The importance of a political opposition

[ray245]

Given that most people is predicting that the democracts will take control of almost every political body in the US, and the republicans will have a minor influence.

Now, some of you have pointed out that the republicans can't be a good opposition with thier policies and ideas. So is it better to have a bad opposition party, or is it better to have no strong opposition party in this context?

Should people support the republicans for the sake of having a strong and viable opposition?

I hope people can understand what I am trying to say.

[Covenant]

In an ideal circumstance, an opposition party forces both sides to come up with good ideas and make deals. However, the republicans have long since squandered good will between the parties back during the Reagan era, when they started marching in lock-step. Reagan's golden rule was to never speak ill of another Republican, and set up the two parties for a permanent state of war. Rove and others didn't help, by trying to achieve what he called a "permanent majority." When you work with them, they claim bipartisanship, and deny you any such cooperation. They fillabustered everything just to create the impression of an inept Democratic congress. They are essentially refusing to negotiate.

Because of this, the democrats need as much power as possible in order for anything to get accomplished. If we can get close to one party rule then we can probably convince a few moderate republicans to defect every once and a while to get voting passed and for things to get accomplished, but the degree of message and voting control they've exercised has really damaged the value of a two party system. If one person simply refuses to help, how is this beneficial to the people?

[ArcturusMengsk]

The Democrats do a good job of being their own opposition. There's a large portion (~30%) of "Blue Dog" Democrats in Congress who belong to the Democratic Leadership Council and tend to vote with the Republicans.

[Lancer]

It's a consequence of the Republican party becomming increasingly right-wing. They've alienated moderate Republicans and right-leaning Independents, and are getting absorbed into (or are voting with) the Democrats as a result.

[Samuel]

We had a period of no opposition party in the US known as the "Era of Good Feelings". Very misleading name.

As long as membership is open, it doesn't matter if there is one party- it will split into differant factions and fight amoung itself.

[The Romulan Republic]

A political opposition is nessissary in a democracy. A sure as hell don't trust the democrats, or any politician, enough to give them unchecked power. Ideally I'd like an end to parties altogether, and more independent candadites. But that doesn't seem likely.

So the GOP serves a nessissary function in our democracy. Unfortunately, its goals and tactics are such that it can no longer fulfill that role. Its goals directly undermine America's secular and democratic government, and its tactics are to treat the Democrats not as a legitimate opposition, but as an enemy to be destroyed. They are more than willing to engage in blatant hipocrisy and slander that could incite violence against their opponent, to deny people their right to vote, to illegally alter the results of a vote, etc. The GOP simply has no respect or tolerance for the law or the democratic system, and thus has forfitted any place within that system.

So, the solution is to beat the GOP badly enough that the party reforms from within. This should include prosecuting illegal tactics to the full extent of the law, dragging the names of the GOP leadership through the mud. This is part of why I fully endorse Biden's suggestion of criminal charges against the Bush Administration if he and Obama got in. It also means defeating them electorally across the board: Governorships, Congress, the Presidency, the works. The key is to avoid persecuting the party as a whole, or giving that impression. The last thing to do is to feed the "us vs them" mentality of much of the GOP.

So Obama needs to take a two-pronged aproach. First, he needs to consistantly beat the GOP across the board, this election and the next time as well. He needs to pursue investigations of the Bush White House for criminal charges. He needs to destroy the GOP leadership as a political force.

At the same time though, he's got to work with moderates and reformers within the party, and specifically the libertarian and fiscal conservative blocks. Show the republicans and the nation that the enemy is not the other party, but the radicals within that party. Live up to his promise of crossing party lines without caving to the neo-cons and the fundis like other democrats before him.

Frankly, the only way to save American democracy is probably to replace or reform the current republican party as the political opposition.

[Samuel]

Why? If the Republicans disappear, it isn't like the Democrats are going to goose step- they having extremely poor party coherency. For example, you have pro-life and pro-choice democrats. The fact of the matter is even if you have only Democrats, that doesn't mean you only have one choice- after all, the election of 1824 was between 4 different Democratic Republicans.

The US isn't a parliamentary system- the party does not normally have a firm hold over its representatives.

[Sea Skimmer]

No opposition is the death of a democracy. However one can hope that if the Republicans become ineffective, and stay ineffective it would at last provide an opening for a new party to form. Unfortunately that’s most likely to come out of the far right side of the Republicans.

[SirNitram]

Democracies have survived times with no meaningful opposition party. Besides, the Dems bring their own.

But no one needs to worry. Jan 1st, if Obama wins, the GOP will suddenly remember everything about being an opposition party, and wariness about the government, and subpeoning anything which MIGHT be tangentally a problem. We'll probably even see another media circus to generate a lie to then impeach. And all this will be piled on by the Blue Dogs pushing Hoover-esque 'WE'RE IN A HUGE ECONOMIC CRASH, BALANCE THE BUDGET RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW' nonsense.

[Stormbringer]

The Democrats do a good job of being their own opposition.

I'd disagree with you there. What the so-called Blue Dog Democrats provide is an internal balancing act, not a true opposition. They may be nominally more conservative on some issues but at the end of the day there's a significant pressure to back the party which is obviously not present in a true opposition. Party politics, and the legislative procedures built around it, makes it much easier to scratch each others back when it comes to pork, pet projects, and to lock step on ideological issues than to genuinely say no and reach across the aisle to do so. The Blue Dogs are unlikely to actually do much reaching out to Republicans once the Dems no longer need to do so. It becomes much easier to just bring your side to an acceptable position. We saw that happen with the Republicans, who have become corrupt and/or ideologically cleansed as time went on.

I'll trust the Dems for a while, if only because they're not likely to take their majority status for granted, but letting them have an unchecked control is a risky proposition. As a resident of Michigan and now Illinois, I can tell you that the Democrats can be as corrupt as any other when given the chance.

That said, I will trust the Democrats own internal balance for a while as they do have those internal checks. The Republicans right now offer nothing by way of opposition I see as worth while. Hopefully that will change but if they skew in the Bush-Palin direction even further, they'll be useless as far as I'm concerned.