One thing a lot of people said early on in Trump’s administration is that we are better off with him than we’d be with Mike Pence. I don’t hear anyone saying that anymore. That doesn’t mean Pence wouldn’t be a terrifying president, but he would present a terror we could understand and live with a little easier than the current clusterfuck we’re experiencing.
In the United Kingdom, things finally got so bad that the Tories basically forced their leader out of office. This is proof that they’re smarter than our conservatives here at home who seem trapped like dinosaurs in the La Brea tar pit. But the British process for replacing Prime Minister Theresa May is absolutely bone-chilling. Imagine if we had this system in place in America!
May will remain as acting leader and prime minister for a few weeks while the party picks a successor, who will become the next prime minister.
Conservative lawmakers will hold a secret ballot on Thursday, with any candidates who don’t get at least 5% dropping out. Further rounds will be held the following week until the field is narrowed to two.
The final two candidates will meet in a runoff that will be decided in a mail-in vote by the country’s approximately 160,000 Conservative Party members. The winner will be announced the week of July 22.
Mind you, these 160,000 die-hard conservatives are not choosing a nominee. They are selecting (essentially electing) the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. It’s up to them, with their choices only limited by the scared little rabbits in Parliament who are convinced they must appease the most racist and xenophobic elements of their society or go the way of the Dodo bird.
The oddsmakers believe that Boris Johnson will be one of the final two and that’s he favored to be the next occupant of 10 Downing Street. Boris Johnson is almost as willfully dishonest as Trump and possibly less competent.
Imagine of the audience at the CPAC conference had the responsibility of choosing the president of the United States. That’s not too different from the situation that Britain faces now.
If we had this system, we might wind up with President Steve King.
Sure, you might tell me that the Rep. King is so racist that he’s been stripped of his committee assignments by the leaders of his own party. That’s true. But the Tories are so afraid of being placed on the ash-heap of history that they’re no longer putting up any resistance to the nativist components in their country. Why would the GOP act differently if put in the same situation? They might nominate two choices who are even worse than Trump.
The only thing saving us from that fate is that we don’t allow a president to be put in place by just a subset of one party’s registered voters. Also, like the U.K., we don’t have proportional representation, so it’s hard for the nativists to form a new party to compete with and supplant the GOP.
Still, the U.K. needs a better system than this. It’s nuts.
The UK doesn’t have proportional representation either. They have first past the post for individual constituencies. It’s why the Tories would be reduced to rubble despite polling at 20%. If Trump decided to break off from the Republicans and form his own party, you’d probably see similar results to what Farage did. For similar reasons that Democrats would win in many states they currently cannot win, Labour would be the main beneficent of this arrangement, but they’re also fracturing in some key areas, preventing them from winning a majority.
>> so it’s harder for the nativists to form a new party to compete with and supplant the GOP
huh? no, the nativists didn’t compete with the GOP, they just took it over.
there’s nothing good to say about the situation the UK is in. with the new law that it takes 2/3 of commons to force a new election, you get the current mess where an unpopular government can’t be removed but can’t accomplish anything.
but our system isn’t easy to justify either. I understand historically how we got stuck with the electoral college, but it’s not defensible today.
The only dinosaurs found in the La Brea Tar Pits are avian dinosaurs…….in other words, birds.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/501974/10-fascinating-facts-about-la-brea-tar-pits
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird
It’s a fascinating place, with amazing animals, and well worth a visit or several. But don’t expect to see what most people think of as dinosaurs. That’s the natural history museum across town.
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Gawd that guy is freaky looking. He surely must have escaped from an asylum or funny farm somewhere. Either that or some community is missing their freak on to keep the gremlins at bay. Pity the British. All this to keep those nasty immigrants out. Are we next?