Re: Our present multy-party scheme is much older than I am.
(However, there was an experiement with a two-party system in the middle 1700s)
LOL... How naive you are, Ilmarinen!! "Multi-party schemes" are not fit for the US. Like most European fellows, you candidly assume that the breakup of the Repub-Dem stranglehold will spawn a handful of democratic parties... That's true indeed for Europe where almost every country has a Green party, a communist party, anarchists social-christians, christian-conservatives, pro-business liberals, etc. --alongside far-right parties.
In the US, however, the first --and probably the only-- party that's gonna benefit from a multi-party free-for-all is the FAR-RIGHT fringe. Well, actually, it's a "fringe" of over 60 million voters as far as Evangelical crazies are concerned.
I've mulled over the whole thing the last weekend and I wondered how come it's so hard for European fellows to grasp US politics --here's a clue:
As I said in several previous posts, the US Right --that is, basically, the GOP-- couldn't, and still cannot, afford to jettison its far-right constituency because that would spell the rise of a powerful far-right, third party in the US. Imagine a similar predicament in, say, France: the Gaullist UMP party merging with the Front National to form one, big Rightist party. How would foreign observers analyze the French political landscape?
Actually, most observers would be as confused and nonplussed as European observers are with today's US politics: people would say, Goddamit! the fascists have taken over France! the party of J.M. Le Pen and Bruno Megret is calling the shots! what a disgrace!
Yet, others would calm it down and point out that it's also the party of (Jewish) Nicolas Sarkozy and Serge Dassault... they'd rightly notice that two ministers of Algerian ancestry have been appointed --just like Europeans point to Colin Powell and Condi Rice in the Bush administration.
I think that's the crucial difference between Europe and the US: rightist parties in Europe have had no difficulties to cut off their extremist, far-rightist fringes... In Belgium, for instance, Flemish parties have devised the so-called cordon sanitaire to cordon off the far-rightist Vlaams Blok. But that's a ploy US Republicans can't use without the risk of precipitating their country into another civil war.
Far-right parties in Europe are mainly secular populisms whereas the US far right mixes politics with religion... Far-right parties in Europe don't have huge financial resources whereas Christian Right leaders are billionaires travelling aboard private jets... Far-right parties in Europe don't have unfettered access to the media whereas the US far right has got its OWN TV networks (CBN, radio stations, etc.)!!!
And all of the above is further compounded by the fact that a US far-right party would appeal to the US as a whole, from coast to coast... However, it would be most successful in the Sun Belt and the Midwest --exacerbating the cultural divide between the conservative South and Liberal America. Contrariwise, there isn't the slightest chance that all European far-right parties will ever coalesce into one, big, unified far-right coalition. Just look at the EU parliament: all the far-right parties have joined the EPP (European People's Party: eppe.org ), they didn't set up their own parliamentary group....
Now do you got the picture? |
