To: Dale Baker who wrote (10430 ) 1/31/2006 5:58:52 PM From: Fred Gohlke Read Replies (3) | Respond to Good afternoon, Dale"The whole process is rotten" and attempts to improve it risk "Stalemate in a cesspool" , I may be a bit less willing to accept those circumstances without objection."The Constitution says nothing about how candidates will be chosen, nor does it mention political parties." In this connection, Professor John F. Bibby wrote:"When the Founders of the American Republic wrote the U.S. Constitution in 1787, they did not envision a role for political parties in the governmental order. Indeed, they sought through various constitutional arrangements such as separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and indirect election of the president by an electoral college to insulate the new republic from political parties and factions." usinfo.state.gov "the incumbents would have to write and pass a new amendment that would legislate their own parties out of existence" because there is nothing in the Constitution that decrees their existence in the first place. Having said that, though, I confess that your "Won't happen" assertion is compelling ... not because a Constitutional amendment is required but because of the extraordinary difficulty of supplanting an entrenched system.
