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 Post subject: America as a One-Party State
PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 3:47 pm 
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http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/2/kuttner-r.html

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 4:10 pm 
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I honestly think that this is just a political scam for the election. I'd take this with a grain of salt. Don't ignore it, but don't take is as the compleat truth either.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 5:00 pm 
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Chaos_Descending wrote:
I honestly think that this is just a political scam for the election. I'd take this with a grain of salt. Don't ignore it, but don't take is as the compleat truth either.


I'm going to agree with Chaos on this. I think it's just a huge rant that Deomcrats are hoping to utilize to sway American voters because the Democrats are unfairly balanced in political power.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 5:36 pm 
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America is likely going to go through a short period of being a state with one party with the vast majority of the power, and the other party being the red-headed stepchild. One guess as to which party will be in which position. However, I attribute this more to the fact that, since the 2000 election, the Democrats have been running around like chickens with their heads chopped off than to "TEH VAST REPUBLICAN CONSPIRACY!!!"

As much as I prefer the Republicans, I must admit that a one-party state is a problem in the long-term. Hopefully, getting smacked down in the '04 election will cause the Democrats to look at the far-leftward direction their party's leadership is taking, realize that it's not beneficial, and restructure to become more viable.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 7:44 pm 
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Bleh, it's stuff like this that makes me question whether I'm really a liberal. Maybe I just don't see it, but it seems like there's not so much conservative or Republican trash being thrown around.

Anyway, I only got about ten paragraphs in, then gave up. This nut repeatedly mentions the Republican conspiricy, but the "facts" he sites include things like "The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and the House, and they even have the Presidency." From there he seems to draw the conclusion that there must be a Republican conspiricy lurking somewhere.

Bleh

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:23 pm 
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Uhm, they thought the Republicans had a conspiracay, even when they DIDN'T have the presidency.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:37 pm 
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Uhh, so, is anyone, like, going to actually address some of the points in it? If it's so crazy, it should be easy to pick apart.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:51 pm 
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Lucis Spei wrote:
Bleh, it's stuff like this that makes me question whether I'm really a liberal.


Lucis, trust me. You're a liberal, not in the traditional sense but in the modern, synonymous-with-leftist sense. If you want to switch, that's great, but you'll need to do some serious rethinking on some of your previously-stated positions.

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Uhh, so, is anyone, like, going to actually address some of the points in it? If it's so crazy, it should be easy to pick apart.


Sure.

Quote:
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided


The presidential election was very tight. The mid-term congressional elections, on the other hand, were solidly Republican, with the GOP managing an unprecendented mid-term gain of seats. That's a strong mandate there.

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and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones.


And I'd like to see where he pulled this statement. Unless, of course, he pulled it from his ass, which I have no desire to see.

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As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts.

...much later...

In the aftermath of the Republican theft of Florida's electoral votes and the 2000 presidential election


OMFG TEH BUSH STOLE TEH ELECTION!!111 *sigh* This charge has been dealt with time and again. As for "complicity from Republican courts," it was Gore who first took the issue to the courts, not Bush.

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And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.


Translation: Waahhhh, "soft money" got capped, now the Republicans can do more fundraising than we can since they know how to gather "hard money" better than we do.

Etc., etc., ad nauseum.


Last edited by Kylaer on Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 8:54 pm 
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You can do it yourself, ol' boy. Shouldn't be too hard for a sharp fellow like you.

Spei wrote:
This nut repeatedly mentions the Republican conspiricy, but the "facts" he sites include things like "The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and the House, and they even have the Presidency." From there he seems to draw the conclusion that there must be a Republican conspiricy lurking somewhere.


Oh wait, if you missed that, maybe you really do need someone to explain it all to you.

-MiB

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:09 pm 
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The Man In Black wrote:
You can do it yourself, ol' boy. Shouldn't be too hard for a sharp fellow like you.

Spei wrote:
This nut repeatedly mentions the Republican conspiricy, but the "facts" he sites include things like "The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and the House, and they even have the Presidency." From there he seems to draw the conclusion that there must be a Republican conspiricy lurking somewhere.


Oh wait, if you missed that, maybe you really do need someone to explain it all to you.

-MiB



The point of the article isn't that one party controls both houses and the Presidency, it's that (according to the article, anyway) the current Republican leadership is using their power in new and unprecedented ways, muzzling the minority party through the Rules Comittee, and thanks to redistricting gerrymandering by both parties, few seats are genuinely contestable. None of these things happened in previous situations when one party controlled both Congress and the Presidency.

I have no idea how true any of this is, but the article does go deeper than "dur the gop is in THREE houses!!!!". Maybe Spei would have realized that if he had actually finished reading it. :roll:


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:11 pm 
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RMG wrote:
I have no idea how true any of this is, but the article does go deeper than "dur the gop is in THREE houses!!!!". Maybe Spei would have realized that if he had actually finished reading it. :roll:


The fact that they're still repeating "Bush stole Florida!" should give you an idea of what their baseline of "truth" is.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:33 pm 
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Kylaer wrote:
Lucis Spei wrote:
Bleh, it's stuff like this that makes me question whether I'm really a liberal.


Lucis, trust me. You're a liberal, not in the traditional sense but in the modern, synonymous-with-leftist sense. If you want to switch, that's great, but you'll need to do some serious rethinking on some of your previously-stated positions.

Quote:
Uhh, so, is anyone, like, going to actually address some of the points in it? If it's so crazy, it should be easy to pick apart.


Sure.

Quote:
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided


The presidential election was very tight. The mid-term congressional elections, on the other hand, were solidly Republican, with the GOP managing an unprecendented mid-term gain of seats. That's a strong mandate there.


http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2002/hseparty.htm
Total 2002 Democratic Votes: 33,865,154
Total 2002 Republican Votes: 37,289,707
The GOP obviously has the clear edge hear, but it's not exactly what I'd call "broad popular support". Maybe you would, I guess that "broad is a pretty fuzzy, subjective kind of idea.

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Quote:
and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones.


And I'd like to see where he pulled this statement. Unless, of course, he pulled it from his ass, which I have no desire to see.



http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=753
Quote:
Yet while Americans feel empowered and applaud individual enterprise, they increasingly see the need for a government safety net for the needy. Two-thirds (66%) say it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can't care for themselves. That represents a modest increase from recent values surveys ­ and a more significant change from 1994, when anti-government sentiments were the most pervasive over the past 16 years.

A comparable percentage (65%) believes that the government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep. That is in line with levels in previous surveys, with the exception of 1991 when 73% said they agreed with that idea.

What may be more surprising is that, in spite of the rising budget deficit, a 54% majority thinks the government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt. In 1994, as hostility toward the government reached a high point, just 41% backed more aid for the poor, even if it increased the deficit.



http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=758
Quote:
There is broad agreement among the public with regard to the value of environmental protection. More than eight-in-ten (86%) agree that there needs to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment, and about two-thirds (65%) agree that people should be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment.


http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=757

Quote:
Most Americans (57%) say they oppose changing the laws to make it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while 36% are in favor, and there have been only slight changes in public opinion on this question over the past sixteen years. While abortion is a significantly more divisive issue today than was the case in 1987, most of the partisan and religious divisions were firmly in place a decade ago, and have changed little since.


And so on. I don't have time to sort through the whole Pew Report right now, since I'm totally supposed to be drawing the Midlands right now.


Quote:

Quote:
As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts.

...much later...

In the aftermath of the Republican theft of Florida's electoral votes and the 2000 presidential election


OMFG TEH BUSH STOLE TEH ELECTION!!111 *sigh* This charge has been dealt with time and again. As for "complicity from Republican courts," it was Gore who first took the issue to the courts, not Bush.


The SCOTUS still voted along party lines, IIRC.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:57 pm 
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OMFG, THE COURTS?! POLITICAL?!

I'll be twice damned, who woulda thunk it? What next, congressional representatives passing laws along party lines?

See 9th <strike>circus</strike> circuit court of appeals for an example of just how bad it can get.

RMG wrote:
The point of the article isn't that one party controls both houses and the Presidency, it's that (according to the article, anyway) the current Republican leadership is using their power in new and unprecedented ways, muzzling the minority party through the Rules Comittee, and thanks to redistricting gerrymandering by both parties, few seats are genuinely contestable


Like a lot of political essays, this is a...half-truth. Yes, the GOP is doing that. Unfortunately...that goes on everywhere. Here is a local example I know personally; the state legislature wasn't always such a big majority democratic as it is now. The voting percentages havn't changed (some studies put it as going slightly more conservative in many areas), but the way the districts are cut up has. Areas of heavy republican voting are often cut in half and combined with nearby weaker democratic-voting areas to get the district to the point where the dems are voted in, etc etc.

So the first assertion, that the GOP is changing around seats, is probably true in several states, at least. The second, that this has never happened before, is a pile of bullshit.

Welcome to politics, please check your morality at the door.

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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 10:25 pm 
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You live in California, right? The Democratic slicing up of districts there is not only mentioned in the essay, but condemned:

Quote:
Sometimes the two parties have cut deals, redrawing district lines to make Republican House seats more Republican and Democratic ones more Democratic. In other cases, a state party with a legislative majority -- Republicans in Texas today, Democrats in California in 1981 -- will redraw district lines that create the maximum number of safe seats for their party. Both courses are profoundly undemocratic because each leaves most members with little to fear from voters and reinforces the underlying pro-incumbent bias of Congress



The essay isn't saying that the GOP is the only one rearranging seats, it's just saying that they came out on top in the Great Seat-Arranging War.

And yeah, I know that politics is totally corrupt with nary a trace of morality to be found, and I know it's always been that way, but forgive me for being young and stupid and idealistic enough to think that it doesn't have to be that way.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 10:40 pm 
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The old system of putting the other party in office to fix the fuck ups of the previous administration and make their own new ones was very successful I thought.

Seriously though it is the possibility of this sort of situation that makes me dislike the two party system. The ability of a slight (or even moderate) majority to rule for an indefinite period of time. Though it is technically very democratic, it seems to me to look more like a loophole around the original intents of democracy.


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PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2004 11:04 pm 
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Some of what he says is true. The redistricting here in Texas has all but prevented any liberal majority and quite possible anything but a predominantly conservative majority in the state senate. Basically it also fucked up a lot of things round my home area, the panhandle. Deaf Smith County (my place of birth) used to be in the same district as Amarillo (the largest city in the panhandle excluding Lubbock). It is 43 miles from Amarillo, and it it now districted in the Lubbock district, which is almost two and a half times as far away, 104 miles. This causes the primarily liberal vote coming from Deaf Smith to be tossed into the primarily conservative batch that is down south around these parts. This also puts their needs out of the picture, as no one in cotton growing Lubbock County cares about the cattle baron Deaf Smith. Now, I'm hardly liberal, but I'm not conservative either. Quite simply, some revamping needs to be done so things like this cannot happen.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 17, 2004 9:29 am 
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RMG wrote:
The essay isn't saying that the GOP is the only one rearranging seats, it's just saying that they came out on top in the Great Seat-Arranging War.


False. Depends on where you look...and no, the republicans won't have a 'stolen' majority, they'll just have a slightly larger majority while people feel like having republicans in office. See the recall, most democrats in the state senate looking as if they're gonna lose to republicans etc etc...the problem with the essay is that it doesn't address that the majority of American voters are independant, now, and thus splitting up districts like that only works so long as the independant voters still like how the GOP is doing the job. There are some districts, both in Cali and Texas, that will always be liberal dem or conservative republican (san fran comes to mind, the day they elect even a centrist republican will be long after I die) but the majority of states and the country at large are not that way.

-MiB

RMG wrote:
And yeah, I know that politics is totally corrupt with nary a trace of morality to be found, and I know it's always been that way, but forgive me for being young and stupid and idealistic enough to think that it doesn't have to be that way.


Power corrupts etc etc etc, besides that I note everyone who says that doesn't want to be a politician, or when they do goes right to the status quo and is a dirty whore.

-MiB

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 2:37 pm 
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As a registered Democrat, I am ashamed of my party (As I have been since the last election). We really need to get our act together, have most of the presidental canditates drop out and put thier support behind one of them (The party of the president matters more in the long run than the personal beliefs of the president). That is the only way the democrats will beat Bush in the next election, if that is even possible.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 12:10 pm 
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RMG wrote:
The Man In Black wrote:
You can do it yourself, ol' boy. Shouldn't be too hard for a sharp fellow like you.

Spei wrote:
This nut repeatedly mentions the Republican conspiricy, but the "facts" he sites include things like "The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, and the House, and they even have the Presidency." From there he seems to draw the conclusion that there must be a Republican conspiricy lurking somewhere.


Oh wait, if you missed that, maybe you really do need someone to explain it all to you.

-MiB



The point of the article isn't that one party controls both houses and the Presidency, it's that (according to the article, anyway) the current Republican leadership is using their power in new and unprecedented ways, muzzling the minority party through the Rules Comittee, and thanks to redistricting gerrymandering by both parties, few seats are genuinely contestable. None of these things happened in previous situations when one party controlled both Congress and the Presidency.

I have no idea how true any of this is, but the article does go deeper than "dur the gop is in THREE houses!!!!". Maybe Spei would have realized that if he had actually finished reading it. :roll:


Yeah but that might be because politicians used to carry guns...


Oh and I heard a quote on MSNBC last night that made me laugh. it was to the effect that if it weren't for the twenty second ammendment Americans would elect Clinton again... I don't think anyone really wants that. I'm a democrat for the most part however Howard Dean bothers me and if he gets the nomination I'm voting for bush. However I really like some of the things Clark, Kerry, and to an extent edwards have been saying.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 12:22 pm 
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Shouldn't be too hard to find something said by Clark that you would approve of, no matter who you are. That's because Clark is a complete weathervane, he alters his position based on who he is speaking to at any particular conference.


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