Have you noticed the rush of House Republicans calling it quits in the last few weeks?
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) announced his exit Nov. 1. He explained that to be a member of the Republican House majority means putting up with the “many Republican leaders [who] are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen.”
Buck is predicting that even more House Republicans will leave “in the near future.”
The day before Buck said good-bye, House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) also quit. Granger had been a leader among House Republicans who prevented the far-right, election-denying Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) from becoming Speaker of the House.
Also in October, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said she was quitting. “Right now, Washington, D.C. is broken,” she said. “It is hard to get anything done.”
This isn’t a victory. They will just be replaced with Trumpites.
Trumpite replacement candidates have been losing close congressional seats to Democratic challengers so this may open up some pathways to retaking a majority.
It’s a risk though. Many people vote party line. It will depend a lot on what district or state the seat is in.
I’m not saying get complacent, but looking at the all the elections from 2020 on, it’s less of a risk & more of a pattern.
Exactly. The ones that are closer to being moderate (there are currently no moderate Republicans in the house) are leaving. They’re less crazy in general, so not only are there fewer Republicans to push back against the MAGA crowd, it leaves spots open to be filled by even crazier Republicans.
Yeah, I feel like the sinking ship is a “sane Republican party”. We’re just going to see more Boebert’s, MTG’s, and Jim Jordan’s in Congress now, which will lead to even more dysfunction and gridlock.
They know that they will be primaried by MAGoos, and will lose.
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The fact that there’s even a debate to be had about whether it’s a victory just shows how fucked up our system of government is—in this case, our electoral processes. Government policies in a democracy should be highly predictable based on what’s popular with the voting-age public, but instead, the policy effects of something as minor as some people retiring are so unpredictable we may as well be trying to read the future in chicken entrails.
I think part of that reason is due to the fact that half of Congress has an arbitrarily capped headcount and we’re no longer able to represent the popular opinions of the constituency. Last I checked, we should have something like 3x the representatives in the house that we have currently.
We also need to ditch the electoral college. There’s no reason to have it any longer. We won a civil war that forced the South to start evolving beyond chattel slavery to prop up their economy, there’s no need to continue with that farce.
The numbers I’ve seen are that if the House wasn’t capped it would have around 10,000 members.
I agree with your points but I don’t think they go far enough. Approval voting (or RCV) and proportional representation are needed.
Oh for sure, I’ve advocated for that for several years. Here in multinomah county, Oregon USA, we went with a version of RCV and our next election will be run that way. There’s a lot of detractors, and while I personally would have preferred STAR voting, I think almost anything is better than FPTP.
You’re right, I was off by a factor of 10 or so on the rep count.
Do you want to take a guess which party is making RCV illegal & already has done so in Florida?
We have computers and Internet and broadband. We could figure out 10,000 representatives.
the whole federal government leans toward rural conservatives. every state gets two senators regardless of population. there’s a ceiling and a floor on house reps, so big states are underrepresented and little states are overrepresented. the president is picked by the electoral college, which favors smaller population states. SCotUS is picked by the already biased president and the senate, which has the heaviest bias.
Rats fleeing a sinking ship that will be replaced by bigger, shittier rats.
That is why the system needs to be transformed into a multi-party system. From now on, both parties will become more and more extreme.
I’ve been voting in elections since the 90s and it’s always been this way at least since my dad was voting in the late 60s.
Breaking away from two parties is great talk, but there seems to be a lot of pushback from folks that are, for over reason or another, married to FPTP voting. We aren’t ever going to move past the two party system until FPTP is thrown in the trash heap and private monetary political donations are banned outright.
Also, no idea why anyone down voted you.
Guess which party is trying to outlaw other RCV & already has in Florida?
Did you like the chaos of not having a House Speaker as a small faction turned against the majority and held the entire chamber hostage?
If so, then you would love coalition politics because that’s a regular occurrence. If you consider the Freedom Caucus as a separate party in coalition with the GOP, then their antics will be familiar to anyone living under a multiparty system.
Multiparty systems don’t solve the problem of extremism, they normalize it. In Italy, Israel, and now the House, leaders must appease extremist factions to stay in power.
We need to get away from American politics and look at how coalition governments work elsewhere in the world. Yes, they can be messy, but it forces the parties to sit down and TALK to each other and make some concessions to make it work.
Just like marriage. Both people are no longer single. They are now living together, they have to make concessions and agree on a common set of rules, norms, etc. The same thing happens in a coalition government, the parties make concessions to make it work and agree on a middle way. That cannot happen in a two-party system.
Right. Coalition governments tend to have a few crazies around the fringes. The difference is that they stay at the fringes, because more reasonable heads are collaborating to form a majority. You don’t have the current situation where the loons are dictating everything while being made up of about one half of the majority party.
Loons dictating everything while being barely a fraction of majority is exactly what you have in Italy and Israel, which are among the purest examples of multi-party democracy.
Italy’s leader is now a literal fascist, and Israel is run by a right-wing nutjob bending the knee to nutjobs who are even more right-wing than he is.
What you’re seeing are outliers. Take a look at this list of coalition governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_coalition_governments
There are plenty of functioning European countries (since we’re talking about the US) that have functioning and “normal” coalition governments.
It also depends on the parties that won and the system used to elect these officials. For example, if the most left-wing party came first, but the other two centrist parties came second and third, if the most left-wing party wants to govern, it will have no choice but to make some concessions in order to govern and put policies on the table that all parties will agree to.
Yes, you can add Hungary and Turkey to the list of fascist-enabled coalitions. And more where open fascists are elected to parliament, like the Dutch PVV and the Austrian FPO. These serve to normalize fascism even if they remain outside of the ruling coalition.
Meanwhile, two-party governments have basically no elected representatives from openly fascist parties. If third parties were viable, David Duke would be in Congress.
If you want to look at how coalition governments work elsewhere, you need to look at Italy and Israel. Those are among the purest multi-party systems.
In both countries, it is true that some parties sat down and “made concessions”. But in both countries, the parties were the mainstream right and one or more fringe fascist or outright racist parties. As the price of staying in power, the mainstream right “conceded” that open fascists and racists have a legitimate place in a ruling coalition.
In a two-party system, I am at least thankful that extremists tend to paralyze government, not empower it.
The failure of the two party system, unfortunately, is the fact that one party is always the leader. In the case of the US, it’s the GOP. The GOP has successfully taken control and shifted the Overton Window in the country further and further to the right since 1945. It will never reset back to an equilibrium with the structure that we have currently. Electing a Democrat only loosens the noose, it doesn’t remove it.
Disagree. The GOP candidate won the national popular vote only once in the last eight presidential elections. They have not passed any significant national legislation in that time. Meanwhile Democrats have enacted health care reform, climate investment, and now pro-choice laws.
The GOP can only hold on to power via voter suppression / electoral tricks, and that strategy won’t work forever.
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I respectfully disagree. I think the GOP will keep marching towards the far right, but that will cause the Democrats to move to the center
There’s nothing extreme about the Democratic party. Get some fucking perspective.
Nice. Instead of staying to fight for America, they turn tail and run like the yellow bellied cunts they are.
How many years did they spend sweeping the ground ahead of Trump and his cronies to support them and bring us to where we are today - only to act like they are taking some principled stand in quitting now?
They made this bed.
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I admit I was semi-consciously thinking of sweepers in curling when I wrote that.
What else you expect? If they legitimately try to govern or talk sensibly, they get primaried. The GOP is so completely broken, there’s no point trying to hang in there.
“right now Washington DC is broken”
Oh Debbie, it’s not Washington honey. It’s one specific party that happens to reside currently.
Both can be true at the same time. The system itself is broken, and the fact that it allows fascists to gain so much traction is a symptom of that brokenness.
I feel like both parties are broken. There’s a systemic failure at large.
We really need to get special interest money out of politics to keep lifers out past their usefulness. People too old to make actual decisions are only there because they are being propped up by the party so more money can be raised.
Weird, I feel like “both sides” rhetoric is delusional and anyone spouting it at this point is covering for fascist garbage.
Democrats have a corporate tit sucking problem and aren’t doing enough. Republicans are trying to burn down the planet by doing the opposite of whatever knowledgeable people tell them should be done. These two groups are not the same, OBVIOUSLY.
Every group has problems, Democrats are not angels. This is not news to anyone. “Ackthually, both sides” isn’t a well considered rhetorical position, it’s a suicide note.
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The post I replied to was not a well reasoned critique of the Democratic party; it was a false equivalency. Mine, however, did contain a fairly specific critique of Democrats. I have adopted the nuance you mentioned. The question is why you’re choosing to ignore that.
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The whole system is broken, though. Just because one is worse doesn’t mean the other is perfect.
“The whole system is broken” is so nebulous a critique as to be meaningless. The system exhibits specific problems for which there are certain rememdies. The reasons for the lack of attempt for these remedies range from corruption to lack of political will.
If what you’re actually saying is “we need to burn it all down and start over” please kindly say so and you’re welcome to go on my block list with all the other Saturday Morning Cartoon Revolutionaries without the faintest conception of the vast ocean of suffering you would unleash on your countrymen.
It is nebulous, but I’m the one that phrased it as system. The comment you replied to listed parts of the system specifically that they felt were problematic and applied to both parties. It’s by no means them saying both sides are the same, though.
Meh. I’m a gradualist. I think there are ways to incrementally improve the world that aren’t impossible to implement.
Both parties are indeed broken. Until we can get corporate money out of politics we will continue to have corrupt politicians who only serve their corporate overlords.
That’s effectively what I was saying, but I’m being downvoted into oblivion. Very reddit-like: no room for nuance or discussion.
Thanks for seeing through that.
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What do upvotes and downvotes mean here anyway?
Easier to quit than actually try to fix what you broke in the first place.
why put themselves at risk confronting the problems in the party, when they can just leave, with their money and influence, and let the crazies run the nuthouse
So the bastards are quitting the machine they built after it got out of hand and are leaving it to be run by crazy bastards.
Yeah, but they’ll be safe, because they were a Republican once, right? Right‽
Assholes rather flee than work with Democrats. Fucking trash
More importantly, flee rather than fight the crazy
Rule: They are not allowed to become Democrats.
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We don’t need a more conservative Democratic party. They can go sit on their thumbs.
The simple fact that you still subscribe to the two names begin different “parties” is telling.
The simple fact that you still subscribe to the two names begin different “parties” is telling.
The political equivalent of “we live in a society”
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She’s only salty that Trump co-opted the religious right out from under the noses corporate GOP by out-crazying them.
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The Moderates and old guard are leaving to be replaced by extreme right wing types.
There really aren’t any moderates.
The moderates are the Democrats (on average). The majority of the Republican party supports treason so any that call themselves Republicans fall into that label as well.
I for one don’t think they are choosing to leave. I think they are being forced to leave. The GQP is holding Kompromat over their heads, and because they didn’t support Qult45 are being forced out, less all the evidences against them all come to light.
Fuck ‘em.
Now this is the Great Replacement theory I’m interested in. Soon, the right will only be Trump and his luddites.
Every Republican still in the House next year will be forced to run for reelection while possibly supporting a convicted felon at the head the GOP ticket. They will also have to say they believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Anyone want to bet against that happening exactly that way?
If they aren’t voting blue, they’re doing fuckall.
Are*
Or more colloquially: they’re*
Edit: Ah yes, the cowardly, infantile downvotes. You’re more like Reddit every day, Lemmy. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Agreed, edited.
Is there ELI5 for us Europeans?
Members of parliament are vacating their seat because they are not satisfied with what their party is doing? That would be seen as rather undemocratic over here. You would expect them to leave the party, maybe join a different one, or stay as an unaffilated member.
What will happen with the empty seats?
So in 2015 the headquarters of the DNC and the RNC were hacked by two different expert Russian hacking groups,…
Massive amounts of dirt on everyone in the DNC and RNC was acquired.
All the DNC (Democrat) dirt was leaked before the 2016 elections. The RNC (Republican) dirt was held back, and has been being used for other purposes since 2016.
All who do not support the Orange GodKing are being forced out.
So you are saying they are forced to leave parliament because there is Kompromat?
Basically yes.
There was a guy here in Congress just recently, a Far Right up and comer, super popular with Qult45; he publicly mentioned he was invited to a GOP cocaine orgy.
A flood of incredibly damaging dirt on him came out soon after and quickly destroyed his whole political career and reputation amongst his peers.
Isn’t that terrifying news? I mean there are always actors not believing in democracy at all, but them being so powereful to blackmail members aout of parliament that’s a new level of fucked up.
They didn’t blackmail, they sandbagged. Suddenly his entire backstory he ran in was a lie, or at least partially ginned up. That he was secretly gay, even tho being a paraplegic. Anything they could somehow spin into turning the guy into a gay communist who drinks puppy milkshakes. All very publically broadcast thru the news. Daily. Non stop. They had a point to make and they made sure every ear within shot would hear it.
I’m no fan of the kid, and he was obviously in way over his head, but his naivity def let a couple skeletons fall out of the church closet.
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I suspect they are talking about Madison Cawthorn.
There always was a lot of dirt on him: he was known for sexual harassment, he was caught lying several times, he engaged in nepotism and graft, … None of those scandals were a problem for the republican party, but when he mentioned some dirt from other republicans, they went after him with a vengeance. An example article, but you can find many more: https://wlos.com/news/local/republicans-and-democrats-take-shots-at-rep-cawthorn-over-latest-video
From looking at it as an outsider, I’ve become convinced that the entire republican party is rotten and only people on whom there is kompromat, are given opportunities to be elected to the highest level.
Yes but also they are likely being offered some lovely private sector positions where they do speeches 6 times a year for a cool 300k.
Politicans gonna be Politicans, right?
Sounds like you got it alright. They’re resigning because they don’t want to be associated with ultra right wing fascists, which opens up their seat for ultra right wing fascists.
Look, nobody accused Republicans of being intelligent.
Everyone with two brain cells wants to stay away from facists, that part is clear.
What i don‘t understan is why they are vacating their parliament seat. Wouldn‘t it be better to stay and vote with the democrats?
Or better found a new conservative party? Considering there are several fed up members.
Are they only leaving the parliament or also the party?
They are leaving ahead of the elections next year. I can think of quite a few reasons why they might do that.
- Staying means being forced to either defend the indefensible or facing backlash and challenges from the right, either of which could damage any future political ambitions they may have.
- Getting out now leaves room for others to get elected, which keeps them from being held responsible for their party losing a seat.
- They know how nasty things are going to get and they want out before leaving becomes too dangerous. It wouldn’t be the first time that Republicans in congress were afraid that pissing of Trump’s base could put them in harm’s way. That was not helped by Jim Jordan supporters agitating their followers and stirring up death threats against their colleagues just to get their way during the fight to become speaker.
- Because they are getting pushed out behind the scenes and are choosing not to fight. I’m skeptical of this but I can’t say for sure that it isn’t happening.
- Because they expect the next election to be a disaster and they don’t want to get caught up in it.
Basically, most reasons come down to either just wanting out, or wanting to make sure they don’t ruin their future political career choices.
If they stayed and voted with democrats, went independent or switched parties, or tried to start a new party, most likely they would end up just as unemployed but with fewer friends and no followers. Going directly against the party would lead to the party itself attacking them, along with the right wing media that many of their supporters get all their info from. Most districts lean to one side or the other, and while a few politicians have made careers on being independent or moderate, the ones that had been on the Republican side of the aisle are all gone, as are those who had the courage to take a stand against Trump when it mattered.
Honestly, at this point they may actually be able to get more done by quietly coordinating with others who have left or been forced out and organizing support for whoever emerges as a viable Trump alternative in the Republican primary. That keeps them out of the cross hairs and at least increases the chances that Trump will lose either in the primaries or the general election if they can at least drag out the fight for the nomination.
If Trump loses badly, political winds could shift in the party. Or if another politician gets the nomination and goes on to win the election, they’ll be in a position to push Trump’s people out. That’s how his people took control in the first place.
Wow, thanks for the extensive answer. Makes things much clearer. Unfortunatly I can only give one upvote.
The thing that is different about Congress is that Reps and Senators are free to vote with or against the rest of their party without any repercussions. We don’t have three line whips or anything like that here, so the party system isn’t as powerful. This is why Manchin could go against the Democratic Party agenda so frequently and the Democratic leadership couldn’t do anything about it.
So in theory these Reps could stay Republican and vote with the Democrats, or go independent/libertarian/etc if they really want to make a break with the Republican label. Staying or changing parties really doesn’t matter except in how it defines the majority party in each house, and also practically as to what legislation is likely to get brought to a vote per the Hastert Rule or the Standing Rules of the Senate.
So this all can go to explain why they’re not changing parties or who they caucus with. It still leaves the question of why they’re choosing to leave rather than remain and affect change from within. Answer: They don’t care about the country or the party. They were here for power, the lobbying money, the post politics sinecures, etc. Now that all of that is gone, they have decided to cut and run. They are abandoning ship now in the hopes that they can get the best life raft.
It still leaves the question of why they’re choosing to leave rather than remain and affect change from within. Answer: They don’t care about the country or the party. They were here for power, the lobbying money, the post politics sinecures, etc. Now that all of that is gone, they have decode to cut and run. They are abandoning ship now in the hopes that they can get the best life raft.
Exactly. The is the best short answer I have seen so far. Thank you for addressing the elephant in the room.
We have effectively two rounds of elections. In the primaries we determine who the candidate will be from either party. That candidate then runs in the general election against the other candidate.
Republicans have now run into the problem where party voters in primaries will pick candidates who can’t win the general election. The Republicans retiring could possibly win another general election, but they’re not extreme enough to win a primary anymore.
Plus Republicans aren’t known for courageous behavior. Retiring quietly is what they do.
They are vacating now to try to come back later after the zealots infighting kills them off.
They’re resigning their seat but not leaving the party, as I understand it. Makes no sense at all.
I agree, we need a 3rd party terribly right now. You guys have got the edge on us in that.
Unfortunately I think it’s less likely for the Greens or Libertarians to get their shit together than it is for moderate Republicans to somehow retake their party. For them to be viable today, they needed to be financing widespread state and local races 30 years ago. And a new party is unlikely to prove viable.
I think our best option is to fight against Republicans until they’re firmly defeated, and then split the Democrats into centrists and Progressives.
You would expect them to leave the party,
There are effectively only 2 parties in the US: Republican and Democrat. They are so ideologically opposed (far-right vs moderate, mostly) that changing parties is anathema. There are a few other parties, usually called Independent when they win a seat, but those tend to go to politicians in spite of them being of a different party, i.e. following the individual.
When people vacate seats before a term is up (more commonly a person just states they won’t run for reelection), the state either appoints a replacement (senators) or the states hold a special election (representatives).
I was really wondering about that one. Thanks for answering.
Everyone here seems to be relaxed about tzhte fact that there will be vacant seats. Good to hear it’s just part of how the system works.
Leaving the parliament before the term ends is so uncommon here, I really don’t know what would happen.
They aren’t that different tho. The range of policy and stances in policy would/could/does fall within one single party in the rest of the world. Let’s break it down.
Foreign policy = same, cept for the Pro-Putin MAGA crowd. So essentially, there’s 2 sides. One side pro-“western” nations (EU, US, Can, Aus, NZ, Jap, SK, Iz, UK) the other is Pro-Putin (Rus, NK, etc, etc)
Economic policy = samesies; both NeoLiberal, both pro-wartime debt spending, both austerity as matter of course, suppressing knowledge of an alternative even existing.
A happy worker is a productive worker. Shut up and do your job.
one side pulls hard hard right, the other comes pre-negotiated to guarantee plans will land further right than they’ve been written. Like clockwork, undoing the gains from the new deal, slowly and steadily to not invoke revolution. Democrats pass more Republican legislation than Republicans do. We have a choice of working class slavery with no taxes on business or the wealthy, or working class slavery, now but with 10% less taxes on the middle class - but with higher gas prices, cuz fuck you. Since communism fell the US has turned its ire inward trying to turn everyone into proletariat. In other words, with only their labor to sell for $. Add in the destruction of small, local business, rigging the stock market against retail/‘dumb’ money but usurping retirement accounts and investing everyone’s pensions into their pyramid scheme, essentially holding everyone, not just those that want change, hostage
Social policy = the ONLY difference. This manifests not just thru media, but judicially. Both Pro-Police state. Both twist Mass media (and that’s 5he only media now) into the 5th government branch, regurgitating the governments propaganda.
Republicans are varying degrees conservative, pining for years long gone that no one has actually lived thru. The right wants a return to the post war era, minus unions, taxes, and civic investment (the things that allowed the middle class to exist). Democrats are socially conciliatory. Which is seen as spineless. They’ll go along with the get along. But they’ll never actually spur change, just appease w/e unrest and go right back to fellatiating corporations and police unions.
Civilians on both sides want change. Both sides can acknowledge that America is broken but one side says it’s because of the transgenders and the gays and the other side just says, to song and dance, “hey, we aren’t them 👉” to distract from the pointing fingers at consolidated wealth as the problem.
So it’s get in line, act in line, or get benched.
Fuck America. We’re out here starving and we have the choice of a road side carcass or a multivitamin but never actual food.
None of that matters. It’s a 2-party FPTP system and one party is fascist and trying to overthrow democracy. It’s literally a choice between a shitty country and facsism.
The place to try to push for progressive change is the primaries, not the fucking General Election. At this point the General is just survival.
You’ve seen less election cycles than I have if you think voting will bring change.
Social unrest, protesting, rioting brings change
Voting (in the past 50 years) simply reaffirms or denies the social unrest. The media talks of nothing else. It’s ratify the status quo or the end of democracy, neverminding that the status quo is essentially institutionalized fleecing. We are tax-chattle. Every dollar you save, somehow, in the system entirely built to make that impossible, will be extracted from your body in exchange for medicine. We will all die penniless and propertyless. By design.
Social unrest, protesting, rioting brings change
So fucking do it. Get out there and riot or whatever you want. All you’re doing is shitting on the last form of peaceful change we have left. We all get you’re jaded and cynical.
I never said I was against voting, quite the opposite actually.
I’m just trying to temper expectations back to reality. Voting for change when you have two options 1. Status quo, even tho everyone acknowledges it’s not working - for us anyways 2. Fascism.
Ya see how only one side offers change, and that change is terrifying?
The Dems are essentially incapable of leading change that benefits everyone, and when they do pass big policy, it’s Republican policy (Welfare to work, 3 strikes, ACA).
Unfortunately for anyone concerned with the future or wanting better, be that the youth or progressives, Liberals (moderate “Democrats”, commonly called centrists nowadays)vision of society is what we have. Trickle down. Subscription model everything. Yada yada. When all you care about is money (which is implied by being pro-corporate, socially conciliatory) all you care about is not rocking the boat. It’s the mayor of DC naming the street Black Lives Matter to placate unrest, NOT to do ANYTHING actual meaningful, but to do something trite and superficial that liberals can close their ears off to anything else while they point and say “I did something”.
Voting my guy, is the START of defense. It is not offense. The difference is CRUCIAL if effecting change is your actual goal. We need precise language, expectations, and goals to ward off the liberal duplicity and double speak. I’m on your side man, I’m just trying to flesh out some of the nuance your way.
And yo, don’t at me, we gotta be better than that in an exchange of ideas. You don’t know where I’m coming from. I just lost my house and every fucking thing Ive ever owned, and my hedgehogs, on the 5th of July (neighbors fireworks, FML fr). I’m a little busy trying to stay warm and clothed this winter instead of leading a protest, sorry if that doesn’t fit your timetable, it doesn’t fit mine either.
