Two rigid ideological parties... YES!

Way back in 2005 I had a class on political parties and interest groups. One of the key points the professor tried to drive home was that the United States didn't really have National Parties, but rather 50 state parties and a national fundraising arm for the Presidential race every four years. I pointed out two things: the first is that the parties have becoming increasingly ideologically aligned, and that picking Howard Dean as DNC chief (instead of some fundraising flunky) meant that the Democratic party meant to become a national party. My Prof. allowed for the possibility that I was correct, except that there were still some outliers in congress, and that there wasn't an equivelent "celebrity" leader in charge of the RNC. I argued "wait and see" about the congress, and pointed out that since Bush was President, he was leader of the party, so the RNC didn't need a "leader" leader.

Well, following 2006, the most liberal Republican is more conservative than the most conservative Democrat in congress. Republicans elected from New York are more conservative than Democrats elected from North Carolina. That's an ideologically coherent national party system, my friends.

And now that Obama's won the Presidency, he's replacing Dean with one of his own guys. And it looks like Newt Gingrich wants to be RNC Chairman. Newt being RNC Chair would prove my quasi-Marxist theory of partisan evolution true.

America is a big country, and we've long had a patchwork party system based on regional differences, but fifty years after the advent of mass media, we've finally cohered into a sensible two-party system. This is bad for political reporters, who like interesting stories about Mavericks crossing party lines. And it's bad for wanna-be philosophes who are oh so concerned that the parties don't line up with their particular esoteric political philosophies. But it's great for average voters, who don't need to really know anything about particular candidates before casting their votes.

Now I just need to start a campaign to bring back straight ticket voting...