Rigidity demonises gays

Peter Hartcher  of the SMH has an in interesting piece on the way the US electoral system works. Strangely he says that some Americans are looking to the way the Australian system works as a possible reform for over there. Personally I can't imagine that ever happening, but he does raise some legitimate points. And the assessment that campaigns there are fought on the policy extremes are correct from where I'm sitting.

I was watching a show on the telly earlier, a foreign correspondent special about the US elections. A reporter from Australia was driving around Florida and meeting up with various people there to get a gauge on it all. At one point she was where the Republicans were meeting and a big truck drove by. She looked at it rather aghast. I had on it big giant posters of aborted babies, something you'd never see here in any elections. She said that sort of thing was actually quite common over there. An example of the extremes of politics playing a part in the bid to gain votes.

Where is the middle ground? Why can't anyone agree over there? Another example she gave was "Obamacare", which was viewed as either the best thing since sliced bread, or the beginnings of a socialist takeover. In the public discourse there's no compromise. It's either this way or that way. These are old issues that have been long discussed and resolved in most other countries. It's like America is arguing issues from 30 years ago. Such rigidity. No give and take.

Anyway, for what it's worth, some of the opinion piece from here.

The single most important reform for the US proposed by Mann and Ornstein is probably the most controversial - the Australian system of compulsory voting. ''In both primaries and general elections in the US, party professionals and consultants focus on bases: how to gin up the turnout of the party's ideological base and suppress the turnout of the other side,'' they write. 

This has ''encouraged a concentration on hot-button issues that appeal to the party bases, like guns, abortion, immigration and same-sex marriage, and led to more and more extreme rhetoric and exaggerated positions''. 

With compulsory voting, the incentive to drive turnout through appeals to the extremes would evaporate. The new incentive would be to appeal to the moderate middle. 

Which is why Australian elections are never fought on guns or abortion but on the earnest middle issues like mortgage rates. 

Another lesson they draw from the Australian model is the idea of an independent, apolitical body to draw electoral boundaries. In the US, most electorates are drawn up into gerrymanders by partisan state governments. This produces seats so safe they are practically unchallengeable. Read more

Perhaps this is what's caused the extremism and narrow minded stupidity I spat the dummy about in the last post. Must say I've not been so angry and frustrated as that before with US politics. I think it was that revolting old lady who said with such venom about being "against homosexuals". It was almost to the point of hysteria. Any political party who demonises the sexuality of a minority to gain votes is appalling.