Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Imagine if say in the senate there were 36 republicans 40 democrats 11 communists 4 libertarians and 15 religious conservatives. To get anything done you would have to give into the demands of a fringe group.
|
I'm not sure if you'd have to give in. In your example the fringe groups would force the big two to work together to get anything passed, but they wouldn't necessarily have a lot of direct influence. There's also the fact that the democrats would be much more economically moderate than the communists as a whole, but would most likely have their support on many economic issues. The religious conservatives would likely be split economically, but agree with today's republicans on many social issues. The libertarians would side with dems on social issues (except gun control and some miscellaneous legislation where they don't think the government has a right to legislate, but would sit to the right of even the republicans on economic issues.
Overall, I think that the main effect is that people would get a chance to get rid of someone in office tehy don't like without switching sides completely. If, however, you're correct, I'm not paritcularly opposed to a congress that does nothing. Sure, it's a waste of money, but they can't screw stuff up if they can't do anything, and CSPAN's ratings would hit such record highs that major debates on proposed legislation would be put in place of the Jerry Springer show.