The Two-Party “System:” Principles Vs. Priorities

If you would like to know why the nation appears to tolerate the current, wholly unacceptable state of our politics, this Armstrong Williams column will prove a great help:

...the two-party system is an imperfect mechanism for governing in an environment that demands more political nuance than usual. Voters have not been able to get enough of what they want from either party without getting too much of what they don’t want from both.

There are too few alternatives outside the two-party system for both expressing voter concerns and making a difference in policy outcomes. The party that wins is usually too mortgaged to special interests and too saddled with the power dynamics to pay attention to its base. And the party in the minority is generally too focused and ideologically closed to garner a governing coalition.

Mind you, when Williams says “too few alternatives outside the two-party system,” he intends that the reader apply the qualifier from the paragraph above: alternatives that provide voters “enough of what they want without getting too much of what they don’t want.” Therein lies the trap of American Big Government, not even concealed from our eyes.

The trap is simple: Now that the federal government has burst its Constitutional constraints, each major party has latched onto a set of priorities that are contradicted by the other major party. Additionally, neither major party can satisfy the desire – the aggregate desire – of the majority of Americans, who would be happy just to be left alone in the peaceful enjoyment of what’s rightfully theirs. Not perfectly happy, perhaps – after all, there’s at least a little authoritarianism in all of us – but willing to settle for the result.

The Democrats claim to support certain freedoms – once upon a time the “civil liberties,” but these days, mainly those pertaining to sex – while arguing for deep encroachments upon others, especially freedom in the economic sphere. Conversely, the Republicans support economic freedom – to a greater degree than the Democrats, at least – while appearing to threaten the ones the Democrats champion. This poses the typical leave-me-alone voter a painful dilemma.

Leave-me-alone voter John Q. Public normally has one or a few priority issues. His vote will be steered by those priorities; that is, it will very likely go to the candidates put forth by the major party he deems more likely to agree with his priorities. He will instinctively resist the suggestion that he vote for a minor party candidate as a “waste” of his vote. After all, a candidate with no chance to win the election cannot help to defend the things he values. Worse, should the balloting narrowly favor the candidate of the major party he disprefers, he will know fear for his priorities and agony over whether the votes drawn off by the minor party candidate might have made the difference.

Thus, the “parties of principle,” for instance the Constitutional and Libertarian parties, are defeated by the very thing they oppose. Only a narrowly focused single-issue party such as the Right To Life Party can garner significant support, and that solely from those voters whose personal priorities are equally narrow and intense.

One approach a minor party can take for winning nominal electoral support is cross-endorsement of the major party candidates closest to its views. A voter can then support a major-party candidate by voting for him on the minor party’s line. However, most minor parties deem this unsatisfactory, for obvious reasons. In any case, it results in near-perfect dominance of elected offices by the major parties, which is the crux of America’s political problem.

We who prize freedom lack an effective method for chastising both major parties simultaneously. This will continue to be so until the current political system suffers a complete loss of the confidence of the American electorate...and the consequences of such a collapse would be terrible indeed.

Yet we cannot help wondering how we might best defend ourselves from governmental predation and intrusion. With the midterms a single day away, it’s a question on many good men’s minds.

More anon.