basquebromance
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- Nov 26, 2015
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During a paean to now-independent congressman Justin Amash of Michigan, columnist George Will touches on, without deeply analyzing, the idea that challenges to the Republican-Democratic duopoly might be salutary for the public weal.
“Voters need not invariably settle for a sterile binary choice,” Will writes. He is not averse to “the idea of offering temperate voters a choice of something other than a choice between bossy progressivism and populist Caesarism.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c95808-bf8b-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html
Two equally attractive upstart efforts, one somewhat right of center and one somewhat left, could help the system retain basic left-right equipoise while providing fresh voices, creative policy options, and leavening tones of discourse that are lacking in today’s polarized politics.
Moreover, by giving voters more choices, the third and fourth parties could provide political way-stations for Americans appalled by the hard-left turn of today’s Democrats and the volatile, nativist proclivities of Trumpist Republicans.
the presidential elections of 1824, 1860, and 1948 all featured four serious general-election candidacies that helped the nation sort out major political crosswinds. The elections of 1912, 1968 and 1992 featured very significant third-force efforts whose results might not have been desirable, but which served as pressure-relief safety valves for tensions boiling beneath the political surface.
“Voters need not invariably settle for a sterile binary choice,” Will writes. He is not averse to “the idea of offering temperate voters a choice of something other than a choice between bossy progressivism and populist Caesarism.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...c95808-bf8b-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html
Two equally attractive upstart efforts, one somewhat right of center and one somewhat left, could help the system retain basic left-right equipoise while providing fresh voices, creative policy options, and leavening tones of discourse that are lacking in today’s polarized politics.
Moreover, by giving voters more choices, the third and fourth parties could provide political way-stations for Americans appalled by the hard-left turn of today’s Democrats and the volatile, nativist proclivities of Trumpist Republicans.
the presidential elections of 1824, 1860, and 1948 all featured four serious general-election candidacies that helped the nation sort out major political crosswinds. The elections of 1912, 1968 and 1992 featured very significant third-force efforts whose results might not have been desirable, but which served as pressure-relief safety valves for tensions boiling beneath the political surface.
