Solution to the Tea Party.

[Roy]

You don't understand how grass roots stuff works, do you, Clutch? It kinda starts this way, crackpot shit said on a small internet forum, then rolls into larger and larger stuff.

I don't want to see the Den party. Like ever. Instead of pork barrel spending, it would have barrels of cocks. Whenever someone talks about breaking something the Den party would scream Sundertard at them. And its party line would be boobies for everyone.

Someone back me up here, that sounds like the greatest party ever. Senators yelling at rivals "Learn to listen jackwad! Go suck a barrel of cocks!"... Representatives trolling Tea-Partiers saying it's a social experiment... attorney generals just laughing in the faces of people opposed to their politics... it'd be the most honest politics ever...

Well, when you put it that way...

[Draco_Argentum]

I mean, of course they're still going to run Republican. They're not stupid (well, they are, but for different reasons ). Running third party would split the vote and almost certainly hand victory over to Democratic candidates.

The correct way to end the Tea Party is to get on the inside and agitate for a split from the GOP.

Get to work you lot.

[cthulhu]

The best solution for the tea party is

A) An end to gerrymander districts in the US

B) Compulsory voting.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The best solution for the tea party is seriously not to do anything. If you had a serious and viable Dominionist or Third Positionism party THAT would be something to worry about. But this is the same old mangy dog, same old tired tricks. Just that the trainer dyed the dog's fur blue this time in hopes that you wouldn't notice.

[Blasted]

The best solution for the tea party is

A) An end to gerrymander districts in the US

B) Compulsory voting.

Because that worked so well for Australia during the entire One Nation debacle?

[cthulhu]

The best solution for the tea party is

A) An end to gerrymander districts in the US

B) Compulsory voting.

Because that worked so well for Australia during the entire One Nation debacle?

Sure, the liberal party actually moved to the centre in response and the one nation party got gutted, failing to elect anyone. (Federal election)

Which bit of that is your problem, the move to the centre, or the catastrophic failure of one nation?

They got some traction in the Qld state parliament, but promptly exploded and lots almost everything at the next election. Overall? Great success.

[K]

The Tea Party, like all fascist movements, found its rise in economic troubles. Fix the economy and they'll go away.

[Blasted]

Sure, the liberal party actually moved to the centre in response and the one nation party got gutted, failing to elect anyone. (Federal election)

Which bit of that is your problem, the move to the centre, or the catastrophic failure of one nation?

They got some traction in the Qld state parliament, but promptly exploded and lots almost everything at the next election. Overall? Great success.

The LNP's policies didn't shift at all. They were also quite careful to make their statements toward ON as ambivalent as possible, so as to ensure preferences (not that this was much of an issue - most ON voters would put the ALP in the same group as the communists. There is an exception at the time for unionised miners.)
ON polled quite well in the 2001 federal election, with 10% of the primary vote in QLD. Normally this would win a senate seat, but preference flow dealt with this.

I believe that the fall of ON had more to do with internal, personnel and policy issues. The internal policies were well documented at the time. They failed to get well versed pollies to run for them. There were a series of interview failures and their policies were laughable (2% 'simple' tax). That they received 10% of the primary vote in QLD given their utter failure to run a campaign is evidence that there was considerable support. The greens have elected many candidates with a substantially smaller vote (pre 2007).
The point here is that the preferential system had more to do with their failure than compulsory voting.

Therefore, I think that the US voting systems with first-past-the-post winners will probably serve to better allow tea party candidates, but with similar issues on policy and personnel, I think that they will meet a similar fate and that compulsory voting will have little to do with it.

Gerrymandering favours the incumbents, so I don't believe that it is entirely relevant on a national scale in the US.

[cthulhu]

The LNP's policies didn't shift at all.

ON polled quite well in the 2001 federal election, with 10% of the primary vote in QLD. Normally this would win a senate seat, but preference flow dealt with this.

So your point is:

A) No federal policy shifts occurred

B) No-one actually got elected

Wow, that's a huge impact those guys had? Wait, no it's not.

Gerrymandering is just bad practice - it's realistically just used to oppress minorities or minority views, so fuck that.

[Neeeek]

Gerrymandering is just bad practice - it's realistically just used to oppress minorities or minority views, so fuck that.

Hmm. District-drawing (and gerrymandering) is actually a hell of a lot more complicated than you seem to think.

For example, if you had 4 districts to draw up (each getting 25% of the population, to make the math simple, we'll say there are 400 people total)), and 30% of the population tended to heavily vote one way (Group A = 120 people) and the other 70% tended to vote the other way (Group B = 280 people), but not as strictly as Group A, which of the following divisions would you think is the most fair:

1) Each district is divided exactly like the overall 70-30 split. In this case, the Group A has 0 representation.
2) District 1: 100 A, 0 B; District 2 and 3 : 100 B, 0 A, District 4 : 20 A, 80 B. In this case, Group A has 1 representatives, B has 3 and there are no competitive districts.
3) District 1 and 2: 50 A, 50 B; District 3 and 4 : 90 B, 10 A. In this case, A will have up to 2 representatives but may get none, and there are only 2 safe districts.
4) District 1, 2, and 3: 40 A, 60 B, District 4: 100 B, 0 A. In this case A is likely to have no representation, unless there is a major change in the voting habits of the region (which happens enough that these would be considered quasi-competitive districts), at which time they will have 3 representatives despite having only 30% of the population.

So which of these is it you want? Safe districts make ousting incumbents extremely difficult, but they also make it so that minorities have some representation when they would not if their voting power was diluted in a scheme that looks more fair on paper.

[cthulhu]

I'm intimately aware of how gerrymandering works. My observation is that if we look at Gerrymandering in practice, as it has been used throughout the ages, lets see what has been done with it:

Greece: Used by the right wing group to suppress the leftists

Northern Ireland: Used by the Protestants to suppress Catholics

Latvia uses it to suppress the poles.

Gerrymandering is FUCKED UP.

The independent commission is best. I am a big fan of the Australian Electoral Commission - but Elections Canada could serve as another model.

Incidently, your proposed example is probably best served by a proportional electoral system, but 70-30 with 100% compliance to votes is a ridiculously sharp demographic divide. That is safer than Australian's individually safest seat that anyone runs a non incumbent candidate in (there is one 80% electorate but it's a bit weird), and you're proposing that nationally.

That's why packing the minority into one district looks like a good idea. But it doesn't help - okay they have a representative, but they are never going to win government.

Gerrymandering is just bad practice - it's realistically just used to oppress minorities or minority views, so fuck that.

Hmm. District-drawing (and gerrymandering) is actually a hell of a lot more complicated than you seem to think.

For example, if you had 4 districts to draw up (each getting 25% of the population, to make the math simple, we'll say there are 400 people total)), and 30% of the population tended to heavily vote one way (Group A = 120 people) and the other 70% tended to vote the other way (Group B = 280 people), but not as strictly as Group A, which of the following divisions would you think is the most fair:

1) Each district is divided exactly like the overall 70-30 split. In this case, the Group A has 0 representation.
2) District 1: 100 A, 0 B; District 2 and 3 : 100 B, 0 A, District 4 : 20 A, 80 B. In this case, Group A has 1 representatives, B has 3 and there are no competitive districts.
3) District 1 and 2: 50 A, 50 B; District 3 and 4 : 90 B, 10 A. In this case, A will have up to 2 representatives but may get none, and there are only 2 safe districts.
4) District 1, 2, and 3: 40 A, 60 B, District 4: 100 B, 0 A. In this case A is likely to have no representation, unless there is a major change in the voting habits of the region (which happens enough that these would be considered quasi-competitive districts), at which time they will have 3 representatives despite having only 30% of the population.

So which of these is it you want? Safe districts make ousting incumbents extremely difficult, but they also make it so that minorities have some representation when they would not if their voting power was diluted in a scheme that looks more fair on paper.

[Blasted]

So your point is:

A) No federal policy shifts occurred

B) No-one actually got elected

Wow, that's a huge impact those guys had? Wait, no it's not.

Gerrymandering is just bad practice - it's realistically just used to oppress minorities or minority views, so fuck that.

No, my point was that compulsory voting and gerrymandering didn't have a great impact on ON and I think that it would have the same outcome for the teaparty.

[cthulhu]

But the tea party, in an environment with gerrymandering and optional voting won 40 seats (Federally)

ON won nothing.

US Gerrymandering makes things more polarised - in a safe district a looney can run against a moderate and win, and then win the general election, but if you are a competitive district and try that you are fucked.

[PhoneLobster]

Sure, the liberal party actually moved to the centre in response and the one nation party got gutted, failing to elect anyone. (Federal election)

Which bit of that is your problem, the move to the centre, or the catastrophic failure of one nation?

What fucking alternate universe do you live in?

The Liberals response to one nation was to adopt a number of their policies and a large chunk of their rhetoric.

One nation taught the Australian Liberals (already die hard right wingers) that there was a substantial racist voting block still out there NOT being exploited properly by their National party allies, and the Liberals moved HARD RIGHT on social, ethnic, aboriginal and migration policy in order to capture that voting block, which handily saved them from electoral defeat earned from their OTHER policies and scandals.

Major LIBERAL figures will tell you this. At the election where they first adopted the One Nation voters into their fold they gloated about it openly on the ABC electoral coverage. Damnit the party is now so super hard core right that Malcolm "god damn" Fraser himself regards them as a bunch of dangerous red necked extremists and will take any and every opportunity to harshly criticize his own damn party in public.

What part of ANY of that was the Liberal party moving more to "Center"?

What the hell about "Lets victimize them scary brown refugees in return for votes!" was "Center"?

No really what the hell about blatantly racist rhetoric and policy is anything other than glaringly hard, EXTREME hard, right?

[cthulhu]

Just to be clear, the state ensures that you have to walk up to the ballot box. Do you really think someone on the extreme right wing is, when presented with

A) Liberal

B) Greens

C) Labor

Going to tick the third box? Like, ever?

[PhoneLobster]

That it IS indeed a bad political strategy for the Labor party to try and appeal to the hard right is neither here nor there.

The fact of the matter is that there IS a hard right element within the Labor party, it is in fact MORE powerful than the left in the Labor party and just as the years after One Nation and Family First have seen the Liberals swing hard right to try and appeal to the supporters of those extremist parties the Labor party has also swung to the right.

Gillard has (much to the despair of Labor party rank and file) turned out to be more Right wing in her policies than Rudd, Rudd was more right wing than Keating, and the man who held the party down and kicked them in the nuts between Keating and Rudd (that idiot Beasley) was pretty hard core Labor right as well and probably at least as Right wing as Gillard has turned out to be in practice.

The fact is that the wake of one Nation has seen all the major parties swing to the right. Earning left wing votes from the Greens is hard voters in the Australian left care significantly about a broad range of issues. You can rope them in with some vague promises about Carbon taxes... but then lose them the moment you attempt a corrupt and incompetent privatization deal. How fickle is that!

Meanwhile one nation red necks and family first extremists are EASY. One nation voters will totally let you rob them of their telecommunications network as long as they feel secure that somehow somewhere a scary brown migrant is being kicked in the nuts for no good reason. Family first voters will let you screw them over in the hip pocket with "work place reforms" and other crazy shit as much as you like as long as you talk tough about abortion laws and do crazy shit like ban small breasted women from Australian porn.

It is a rather natural product of right wing political strategies over the years that left wing politics is isolated from the center at every opportunity, and if you need an example of this in the extreme you only need to look at the USA, but Australia DID experience a significant shift of "the Center" in the direction of the right in the decades since Keating (and indeed the decades since Fraser really...) and a major part of that shift is directly attributable to events surrounding the Extremist right movements in Australia like Family First and One Nation.

One nation may have failed as a party but just look at federal Labor and Liberals. Still to this very day arguing about which of them is kicking brown skinned migrants in the nuts for no good reason the hardest. That's not a genuine Center, there is no left wing voice in the leadership of the major parties on this issue, and when Rudd was pushing for a swing to the left on it and other issues he was ousted by the Labor right faction.

[cthulhu]

Your conflating half a dozen issues

A) Federal Labour has lost its way - I agree with Bernand Keene on this.

B) Taking votes from the greens has always been a dead issue.. until 2007, which through some strange effect has doubled the greens vote nationally in federal and state elections. Prior to that, it was just not relevant.

This is why the greens party is suddenly resurgent. (Which is good). But has nothing to do with 1 nation, which died in 2001. (arguably 1998)

C) Labor Right comes from QLD and NSW.

D) Labor in QLD and NSW is fucked.

Hurray!

E) The liberal party has extreme right elements in it.

F) Family first.. has ended as a political party, for the same reason as one nation.

H) It's not clear if elements of traditional labor votes (blue collar workers) can be lured over to the liberal side with 'whats up in Kansas' strategies.

G) If they can be lured over, should the labor party shed votes on it's left flank to the greens to get them back?

[Blasted]

But has nothing to do with 1 nation, which died in 2001. (arguably 1998)

Actually ON is still happily lurching around like the zombie of that nutcase uncle everyone seems to have. It certainly has had success in QLD and as a grass roots movement, it's been more successful than ever in affecting the national agenda.

C) Labor Right comes from QLD and NSW.

and WA.

But the tea party, in an environment with gerrymandering and optional voting won 40 seats (Federally)

The teaparty has the support of the Republican party, and many candidates who aren't complete nutjobs. Two important advantages ON lacked. Had ON party members supplanted National candidates or Liberal candidates, and had they candidates able to put two sentences together, I think they would have been much more successful.

[cthulhu]

But has nothing to do with 1 nation, which died in 2001. (arguably 1998)

Actually ON is still happily lurching around like the zombie of that nutcase uncle everyone seems to have. It certainly has had success in QLD and as a grass roots movement, it's been more successful than ever in affecting the national agenda.

It doesn't have a single sitting member at the state or federal level. You could say the same thing about the socialist alliance. Compared the Greens they are a total fucking joke.

and WA.

Fair cop.

The teaparty has the support of the Republican party, and many candidates who aren't complete nutjobs. Two important advantages ON lacked. Had ON party members supplanted National candidates or Liberal candidates, and had they candidates able to put two sentences together, I think they would have been much more successful.

Sentences like 'I am not a witch'? or how about 'I should have the right to refuse service to a black man'

The second one got elected.

Joking aside, this is partly driven by the safe seats generated by Gerrymanders that stack partisan groups. Those elections are won or lost in the primaries or pre-selection battles not the general election. A number of republicans have said that a moderate republican could have won Delware in the general election, but not the primaries because, as we saw, the extreme right wing ate moderates for lunch.

That's what happens in the highly polarised safe seats. Now, Gerrymandering is of course not the only reason for the high polarisation, but its an obvious place to start to fix it.

[Juton]

Sentences like 'I am not a witch'? or how about 'I should have the right to refuse service to a black man'

The second one got elected.

Crazy thing is, I don't think Rand Paul is a racist. I think he is such a pure libertarian that he can't imagine artificially reducing his profits for something like race. That's the problem with libertarianism, it requires people to be rational operators, but they aren't.

[Prak]

But the tea party, in an environment with gerrymandering and optional voting won 40 seats (Federally)

The teaparty has the support of the Republican party, and many candidates who aren't complete nutjobs.

Jon Stewart's take on the Tea Party's Republican backing

[JigokuBosatsu]

Well, I suppose that is the problem with being libertarian. Agreeing with a number of 'pure Libertarian' platform points just happens to lump you in with the shitbag crazies. Sigh.

I completely support a Den Party. Would we favor the creation of a national Ombudsman? We could all take turns telling people to get fucked.

[Sashi]

Well, I suppose that is the problem with being libertarian. Agreeing with a number of 'pure Libertarian' platform points just happens to mean you're shitbag crazy

Fixed that for you.

[JigokuBosatsu]

arglebarglewharrgarbleeeblebeebledoodlyedoo

True dat.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I have found it to be more productive than to encourage my friends to be involved in the political process than to oppose the Tea Party directly. I don't feel that I have the ranks of diplomacy to convince a Tea Partier that they are wrong, but I have been semi-successful in getting my friends to the polls to oppose them.

Sounds better than the truth, the "Tea Party" are the exact same people that have had a stranglehold on Virginia politics since before I was born. I sincerely doubt I could make a huge difference, but I can at least negate some of the craziest people.