If you haven’t yet read Lee’s book on Break The Two-Party Doom Loop, please hasten to do so.
The one topic that Lee kept out of this excellent substack piece I would have liked to hear his opinion on, is the much more moderate GOP voting when a vote is by secret ballot. Far fewer Republicans supported Jim Jordon on secret ballot votes compared to roll call votes. How does that inform Lee’s perspective?
To what extent does fear of Trumpism cause some moderate Republicans to publicly vote one way, and another way when there vote is secret? Are Republicans- however intimidated by MAGA, actually more moderate that roll call votes would suggest?
How should we endeavor to define the terms "conservative" or "right?" It seems to me that the Republican Party has moved somewhere beyond the normative bounds of these terms and we do not yet have an understanding of what to call the territory it inhabits. Traditional conservatives would most likely not recognize the current Republican Party as "conservative" at all, since it is not trying to conserve anything, but rather to tear down.
1. Can you really categorize a group as "far-right" based on NOMINATE scores? Aren't those purely based on similarity of voting patterns, not on the substance of what is actually being voted on? Pew Research has graphs showing Republican and Democrat positions on issues over time, for instance, and on 7 out of 10 issues, both Democrats and Republicans had shifted to the left at the time.
2. PR would be great, but I don't know of any feasible way to actually adopt it in a federal system of states, especially with polarized representatives. Maybe in individual cities or other small jurisdictions, but nationwide would require constitutional amendment, no?
3. Seems to me that voting systems that suffer from vote-splitting inherently trend toward a two-party system, which causes political opinion to collapse into a one-dimensional political spectrum, and voters to think only in terms of this false dichotomy, which leads to ever-increasing polarization, eventually breaking out into political violence and civil war.
PR is a way out of this loop, but not likely achievable in the US. Another option is consensus-based single-winner voting systems like STAR, Condorcet, and Approval Voting. STAR just made it onto the ballot in Eugene, Oregon, where a previous STAR ballot initiative achieved 54% support, so hopefully we can see it work in real elections.
Multi-member districts with proportional representation could be adopted for US House on a statutory basis. It wouldn't require a constitutional amendment.
Correct, but it wouldn't need supermajorities in Congress or ratification by the state legislatures to amend the Constitution. Congress already has the general power to make rules for congressional elections. There's a current law requiring single-member districts, for instance.
If you haven’t yet read Lee’s book on Break The Two-Party Doom Loop, please hasten to do so.
The one topic that Lee kept out of this excellent substack piece I would have liked to hear his opinion on, is the much more moderate GOP voting when a vote is by secret ballot. Far fewer Republicans supported Jim Jordon on secret ballot votes compared to roll call votes. How does that inform Lee’s perspective?
To what extent does fear of Trumpism cause some moderate Republicans to publicly vote one way, and another way when there vote is secret? Are Republicans- however intimidated by MAGA, actually more moderate that roll call votes would suggest?
How should we endeavor to define the terms "conservative" or "right?" It seems to me that the Republican Party has moved somewhere beyond the normative bounds of these terms and we do not yet have an understanding of what to call the territory it inhabits. Traditional conservatives would most likely not recognize the current Republican Party as "conservative" at all, since it is not trying to conserve anything, but rather to tear down.
1. Can you really categorize a group as "far-right" based on NOMINATE scores? Aren't those purely based on similarity of voting patterns, not on the substance of what is actually being voted on? Pew Research has graphs showing Republican and Democrat positions on issues over time, for instance, and on 7 out of 10 issues, both Democrats and Republicans had shifted to the left at the time.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/10/05/1-partisan-divides-over-political-values-widen/1_1-18/
2. PR would be great, but I don't know of any feasible way to actually adopt it in a federal system of states, especially with polarized representatives. Maybe in individual cities or other small jurisdictions, but nationwide would require constitutional amendment, no?
3. Seems to me that voting systems that suffer from vote-splitting inherently trend toward a two-party system, which causes political opinion to collapse into a one-dimensional political spectrum, and voters to think only in terms of this false dichotomy, which leads to ever-increasing polarization, eventually breaking out into political violence and civil war.
PR is a way out of this loop, but not likely achievable in the US. Another option is consensus-based single-winner voting systems like STAR, Condorcet, and Approval Voting. STAR just made it onto the ballot in Eugene, Oregon, where a previous STAR ballot initiative achieved 54% support, so hopefully we can see it work in real elections.
Multi-member districts with proportional representation could be adopted for US House on a statutory basis. It wouldn't require a constitutional amendment.
Meaning the US House, Senate, and President would need to cooperate to pass a federal law?
Correct, but it wouldn't need supermajorities in Congress or ratification by the state legislatures to amend the Constitution. Congress already has the general power to make rules for congressional elections. There's a current law requiring single-member districts, for instance.