what would it take to get rid of partisan politics? (Congress, salary)

[stycotl]

i hate partisan politics. i can't stand the fact that in order to get elected into any office, you need to discard any sort of moral principle, and anally rape the community as you kowtow to the big money of the american aristocracy. if you don't, you can't get in.

i see the whole democrat vs. republican contest as absurd. if you don't staunchly support the party, through thick and thin, through good decisions and bad, then you are considered flip-flopping and disloyal. but if you do stick with it, then you have to smile and support policies that screw everyone but the elite minority, who conveniently continue to become more and more elite at the cost of everyone else.

for the record, i don't consider myself one of any of the national parties, and think that they are all egotistical organizations led by blind idiots that are stuck in a feeding frenzy of power and pride.

what would it take for the country to get rid of partisan politics?

what would we have to do in order to ensure that whatever system we came up with to replace it would not be any worse?

what would we have to do to make sure that the current parties are not merely replaced with new ones when ousted?

do you think that it would even be worth it?

God bless. aaron out.

[camping!]

Great questions.
I do know that we need a viable third party option, and perhaps a fourth as well.
I believe term limits will help keep down cronyism. I think that each congressperson, senator, justice, everybody on the presidents cabinet and of course the potus and vpotus should earn only what the mean us salary is at the time of their terms. I think they and their immediate family should be audited on a yearly basis to keep the temptation of bribery/graft/lobbyist 'gifts' at bay.
But really, the only thing to stop this two party (which has really become one party) nonsense is the american public. And they seem to be happy rooting for 'their' guy and their side and their color state that they can no longer see the bigger picture.

[Rggr]

I couldn't agree more. Read "Making Government Work" by Senator Ernest Hollings. He talks about how both sides are governed by money and how they are constantly in campaign mode.

[jtur88]

In many cities, municipal elections are non-partisan, by law. I have not heard about any cases where candidates get around this by "secretly" being associated with any party. It just seems to work. Not that very many cities; municipal administrations have any more integrity than partisan fedeal politics.

By the way, in Minnesota state politics, the parties are not the Republicans and the Democrats and have no affiliation with any national parties. The parties are "Democratic Farmer Labor" and "Independent Republican", which, probably, do reflect the overall political philosophy of the national party that is reflected in their party names, but not officially.

[jest721]

Get rid of the electoral college. Run the election based on the popular vote, and if someone doesn't win the majority, hold a run-off for the top 2 vote-getters.

[NewToCA]

Added some info to the rather cryptic title

[ParkTwain]

Look at the Nebraska legislature. It is unicameral and has no parties!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature

[GregW]

Keep the Electoral College. It is there to keep a populist mob (left or right) from hysterically electing some charismatic idiot. At least it is supposed to but we got King George anyway.

If the economy does completely collapse we can be guaranteed some major political changes.

[stan4]

It all seems pretty ridiculous, I agree.

One thing I appreciate about having two parties, though, is that one party seems to keep the other party from enacting very many extreme measures. I don't think we'd really want it on one end of the spectrum or the other (and I say this as a Republican), because very few people agree with every single thing a party supposedly stands for.

Having too many different strong parties may dilute the power out to the point that nothing gets done...the whole "rule by committee" which rarely works. We all have different priorities and opinions, but we can't have 300 million political parties. That's why you gotta prioritize what's important to you and then pick the party that meets most of those goals in the order of priority.

I think the real problem is that to get any attention as a Democrat or a Republican, you almost have to profess to some extreme wacko polar stance (ahem, Obama, Palin). Regular, reasonable, middle of the road people are not going to get the attention or garner the support or have the media cache. So they don't get nominated, supported, or elected to high office nearly as often.

[KantLockeMeIn]

We need to eliminate plurality voting and move towards approval voting. But ask yourself why the two parties that control power would ever cede this power to other parties by implementing a more fair voting system?

Duverger's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia