Originally
posted by
Rockman:
Additionally, you assume that everyone fits on a 1 dimensional political spectrum between the two parties, and that there is no one off the grid. That is also incorrect. Most people are nowhere near the spectrum between Republican and Democrat.
I am assuming that people must fall somewhere along a 1 dimensional line that denotes 'Liberal' and 'Conservative'. The parties fall on the line, not the other way around. Everyone falls somewhere on that line. Maybe not in every issue at hand, but overall, everyone is a dot on that line. IF a strong, centrist party rose to power and manage to edge out both competing parties, one or the other party would simply disappear. The reality of the situation is that we have a first-past-the-post system, not a proportional system like many other countries have. The mechanics of the system CANNOT support 3 equal parties.
As the Republican Party continues to move further to the right(ie the extreme), they lose ground in the middle(ie independents/centrists/etc). If this trend continues, there could very well be a new party that would rest in the middle to middle right, and the GOP as we know it would dissolve. The people on the extremes are so far from the beliefs of the other party, that they are basically safe votes, and so parties must compete for those ideologically in the center. That's how it works in a system like ours.