Brian Gongol
Today at 1:00 Central: The WHO Radio Wise Guys return to the air
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America, land of the free, becomes the land of the one-party state
A New York Times report holds that 37 states will have a single party in power, controlling the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers. A University of Minnesota professor says, "If you wondered what Washington would look like under single-party rule, the states are a laboratory for that now." One can hope that this might mark the peak of mindless partisanship -- in which people affiliate with one party or another based solely on hot-button issues -- and might give way to an era of performance-based voting, in which voters take a serious look at the actual performance of their elected officials and vote accordingly. It is certain that the only way any of the many "third parties" out there would ever work their way into prominence is by taking advantage of these completely un-balanced times, getting themselves elected as the "alternative" party on a local basis in places where a single party has absolute control (like the Democrats do in Chicago and greater Illinois, for instance), and then using that performance-based record to get themselves elected more broadly. But they have to prove themselves in a practical way, not in an ideological way -- and that's what the "third party" adherents seem not to realize.
