a big fan of multiple parties, coalition governments, and governments collapsing and being forced to start over.

Currently our simple two-party government is stagnating because there is absolutley no cooperation between them. Those in power seem to feel that they can delay votes and laws until the next election when they might have a larger percentage of the total membership(house or senate) to force their will.

If they had to deal with multiple political groups, maybe they wouldn’t waste so much time, maybe they would get more work done; maybe it’s about time that we have more than our sacred two-party system?

For the most part I agree with him, and as long as the Constitution says nothing about this being a two party system, I see no reason not to go with the European model of a multi-party government.

Our current electoral system can accommodate as many parties as needed without requiring any major modifications. This change might even force this country to become a democracy instead of a republic.

However the real problem, and the real power, lies in the cost of getting elected. The major political contributors are not going to support anyone they don’t see as a winner, meaning someone who can get elected within the existing structure and can be controlled by them. Any change to the status quo will either threaten their established relationships or make it prohibitively expensive to buy politicians except on a local level.

On top of that, the constant competition would leave the politicians subject to continual scrutiny, and therefore make them accountable to the voters in real time. For this reason alone the two 800lb gorillas are never going to allow any changes to the status-quo.

If you think that either party will allow more than lip service when it comes to change, just remember all the promises the Democrats made before they were elected and how many real changes they made once they had the power.