ANSWERS: 3
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The problem with politicians not having parties is that one politician cannot pass a law - they have to gang up. If they belong to parties, you know who they will gang up with; if they have no parties, you have no idea who they will gang up with. A Congress without parties would be essentially unpredictable. You may say that they would gang up to deliver on their promises. But any single politician will probably make promises on only a dozen or so of the hundreds of issues before the. So they will go to their fellow congressmen saying saying "support me on this issue, one of my hot ones, and I will vote whichever way you say on your issue that I have made no promises about". Political parties are a necessary evil - government would be even more of as favour-trading house without them. But two parties is not necessarily the right number.
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We should always go to the trouble of paying attention to what they're saying. Political parties are a necessary evil (though I wish there were more than 2 dominant), but voting for a party as opposed to paying attention to the substance of a candidate's message is insane. I am a registered democrat, but never voted a straight ticket in 38 years of voting until the past 8 years, for reasons of my own. In this last election I didn't vote a straight ticket on my state's election slate. People who don't go to the "trouble" of paying attention (and that includes people who get all of their info from pundits, talking heads and sound bites) don't even deserve a democracy in my opinion.
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I don't vote for the party at all. As a matter of fact I think we would be better off if all of them walked off a cliff together. I vote for the person and hope their party affiliation doesn't poison them too much. I hate our two party system. It stifles the conversation of political ideas by pigeonholing every little thing as either Right or Left. Seems to me most folks are a little of each until election time. Then they go with the side that seems to have their values in mind. When in reality neither party cares squat about ideologies. What comes out of their mouths is lip service for the most part. Both are more concerned with holding power, gaining power or defeating power. Our interests run a distant second to these main imperatives. It's a rigged system and I hate it.
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