Tells me they have nothing better to report, they are trying to make a non-existent story, or election process is so fucked that two lightweights can be considered serious contenders when they have proven they aren’t ready for primetime.
Seriously, Rubio was a lightweight who said all the right things knowing full well he was a phony, and he was viewed as a Messiah. I warned my republican friends that he was only a little more experienced than Obama, and what little was known about him was that he was all talk. Well now this article is taking him serious because instead of accomplishing things he is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign. Things are really messed up. If this guy wins, or even survives the primary process a significant amount of time, it is further proof the process is broken.
If this guy wins, or even survives the primary process a significant amount of time, it is further proof the process is broken.
You may disapprove of the output generated by the process, but there is no denying that the process is operating exactly as it is designed to operate. Therefore, it’s utter insanity to believe that if we simply tweak the output (e.g. vote for someone else) then things will improve.
Tells me they have nothing better to report, they are trying to make a non-existent story, or the GOP is so fucked that two lightweights can be considered serious contenders when they have proven they >aren’t ready for primetime.
but there is no denying that the process is operating exactly as it is designed to operate.
I’ll deny that.
On what grounds?
FTR, I’m not claiming that the current process is operating per the design of the 18th century constitutional republic. It’s operating in a completely corrupted fashion, and yielding exactly what the modern stakeholders seek to achieve.
It’s operating in a completely corrupted fashion, and yielding exactly what the modern stakeholders seek to achieve.
I’m arguing it’s not really intentionally engineered by some corrupt group of stakeholders.
I argue it just kind of happens, because a) money, and b) predictability.
Modern elections require money. Lots of it. And, excepting very wealthy individuals (Perot), the distributed money-gathering mechanism of a large party will naturally out-compete individuals or small parties. It just does. This is just human nature. Competitiveness. Money is power, and large parties are efficient money collectors. You’re free to run for office. Or to start a new party. It’s just that the extreme power of the large party creates such a naturally huge barrier to entry, that most don’t get very far. That’s life. Try starting an airliner company to compete with Boeing. Same deal.
And second, parties are predictable and comfortable. It’s convenient for voters to one-stop-shop. You know basically what you’re going to get with a GOP (pro-gun, pro-“value”, pro business) candidate. You basically know what you’re going to get with a Dem (pro-union, pro-environment, pro-entitlement). It’s safe. There’s little risk - for better or worse- of an elected official going totally off the reservation. Being beholden to a party constrains behavior. For better or worse.
It’s be nice to have a 3rd or 4th option. But then you have the other two large parties who will collude to prevent that. Not because there’s like some group of individuals who consciously “won’t let that happen,” but just because that’s how competitive organizations operate. Organizations protect themselves. It’s not corruption per se (though I don’t doubt party corruption exists), just life.
To break the pattern will require concerted, coordinated effort by the “the people.” The Tea Party kind of tried, but then the GOP co-opted the Tea Party by “integrating it.” So now the largest, most powerful “Tea Party” organizations are managed by mainstream GOP names, e.g. Karl Rove, Koch Bros.
I don’t necessarily disagree with most of your assertions (excluding the first, whereby intentionally engineered is a very minor step below negligently exacerbated). While you may not believe that there is a group of evildoers plotting the razing of the American population and American political system, there is a self-sustaining class of power-seekers that know what they can obtain/achieve through liberal exercise (or abuse) of authority, and they seek to accumulate power accordingly. While their fundamental intentions may not be grossly malicious, the inevitable result of their pursuits are historically (and undeniably) so.
All of that aside, the lone point that I’m advocating is that the process (namely, the state) progresses in only one direction: greater, centralized power and the erosion of individual liberty. TheForge argued that the process is broken, and I maintain that it’s doing exactly what I’ve suggested (perpetuating a class that negligently expands the central authority). Again, you may argue that this is not the design of the process, but I further emphasize that the process only has one predictable outcome (i.e. only flows in one direction).