alt Hacker NewsBecause the republicans punish their own when they reach out to support bipartisan efforts.
Even right now, congressmen have been threatened with being primaries if they don’t toe the line.
There has been multiple decades of very public efforts to degrade and break the American system. Ever since watergate.
Congress was broken.
I don't disagree with you, and neither would the Founding Fathers. In fact they were even opposed to the concept of political parties, but the power/convenience they enable means that lasted all of 5 seconds. But I would say that Congressmen being threatened with being primaried if they do unpopular things is literally the entire point of representative democracy.
I think the question is when that pressure to obey is coming from the people and when it's instead coming from the party. In the ideal scenario the party and the people (at least the constituency) would be in lockstep. In any case term limits would help. If you're going to be out of office in at most two terms, it eliminates any point about sacrificing your values for some sort of long-term favor/benefit with the party.