@engineer,
Quote:I agree with Cyclo, we could do much, much worse than what we have. In our particular poltical environment, the challenger to the incumbent, especially in the primaries, is the more radical of the two. Republican or Democrat, it doesn't matter. If the challengers were to win all the primaries, we would be faced with nothing but extremes in the final election.
This analysis is misleading, most incumbents don't get serious primary challengers-- meaning that of course when there is a challenger, it is going to be someone who has to show a difference from the person in office. This has always been the case.
This doesn't mean that Congress is getting more extreme, when someone outside of the mainstream in one party wins the election, quite often this gives the election to a moderate from the other party (I can give you countless examples of this-- and hopefully there will be more this year).
Quote:Around here, all the challengers have no qualifications for office other than they can spout the party line of whatever party they follow.
Stop blaming politicians for the idiocy of the voters. Politicians have to give voters what they want in order to win-- and if spouting the party line is what gets the most votes, what would you have them do?
