Congress as Parliament

The body of the letter I sent today to Andrew Sullivan:

I'm an orthodox rabbi and I follow Israeli politics almost as obsessively as my local American scene. There has been a disturbing similarity between the two systems as seen since 2000 but especially in 2004 and 2006.

In Israel the main parties never have enough seats on their own to form a majority and they need to gather together a coalition of the narrow-minded smaller parties. To do so, the big parties - which are normally moderate left or moderate right - need to shift hard to the extremes to get the votes necessary to rule. The majority of the country is thus forced to accede to the demands of the wingnuts.

In 2000, we saw that the country we saw that the country is even divided between left and right. It's so closely divided that the extremes will determine the election. In 2000, the Green party ironically tossed the election to the Right Wing. The even divide was known to Karl Rove and in order to win the next elections, he needed to go the Knesset route and draw out the extremists in his own party to tip the scale.

2004 is the best example of this - where the country was so evenly divided that the few percent of Whacked-Out-Rightists tipped the election in Ohio - sealing all our fate.

For 2006 I see the same dynamic coming into play. Which is one reason why moderate-Republicans like you are acting as scared and angry as we Moderate-Democrats have since 2000. We're all in the same boat as in Israel - where the extremists are able to determine elections because the country is too evenly divided.

Rove, the 21st Century Rasputin, has hijacked America by playing this legitimate electoral game to the hilt. I wish I knew a way to stop it.

2009 Update: Pic from here.