What the Neos have done in Congress in the last decade or so is unprecedented in American history. There's obvious objective evidence of how this could be: Gerrymandering of House districts to create safe seats. We've sunk to the point where now only something like 10% of the seats in any given election are contested, and that gives the Party unprecedented power over representatives. There's never been any time in history when a political party exercized so much control over Congress.

I'll have to find the reference again, but in 1950 a commission reviewing the state of American politics issued a paper recommending strengthening the political parties which, up until that time, had been weak on the nationa level, facilitators rather than orchestrators, and tended to be more powerful at the state level. The commission believed that stronger parties would reinvigorate politics and lead to more open debate. The actual outcome has been a dramatic illustration of the law of unintended consequence. For a while there stronger parties did add vitality to politics, but then of course they overshot the mark and became centers of power in their own right. They're now competing with the people for control of the government, and that's just plain wrong.

That's the trend that has to be reversed to preserve democracy in America. Right now the immediate problem is NeoRepublicans, but rest assured, I'm looking at mitigating Democratic power as well. America needs a healthy center, not battling partisan titans.