Two America's - why not give it a try??

[alcmaeon]

The New York Times had a full page spread showing the state by state breakdown on Dem vs Republican states in every presidential election going back to the early part of the last century. The country seems to flip flop blue and red every 20 years or so. Ranging from the solid red of Reagan to the nearly solid blue of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson This year things looked mighty red in the south and the west but give it 20 years of population shifting and it may be solid blue again. Reno is already becoming East San Francisco... The reality is we need both sides. You know you don't really want to live in a country dominated by conservative religious individuals, you know it would look like Taliban Afghanistan or 1980 Iran. It goes the same for the ultra liberals, we'd end up in some version of Soviet style sillyness like Nepal seems to be headed for. I guess that makes me a Neutralist! Maybe I should start a new moderate party.

 

[Silent-Snail]

Maybe I should start a new moderate party.

Go for it

 

[Brian Dale]

Y'know, I've been calling myself a "classical liberal" and a "small-L libertarian" based on the issues of the day. I see that the larger question of HOW the country should be governed deserves to be moved from the back burner to the front.

Call me a Federalist.

If that confuses the uninitiated, who mistakenly believe that the word means that I support more power centralized in the federal government, that's just too bad. Let 'em read, or let 'em be confused.

 

[Warren]

IF there was a liposuctioning away of the fatty infected areas THEY would control all the major ports and thus have a strangle hold on imports with which they could do some serious damge to the manufacturing base of this country.

The same goes for all the major financial centers. And a lot of manufacturing.


This would be a disaster for the rest of us.


So lets change the Electoral College to one vote per county regardless of the population of the county.

Could get some things done then.

On the other hand this could mean the Repugs would be even less inclined to satisfy their base given that they would be a lock every four years.

And it might make it easier for the relegious wing of the Reps to force themselves on everyone else.

 

[Ivy Mike]

Texas!?!?!?
You'll never take Nevada alive!!!!!

I like this idea.

 

[tcsd1236]

Never. We are one nation, regardless of any ideological differences

 

[nualle]

If the cities are parasites on the countryside, so is the same true in reverse. Look at the county map that ctdonath so helpfully provided. All the major ports except New Orleans voted blue. -- And the Mississippi river north of New Orleans is "bottled up" by a two big swaths of interior Blueland.

How is Redland going to fuel all its military hardware (not to mention transportation and farming infrastructures) when all the foreign oil coming into those ports isn't getting traded to it by Blueland? Answer: it'll have to take and occupy much, if not all, of Blueland.

 

[TimRB]

"Answer: it'll have to take and occupy much, if not all, of Blueland."

That shouldn't be a problem. Blueland's response will be to hold hands and sing We Shall Overcome.

Tim

 

[rbrowning]

Like I suggested the other day, give each county one electorial vote. KY would be the most influential state in a presidential election.

 

[jason10mm]

You could always just do away with the electoral college all together and use the popular vote. That should satisfy everyone. No more pandering to specific regions (eg, the "swing" states), presidents would have to deal with the country as a whole. We have the technology now to do that. Unfortunatly we also have the technology to allow instant access media to influence such a vote.

Of course, what we REALLY need are term limits in the Senate, House, and Supreme Court. Having entrenched ideas and people runnig the country who are so out-of-touch with reality is what is killing us. Imagine a Senate with no Kennedy, Feinstein, Schumer, or Daschle (oh wait, whoo-hoo!) who just keep on rolling, term after term. Go back to the idea of the everyday citizen who steps up to the challenge of running the country, rather than career politicos locked up with special interest groups. If the Supreme Court judges were forced to rotate out after a set time, maybe there wouldn't be such resistance to candidates (and the looney ones would be gone after a while).

 

[Sawdust]

You could always just do away with the electoral college all together and use the popular vote. That should satisfy everyone.

Uh, no, not me.

No more pandering to specific regions (eg, the "swing" states), presidents would have to deal with the country as a whole.

This is exactly why we have an electoral college - to prevent a few areas of the country with large concentrations of the population from "ruling" the rest of the country.

Sawdust

 

[geekWithA.45]

PA is a great model for why a pure popular vote is a bad idea.

More than 1/2 the Kerry votes came out of Philadelphia alone, and Kerry won PA by a slimmer margin than Bush won Ohio.

At the state level, that would mean that if PHL wasn't firewalled off from the rest of us by the winner takes the whole district mechanism, the city could overpower the rest of the state, and turn it into a hellhole like NJ.

At the county level, PA's mostly Red.

So, incidentally, if we're gonna give the Blue states to Canada, let us over here wall off PHL and cede it to Jersey first, and then stay in America.

 

[cls12vg30]

Call me a Federalist.

If that confuses the uninitiated, who mistakenly believe that the word means that I support more power centralized in the federal government, that's just too bad. Let 'em read, or let 'em be confused.

Me too, though I prefer the clarity of the term "Constitutional Federalist"

I do see the anti-gay-marriage victories as a victory for states' rights, if the SCOTUS tries to overturn them there will be a very nasty, very public fight which might get people thinking about true Federalism again.

You see, if we were able to go back to the Federalist system spelled out in the Constitution, where the national government is responsible for defense, foreign policy, minimal regulation of interstate commerce, and little else, we wouldn't have these problems of "division". Who the President is would have much less impact. If your state goes in a political direction you don't like, you just move to another state. This is still effective to a point today, I for one blew out of New York State right after college, for reasons of climate, culture, and politics. Now you could not extract me from the South for anything. I am glad that such decisions can be freely made by individuals, and I wouldn't want to have the country politically homogeneous.

Federalism will ensure that this state-by-state and region-by-region variance remains. If NY wants socialist programs, NY can pay for them. (Although a lot of people in upstate NY are not happy about getting their a$$e$ taxed off to pay for NYC's welfare rolls.)

The Constitution of the United States is the single greatest political document ever written, people. Following it to the letter would give most all of us the country (or state) we really want.

 

[Robert J McElwain]

Some of the comments here remind me of one item that the far left and the far right have in common. That is intolerance for all opinions that vary from their own.

The political spectrum is not a straight line with the far left on one end and the far right on the other. It is circular. The spectrum starts at the bottom of the circle with the moderate mainstream, and as one moves away from that point, either left or fight, one moves to the other side of the circle, at the top, which totalitarianism.

Thank God for the Constitution which saves us from our extremes.

Bob

 

[corncob]

The Constitution of the United States is the single greatest political document ever written, people. Following it to the letter would give most all of us the country (or state) we really want.

While this would certainly give ME what I really want, I have become very sure that the vast majority of Americans most certainly do NOT want the Constitution. If it were forced on them, maybe they would be glad about it later, but remember that 98% of the voters in this country voted for Bush and Kerry last week. Try selling any of THOSE people on the idea of ending social security, or pulling troops out of Iraq because Congress isn't given the authority to give the President the authority to wage war, or ending federal enforcement of drug prohibitions and gun control, etc.

Also, with respect to the blue counties controlling all the ports and buisiness centers, you are forgetting about the free market. If the enlightened left were free of us, I'm pretty sure the cost of doing buisiness in their country would rise pretty fast. On the other hand, taxes in the red states would most likely fall pretty quickly. I think it would work out. This assumes that those who vote Republican, and thus make the red counties red, really do want to give up all the goodies the government currently pays for. Remember, with the blue counties off the payroll, the coffers of the red county governments would immediately begin to overflow, and they might get used to it.

 

[red_devil1469]

The Kerry Klan has already proposed a map.

 

[Atticus]

Who's John Galt?

 

[DRZinn]

If the Constitution (including the Tenth Amendment) were as ironclad as it was meant to be, the entire country could be populated and led by Marxist socialists, and it STILL wouldn't matter.

 

[DRZinn]

I'll see your "Who is John Galt?" and raise you a "Howard Roark laughed."

 

[MICHAEL T]

Be cheaper and easier to just shoot all Dem's .

 

[Moondoggie]

I have thought about the practicality of "city states" as well.

The red areas would have more guns, less crime, and almost all of the food. There are enough ports in red areas to facilitate foreign trade and oil imports. I'm sure we'd also have most of the military.

I also find it interesting that the blue areas mostly border on large bodies of water.

I'm fortunate to live in one of the few all red states...67% of Nebraskans voted for President Bush. Now, if we could just get a CCW law passed.

 

[Pilgrim]

The big liberal centers are parasites on the rest of the country. The only way they can fund their big government programs is to force everyone else to pay for it.

Looks like it would be pretty easy to starve them into submission.

Pilgrim

 

[BigG]

Why not just build a fence around the urban blue areas?

 

[schizrade]

The Kerry Klan has already proposed a map.

ROFLMAO!!

Had a good laugh at that one.

 

[Brasso]

We could of course simply get back to the Constitution as it was written, giving all power to the states except for those specifically expressed for the federal government; but then the Democrats wouldn't have that huge tax base to blackmail the states with to keep them in line with their other socialist ideas. Unfortunately, in a free republic, when the sense of morality / right and wrong are put to the curb you need more laws to keep order. As long as the Democrats keep pushing their moral relativism on us we will need to adopt more of their dumbass laws to keep the order. Sad really. The Democrats are pure evil. IMHO.