Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Nice job on the first shot, Andrew. My first article here should be popping up in a few seconds - you beat me to the punch.

Cheers!

Andrew:

Indeed, a very good job.

Money is the biggest obstacle to conquer in our political system. It galls me to hear politicians maintain, with a straight face no less, that they are not influenced by the money that is donated to them. Why then are people giving away so much money for nothing?

3rd parties simply dont have the money that the 2 major parties have, which means they cannot run the publicity campaigns that Dems and Reps do. seems to me any solution will encompass changing the money aspect. Not sure how to do this.

A second aspect that may be just as deadly is the incumbency of politicians. I understand the idea that term limits might infringe freedom of speech, but the bigger issue here is gerrymandering.

Districts are manipulated so tightly now that incumbents get huge advantage. Look in Texas how two districts were engineered so as to cause two Democratic incumbents to face off against each other. This was an unusual case where gerrymandering hurt an incumbent, but the principle still stands. We need to have viable districts rather than ‘rigged’ districts.

Agreed, however there is a huge conflict of interest regarding term limits. I think that limits would be a major step in the right direction, but how to get them passed in the face of 20+ year veterans is the question.

As for money, perhaps the internet will end up being prevalent enough in the majority of Americans’ lives to play a large yet relatively inexpensive role in promoting candidates outside the two party system. This is one area where I think our disgruntled energy should be focused.

joe -

could you expound on term limits infringing on freedom of speech?

There will never be a viable Third Party. Why? Because they will NEVER get Countrywide publicity. Why? Because they will never get the airtime needed to make themselves known. Why? Because Commercials ain’t free. Why? Because Media Corporations will never allow BILLIONS of dollars of revenue get away.

The only third party to ever come out was the BILLIONAIRE Ross Perot. He spent his money on 30-minute infomercials. THAT allowed him to be in the debates. The Debates were the ones that gave him legitimacy.

No Money. No Third Party.

Aldous.

So, no _television_ airtime; but we’ve seen an increase in the use of the internet for campaign purposes during this election. Is it not plausible that the connectivity offered by the internet could be put to good use politically? I’m saying we shouldn’t let ourselves be cornered by current limitations, and should seek ways of alleviating them in the future.

After the annointment of Bush in 2000, it will become increasingly difficult for anyone that doesn’t have the deep pockets of, say, a Ross Perot to gain acceptance on a large scale.
I find it hard to belive that the Framers wanted career politicians to run the country. Campaign finance reform and term limitations will be only one of the ways to fight this.
The biggest problem is that third party candidates aren’t making it to Congress where they could gain the national stage. They’re also not making inroads as Governors or in the state houses. These are the places where third party candidates must stand out if they ever want to move into the national spotlight.

Am I the only one who likes both George Bush and John Kerry, who believes they’re both good people, who believe(s) they both love our country and they just see the world differently?
-President Clinton

I would assume most voters feel this way. They vote for the person they feel can handle the job best, usually the one from the party they are registered to. If their man doesn’t win, they don’t let it bother them. After all, it’s only a four-year term. I’m guessing that most voters are centrist and try to look at issues objectively.
The people you hear from the most (usually) are the people a little more to the right or left. They do more talking since they have more of an agenda.
In this election, something different happened. Most of the noise was coming from the extremists. In fact, the MSM, 527’s, blogs, talk radio, propagandistic films, and celebrities made the candidates sound moderate by comparison. This might help explain why the race was so close. Although President Bush and Senator Kerry couldn’t stand each other, and they said some very condescending things, most of the actual hate speech was coming from their supporters.
The candidates did not like each other, and this was obvious during the first debate. They attacked each other early and often (Bush advertised against Kerry even before he was nominated). This helped magnify the differences between their two positions, at least before the real extremists came into the picture.
In reality, Kerry, liberal as he is, is far to the right of someone like Howard Dean (or Nader, for that matter), and most conservatives would describe Bush as a right-of-center moderate. Even with vastly different agendas, both were far more centrist than their supporters would have you believe. And they both had the country’s best interests at heart.
Now that the election is over, it’s only the extremists, not the entire left wing, who are whining and complaining that Kerry lost. Some of them are actually getting therapy! If Bush had lost, it would only be the right-wing extremists we’d be hearing from.
In recent history, we have never seen this kind of animosity between presidential candidates or their supporters. Hopefully in 2008, two brand new candidates will calm things down a little.
I’ll have to agree with President Clinton for once. It’s time to focus on the future, not the election.

As for the parties…
We can’t outlaw them. We can’t outlaw donations to them.
How about not registering voters to a certain party? That would at least take some of the recognition away. Parties could still have membership, but it would be more voluntary and less official. People would not be joining a party every time they registered to vote.
This would also have the benefit of making GOTV drives more issue-based, since you wouldn’t know in advance who people supported.
I’m also in favor of term-limits. I think 3 terms for the House and 2 for the Senate. Good luck getting Congress to pass the required constitutional amendment, though.
Sorry for being long winded… There was only one post when I started writing this!

AParker:

I cant expound much, but my understanding is that constitutionally, if one were to institute term limits, that could constitute a prohibition on freedom of speech or expression.

I guess it comes down to the idea that if you are unable to vote for a candidate for office simply because of a term limit, that infringes your right to free speech.

It may be more in line with saying that voting is a way of expressing speech, so to vote someone in or out is considered speech. Therefore, if you prevent someone from voting for the candidate of their choosing, due to term limits, you infringe their right to speech.

Im for term limits, even if they do infringe my speech somewhat. We have term limits for the Presidency, so that would seem to be precedent.

Perhaps someone who understands the argument about term limits and free speech better than I do can explain it all better.

A modest proposal for evening out the funding:

Political donations, instead of going directly to a corruptible campaign, could go into a kitty from which all candidates can draw. Thus, everybody gets an equal share of funding, and as a side effect, election costs trend downward because people are donating to everyone, not just their candidate.

Term Limits

First, let me state for the record that I believe term limits would not be necessary if the public at large paid attention to the decisions made by the officials they elect. I belive there are many who simply listen to the “positions” a candidate states rather than looking at the “actions” they actually take. I believe we are seeing more people look at the actions, but we still have a long way to go!

With that said …

The Framers saw term limits as unnecessary because, at that time, elected office was a part-time duty. As the years have passed, the length of time an elected official actually spends performing the duties of their elected office has increased greatly to the point that being a politician is now a career.

In the last couple of decades or so, it has become clear that an elected official spending their career at any single level of government is generally not advantageous for the public good. Thus, term limits has become a popular method for eliminating that possibility.

However, the method chosen in most cases, some number of terms within a branch, has clearly had an adverse side-effect. Many elected officials will spend their last term, or a good portion thereof, in one branch campaigning for office in another branch. This has become very evident in California where you have elected officials, for example, spending their last year in the State Assembly campaigning for a seat in the State Senate. While campaigning, elected officials are often away when important decisions are made or, even worse, they shy away from making decisions that would be considered controversial and impact their chance for being elected.

Term limits should be applied at a level of government, not a branch, the Legislature, not the House or Senate. For example, here in California, rather than 3 terms in the State Assembly and 2 terms in the State Senate (a total of 10 years), make the term 8 to 12 years in the State Legislature. An elected official could then spend their entire term in one branch of government. This method will allow an elected official to spend their time focusing on the business of the State - or City or Country - rather than campaigning for another branch within that level of government.

Why, do the third parties in America only run for the Presidency? Without the name recognition that a few terms as a Governor or Senator would bring the cause is hopeless. It seems like a tremendous waste of money and all it does is bring scorn on all third party candidates.

Money is the biggest obstacle to conquer in our political system… A second aspect that may be just as deadly is the incumbency of politicians.

Dang, jbod! You sound like a whiny liberal. And I mean that as a compliment. :)

How come every time we bring up campaign finance reform, your guys start slamming us for violating the first amendment?

And just for the record, I’m against term limits but for viable districts. This gerrymandering business is out of hand. As long as our districts are geographical (rather than, say, social or economic), they ought to be arbitrary.