Two Dimensional Man

In his newsletter Capitol Comment, Iowa House Republican Mike May recently argued for maintaining the current Electoral College system and against the adoption of a national popular vote in a piece entitled "Why Trash the Constitution?" (Our representatives should ask themselves this question much more often.) Toward the end of the article, he provides us with a window onto the ideological prejudices of the duopolist politician. He contends:

Additionally, voters must consider this new initiative in terms of what it would do to the two-party system. Frankly, the present system favors two parties where a president almost always has the approval of a majority of the voters. If that were not so, minority party members could claim the winning candidate does not represent the will of the people.

Ironically, however, since 2006 a super-majority of Americans have consistently told pollsters that they do not believe the federal government represents the "will of the people." According to Rasmussen, "Less than a quarter of Americans (23%) believe the federal government truly reflects the will of the people . . . Those results [are] slightly more positive than those found in a survey taken last June, when only 17% said the government represented the will of the people and 68% said the opposite. In December 2006 only 16% believed the government reflected the will of the people, while 68% said it did not." May continues:

This fracturing of the American electorate might demand further changes of the Constitution to promote a multi-party system, and we need only to look at the modern history of, for example, France and Italy, to discover the chaos that can bring. (Or we may replicate nationally what is happening currently in the Coleman/Franken case in Minnesota).

By implying that the two party system is somehow mandated by the constitution, he effectively obscures that fact that it has rather been entrenched in myriad laws crafted by the duopoly parties themselves. On the other hand, while offering up France and Italy as examples of the "chaos" caused by non-duopolist political systems, he conveniently forgets that the Coleman/Franken case already represents the replication of the national Bush v. Gore debacle at the state level. However, May is not so blinded by duopolist ideology that he is completely incapable of registering its limitations, but with grave reservations:

While I sometimes think we would be better off with third party candidates that would offer voters more choices, that variety would come with a price. Radical groups on both sides could potentially gain more voice in promoting their agendas. (Emphasis added.)

This admission reveals the depth of the two-party delusion. Even when allowing for the possibility of more than two choices in any given contest, May still cannot conceive of the idea that there would be more than two sides in the equation! In the self-serving ideology of the duopoly, the two party system is necessary to keep Republicans and Democrats in check.