Parties corrupt democracy. George Washington warned us. To him, parties put their own interests above those of the country. And their chief interest is to dominate, to control government.
So the parties split voters into two groups based on an issue. Not all members of Congress care about the issue, so they then embrace other issues to win over others. They end up splitting on a bunch of issues.
Then they argue just to make themselves look right and the make the other side wrong.
On the other issues, the voters don’t split the same, so people have to choose whether to stay in one party that represents them poorly in some ways, or join the other side which represents them poorly in other ways. This article reports: “Once you get out of Washington ‘conservative’ can mean all sorts of different things. Voters are often left of center on some issues and right of center on others.”
On some issues, the party doesn’t even represent the people. On the question of whether to close gun background-check loopholes, 93% of Americans want it. But the Republican party represents the NRA position, which is against it. And while the Democrats could easily pass a bill closing it, they’d rather leave it open to help make a future gun-control bill more attractive, sacrificing what the American people want to cater to their zealots.
On some issues, neither party represents the people. Depending on which poll you look at, 75% (in 2012), 71% (in 2011), 75% (in 2015) of Americans support term limits for Congress. Also 63% would abolish the electoral college. And over 90% would support anti-corruption legislation such as the American Anti-Corruption Act. Despite these issues having been around for years, neither party is taking a stand on them, much less championing legislation.
The bottom line is that the parties don’t represent the people. As Washington said, “They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community.”
Let’s free Congress from the dictates of parties. In the next article, we’ll see how PeopleCount.org accomplishes this.
Until then, please register, if you haven’t yet, and vote on term limits (questions 10 and 11).