Just enough to make you read the rest…
America as a One-Party State
Today's hard right seeks total dominion. It's packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.
By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 2.1.04
America has had periods of single-party dominance before. It happened under FDR's New Deal, in the Republican 1920s and in the early 19th-century "Era of Good Feeling." But if President Bush is re-elected, we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself. The United States could become a nation in which the dominant party rules for a prolonged period, marginalizes a token opposition and is extremely difficult to dislodge because democracy itself is rigged. This would be unprecedented in U.S. history.
In past single-party eras, the majority party earned its preeminence with broad popular support. Today the electorate remains closely divided, and actually prefers more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones. Yet the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused little press scrutiny or widespread popular protest.
We are at risk of becoming an autocracy in three key respects. First, Republican parliamentary gimmickry has emasculated legislative opposition in the House of Representatives (the Senate has other problems). House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has both intimidated moderate Republicans and reduced the minority party to window dressing, rather like the token opposition parties in Mexico during the six-decade dominance of the PRI.
Second, electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. 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. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.
Third, the federal courts, which have slowed some executive-branch efforts to destroy liberties, will be a complete rubber stamp if the right wins one more presidential election.
Taken together, these several forces could well enable the Republicans to become the permanent party of autocratic government for at least a generation. Am I exaggerating? Take a close look at the particulars…
Posted by P6 at January 20, 2004 01:59 PM
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Comments
Wow. Very real concerns completely misapplied. The best advice I can give is: re-read that second amendment, and understand it.
Posted by Phelps at January 20, 2004 06:15 PM"Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split"
I wouldn't discount this. As a political party grows in power and influence, the ideological differences among the members of that party tend to become more apparent.
Take the Republican win in 1994. Fiscal conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives and neoconservatives formed an alliance which helped them win the House, but the alliance is showing signs of wear. There is great disagreement among the neoconservatives and the more traditional conservatives over fundamental issues.
I hardly think that a libertarian like Ron Paul (R-TX) who advocates for a gold-based currency and an end to the drug war, and a social conservative like John Ashcroft, can long remain in the same party in the absence of a significant unifying opposition.
Posted by Brian at January 21, 2004 12:19 PMThere are many of us who would really like to see the Libertarians breaking off from Bush and Ashcroft but so far most of the ones here don't seem to be doing it.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at January 21, 2004 08:54 PMI hardly think that a libertarian like Ron Paul (R-TX) who advocates for a gold-based currency and an end to the drug war, and a social conservative like John Ashcroft, can long remain in the same party in the absence of a significant unifying opposition.
The good news for the Republican partisans is that the Democrats really aren't doing anything to drive a wedge on these issues, so that unifying opposition isn't.
Posted by Phelps at January 22, 2004 02:37 PM