@boomerang,
It seems something of a sham that allowed this concept to avoid California Democratic Party v. Jones.
How is expressing a preference for a party materially different than declaring a party affiliation?
Presumably the candidate who
expresses a preference for the Republican Party is receiving support (monetary and otherwise) from the Republican Party.
Ditto Democrats.
Much of one's thinking on this issue, I think, tends to depend upon one's definition of "moderate."
Assuming the argument made herein is accurate, that Republican candidates battle for the title of "most conservative," while Democrat candidates don't contend for the title of "most liberal," this is hardly proof that Republicans are more ideologically driven than Democrats.
It could be (and I think this is the case) that there is a greater frequency of primary battles wherein one candidate is materially different in terms of ideology in the Republican Party than its counter-part.
Value judgments aside, there is far more vigorous battle for primacy of ideology in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party. This is something of a cyclical affair. During the Vietnam years there was every bit as fervent an internecine ideological struggle within the Democrats as there is now among the Republicans, and this, in turn, led to the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council, and Bill Clinton's Third Way.
Current Democrats are all, essentially, singing from the same hymnal, but in a close race they have no problem appealing to ideological purity: Obama's emphasis on his anti-Iraq ware vote during the 2011 primaries. Was it really necessary for him to say "I am the more
liberal or more
anti-war candidate?" That he didn't is only a sign that currently, liberals share a very broad understanding of what it means to be a liberal.
Those who see Democrats as moderates and Republicans as extremists are, overwhelmingly liberal. That the media joins them in this definition of the term is quite helpful to the agenda of liberal politicians.
This is a battle of ideas and casting one side as extreme and other as pragmatic and moderate is an effective partisan ploy, but it doesn't make it so.
If conservative ideology is so terribly extreme in terms of what Americans actually believe and want, it will collapse upon itself. There is no need to monkey with primaries.
Moderate Republicans are ones who will go along with Democrats. They are no more beloved to conservatives than were the moderate Democrats who have gone along with Republicans, in their ascendency, to liberals.
Comparing liberals and conservatives in America to those so defined in the rest of the world may be interesting in some sense but it is meaningless in terms of defining what an American Liberal or an American Conservative may be.
If any reform is to be supported it is reform of re-districting schemes.
Here again, the current liberal trope (or for you Dawkinsians, "meme") is that gerrymander is strictly a Republican sin. Given sufficient political power either party will use and have used this approach to stack the deck.
Allowing the party in power to ensure their continuing power through means not connected with performance is harmful, however I'm not sure how the problem can be rectified. "Independent Commissions" are rarely independent and always subject to the manipulation of those in power.
It's always a case of whose ox is being gored. The tables have been repeatedly turned and will be turned again. I am quite sure that at some point in the fairly near future, liberals will be arguing that what others call extremism they call
speaking to power and patriotism.
