Moments of Permanence - The right-wing appropriation of conservatism

From: sami Date: September 18th, 2011 06:49 am (UTC) (Link)

I think the problem comes in partly because they have a lot of stuff that should be non-partisan that's either partisan or "bipartisan". Including things like running elections. The Australian Electoral Commission is rigidly non-partisan and I really think that's how it should be. And then you get gerrymandering oh lord what.

I think the thing is, to me, that there are multiple axes of political alignment, and people sometimes forget. Left wing and right wing or liberal and conservative - they're not equivalents, you can't just assume a liberal is also a lefty.

I think it's more in mind here because Australian politics are fairly centrist/conservative, but leftist vs rightist is quite a significant conflict. Although I'm starting to confuse myself.

Currently, as far as America is concerned, I'm kind of hoping that the march to Tea Party radicalism sinks the Republican Party as is, and it either gets vehemently reformed or else disappears completely, and a new party gains strength. The Republican Party was formed out of the total breakdown of the Whigs - if the Republican Party is becoming a mess, which it is, clearly America needs a new Lincoln to form a new party.

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From: willow Date: September 18th, 2011 06:58 am (UTC) (Link)

I am not oppimistic. I think the Repulican party will become The Tea Republicans. And the Democrats will become The Old Republicans, and people who'd call themselves liberal conservative labour, in another system, will jump to pick a side, and get shafted, along with everyone else.

I think the thing that confuses me the most about the American two party system, is that as a child I picked up very clearly that the adults around me could vote for someone they didn't like, but who had other people in their party noted for getting along with x party or y party, and who had z thing to reccomend them. So they were promoting a ZX alliance, or a ZY alliance.

Here. There are no alliances, or so it seems. And if someone has other thoughts and wants to vote for a non two party individual for ANYTHING, that's seen as 'throwing away your vote'. So, you're standing there thinking, 'Huh, a Green Minister of Education' (I am totally mixing things up here, but it's for an example) with a 'Conservative Treasury Official' but a 'Non Leftist Liberal Head of State - I want to throw them in a pot and see wht government I get'. Except in the US it's all grouped together in saran wrap and so to me, it feels like the reason the electoral process is a bloody 2 years long, is because that's how long it takes to convince citizens to give in and choose a lesser but still disliked evil.

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