@JPB,
JPB wrote:
What we need is to eliminate political parties whose main goal is a power play on behalf of the party. It drive me nuts that folks at the RNC and DNC (who aren't elected by the people) get to determine what the party line and, hence, the voting agenda of the membership will be. We also need term limits and serious campaign finance reform, both of which I'm supporting at my state level and pushing for Constitutional Amendments driven by the state.
What will repace them? The goal of all political parties, movements, or associations -0r whatever you choose to call them - is political power. That's how democracy works, and I am not aware of any working democracy anywhere that is entirely (or even mostly) free of such factionalism.
Everyone appears to want "campaign finance reform" at least theoretically or in principle. However very few such advocates really favor the "reform" of campaign financing by organizations they favor. Environmentalists certainly don't wish various "green" advocacy groups to be silenced in their free advocacy; supporters of organized labor don't favor restrictions on the political contributions (or services in kind) provided by these organizations; associations of professionals (lawyers, doctors, variousd scientists, etc.) all support their contiunued right to organize and contribute to political actions they support. Similarly business associations have equivalent motives to protect their own interests. It is messy, but it is the nature of a free democracy. All of these actors imagine they are acting in the public interest, and none has a permanent lock on virtue or merited priviledge. If we act to restrict the free expression of one group or class of actors in this drama, then surely the freedom of all is in danger.
