An excellent analysis on the asymmetrical polarization of todays political environment. The supposed promise of linking more tightly party and ideology was that it would offer more clarity and accountability for voters. As Austin Ranney forecast in his prophetic dissent to the famous 1950 American Political Science Association Report, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System, those benefits are likely to come at a high cost. Ranney argued that more ideologically coherent, internally unified, and adversarial parties in the fashion of Westminster-style parliamentary democracy would be a disaster within the American constitutional system, because of its separation of powers, separately elected institutions, and constraints on majority rule that favor cross-party coalitions and compromise. That mismatch between parties and governing institutions is exacerbated by the fact that the polarization is asymmetric. Republicans have become a radical insurgency—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition. The evidence of this asymmetry is overwhelming. -Thomas E. Mann
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:54:26 +0000
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