Political Football
At a time when we have two senators and one senate candidate from our one party state all trying to insert politics into college football (and all three claim to be conservatives – go figure) it seems appropriate to use a football analogy to describe the dangers of having one-party domination within the state or the nation.
Imagine the worst NCAA Division 1A (FBS) football team in the country playing the best team in the NFL. It should be a no-brainer to figure out which team will win the game.
Think of the worst NCAA Division 1A (FBS) football team in the country. Now imagine that team playing the best team in the NFL. It should be a no-brainer to figure out which team will win the game (or every game if they were to play multiple times). Now imagine that we make one minor rule change – the NFL team can only play defense – the only way they can score is a safety or an interception returned for a touchdown. Anytime they get the ball and don’t score they would be required to let the NCAA team play offense and keep trying to score. In that scenario it would be very rare for the NFL team to win the game.
The point that this should illustrate is that with such a rule change the football games would never give any indication about which was the better team or even how good each team was. So long as those rules were applied between teams more fairly matched than a middle school team vs professional athletes the outcome would be almost completely determined by which team was allowed to play offense.
If one team were only allowed to play defense the outcome would be almost completely determined by which team was allowed to play offense.
Living in a one-party state has the same effect on our political system. So long as one party has no opportunity to play offense the outcome of every political scrimmage is practically predetermined. Sadly the Democratic party in Utah seems resigned to a permanent minority status where all they can do is play defense and hope for some spectacular interceptions. (I don’t mean to imply that there are no democrats trying to play offense, but the party as a whole seems to have accepted the idea that they can’t win.) The result is that the values espoused by the Republican party as well as the values espoused by the Democratic party are never really explored or tested in our political arena. People who would otherwise be Democrats participate in the Republican party in order to influence the politics of the state and moderate members of the Republican party can be ignored by party insiders as they pander to more vocal and extreme elements of the party which are not representative of the core values of the party as a whole.
This sounds like a recipie for political decay.
Excellent post. Maybe the problem is that the partisan system was developed nationally, where there is parity between Dems and reps. It’s too bad we can’t have a separate partisan system in Utah with two or more uniquely Utah parties divided at the center of the Utah spectrum rather than the national spectrum
That’s an interesting idea, but I wonder if it’s really feasible to maintain a state party that is not connected to a major national party and have it competitive with a party that is thus connected.
That kind of system actually works in many municipalities across this nation, including my own. Perhaps states are too deeply intertwined with the federal government for a nonpartisan or nonaligned party approach to function, but it would be cool to try it out. It could hardly be worse than what we have.
I agree that it could hardly be worse than our current political situation in the state. I think that the reason that it has a better chance of working at the local level is that municipal governments are close to the people and the people are better able to influence their local politics in most cities. At the state level the government is just far enough from the people to make the odds of success much lower – not that it’s not worth a try.