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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Strict party discipline is only good when the party's platforms are good. Strict adherence to bad dogma is ultimately repressive.
Party discipline is something the Obama-era GOP had a lot of. (It's broken down noticeably when they actually find themselves running the show.)
edited 8th May '17 7:24:00 PM by Elle
Since you mention it, I don't believe either party has a formal procedure for expelling anyone. They could blackball them informally but I don't know any case that's actually happened.
I dunno though. The Tea Party had the GOP moderates by the balls just by threatening to primary them if they didn't vote their way - guy who loses a vote can still run again or run elsewhere. I can only imagine what sort of threat expulsion would be unless it really truly was for serious breaches of ethics and such. The state of things here is such that if someone is ousted from the party system their career would be utterly over.
edited 8th May '17 7:36:14 PM by Elle
So Sally Yates said Mikey "Shock 'em" Pence could, "essentially be blackmailed by the Russians" because of Flynn's actions. So where does that leave the investigation? Trump is going into fearful deflection yet his name wasn't brought up, it is unlikely he'll get kicked out unless they find something to tie to him personally. But will there be another trial?
Edit: Hearing about POS Cruz getting hit hard verbally is a joy to watch though.
edited 8th May '17 8:04:42 PM by Wildcard
It works in most other countries, the parties are considered private organisations (often with membership fees) and can thus expel members should they so wish (though in some cases parties have been forced to accept members if their exclusion was due to being sort of a protected class, the BNP were once forced to accept black members).
Here's the thing, this means that parties end up with more coherent policies (they don't have to please everyone who feels like putting their name down), are more independent finacially from donners (membership fees are a good way to raise money), they're more distinct from each other (which also helps reduce apathy) and you get a great variety of opinions being debated publicly instead of behind closed doors. It helps encourage growth of smaller parties because it means that people who vary to much form the party line either leave or are forced out and then go on to found their own parties.
The problem is that the US has this weird system where the government has a large roll in the internal workings of US political parties, primaries being run by the government is one example but the fact that when registering the vote you're asked what party you belong to is another.
Oh and on a different topic, after France is there any change of a movement occurring to try and push the US towards a similar voting system? Legally what's to stop a state making their presidential election be determined via a jungle primary and runoff (which is exactly what happened in France)?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBefore someone calls us out on derailing the thread any further, I'd just like to reiterate that Paul Ryan is not like Andrew Ryan. He's more like one of those idiots who would get an invite to Rapture and fall for the Original Position Fallacy. He'd probably end up being one of the toilet scrubbers.
The really interesting thing is wondering who in real life would be most similar to Frank Fontaine. A New York conman who engages in shady business and gains a power base by pandering to the "common folk" in Rapture...
edited 8th May '17 9:43:53 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Especially Oddworld. The main villains in those games are essentially the GOP, the main enemies you fight are militarized police, it has a heavy industrial authoritarian air to the setting, and it has a big pro-environment and anti-corporation message.
edited 8th May '17 10:05:43 PM by FireCrawler2002
In other news, Comey apparently lied to Congress about how Huma Abedin forwarded "thousands" of emails to Weiner.
The hilarious part is that the FBI can't figure out how it should deal with this. It's so dysfunctional that they can't even send a damn correction letter.
edited 8th May '17 10:18:54 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedUnicorn Brigader fight
. Conspiracy nut (there is no other word for it) HA Goodman denounced TYT for selling out to the Democratic Establishment, while regurgitating every anti-Clinton talking point he can think of (DNC rigged the primary, "superpredators", blah blah blah) and insisting that the "purest progressive voices" need to blow up the Democrats and form their own party.
That someone like this continues to be given a platform at the Huffington Post (and on other ostensibly liberal sites) depresses me—and explains why I'll never take HuffPo seriously. That some people are still pushing for the left to self-destruct in this fashion frightens me. That they're finally eating their own, conversely, amuses me far more than it should. Please, feel free to attack Cenk all you want Goodman. Hopefully with his ego he'll waste time firing back at you and we can watch you two cannibalize one another for a while instead of continuing to target actual Democrats and actual progressives.
I have only a passing familiarity with TYT - all I really know is Cenk Uygur is a genocide denier and its name comes from the political movement whose leaders were responsible for carrying out the aforementioned genocide (I'm getting the impression it was a little more complicated than that, but you get what I mean).
It's a wee bit hard to take the guy or his organization seriously as a "progressive" entity given all that.
I also think it's super weird, that these types of people have such ridiculous purity tests that they'd just squabble over who's the real sellout to the establishment while the US lies in a smouldering ruin after the Trump administration.

I'm not too worried about Gabbard this cycle, she's far too young and has no support base of note. Still, creeps like her do make me see the advantages of stricter party discipline conventions used in other countries.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.