Commentaries, Global Warming, Opinions   Cover   •   Commentary   •   Books & Reviews   •   Climate Change   •   Site Links   •   Feedback
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
WEBCommentary Guest
Author:  Bruce Walker
Bio: Bruce Walker
Date:  June 1, 2006
Print article - Printer friendly version

Email article link to friend(s) - Email a link to this article to friends

Facebook - Facebook

Topic category:  Other/General

A Reform to Move Everyone to the Right

A dilemma that many conservatives feel today could be best remedied by adopting a political reform which, of all places, was developed in Louisiana:  require that the winning candidate in any federal or state election must receive a majority of the vote and hold a runoff election among the top two candidates if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the primary election.

A dilemma that many conservatives feel today could be best remedied by adopting a political reform which, of all places, was developed in Louisiana:  require that the winning candidate in any federal or state election must receive a majority of the vote and hold a runoff election among the top two candidates if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the primary election.

There is no question about the constitutionality of this for congressional elections.  Congressmen and senators in Louisiana have had general bipartisan runoff elections without judicial concern for some time now.  Clearly there is no problem regarding state elected officials, who have always been governed by state constitutional, rather than federal law (in fact, any state could adopt a parliamentary form of government, if it wished, and some of the Southern states of the current American republic had both governors and judges chosen by the state legislature.)

What about presidential elections?  Well, there is absolutely nothing that grants the people the right to vote for president at all right now, and the method of electing the president is clear:  each state legislature chooses the electors, or the method for selecting the electors, and any state legislature could pass a law repealing the right of the voters of Ohio or New York or Michigan to vote even for their presidential electors (who, of course, actually choose the president.)

If there are no prohibitions to requiring an open primary and then an open general election among the top two candidates for all state and federal offices, then what are the advantages of it?  Consider, at the outset and as I have repeatedly noted in my many articles on the Battleground Poll, that about sixty percent of Americans call themselves either conservative or very conservative and that only about thirty-five percent of Americans call themselves liberal or very liberal.  Although lots of Leftists have tried to download the consistent message of these many Battleground Poll responses by the most respected bipartisan poll in American taken over many years, the fact remains:  Americans are overwhelmingly conservative.

This means that in any election in which the two finalists are respectively conservative and liberal, the conservative will win even in states like Washington, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.  The 1972 and 1984 presidential elections, in which Democrats carried in each a single state, were not aberrations but rather genuine reflections of the sentiments of the American people. 

The odd elections have been like 1968, 1980, 1992 and 1996, when a candidate running as an independent voice siphoned off a large number of otherwise conservative voters.  In the first two presidential elections, the conservative candidate won anyway, but in the latter two he did not.  It is helpful to recall that when all the votes cast in a presidential election are counted, that only one Democrat since the end of the Second World War has actually won a majority of the popular vote (Carter did not in 1976, although he won a majority of all votes cast for candidates.)  That is an astounding testament to the unpopularity of the Left in America.

More than just winning elections would be how elections were won.  What if, in the 2008 elections, conservatives had the option of voting for a candidate more to their liking on immigration and federal spending and other sore spots, without the risk of throwing their vote away?  In the vast majority of state and congressional elections, the top two candidates would remain the establishment Republican candidate and the Democrat candidate.  But the dynamics of the runoff would change dramatically.

If the mainstream Republican received thirty percent of the vote, the conservative candidate received twenty-nine percent of the vote, the Democrat candidate received thirty-one percent of the vote, and the protest Leftist candidates received ten percent of the vote, which way will the Republican candidate in the runoff move?  To the Right!  What has been the traditional pattern -  run Right in the Republican primary; run to the middle in the general election - would be reversed.

The bulk of voters would be on the Right, the Democrat candidate would also move to the Right in the runoff.  This tilt starboard would so upset the lunatic Left that those ten percent would stay off during the runoff election which would insure the most conservative candidates won the runoffs, which would be held at the same time and include a large number of offices.  Thus, we turn our real majority into a governing majority. 

Bruce Walker

Send email feedback to Bruce Walker


Biography - Bruce Walker

Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a regular contributor to WebCommentary, Conservative Truth, American Daily, Enter Stage Right, Intellectual Conservative, NewsByUs and MenŐs News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.


Read other commentaries by Bruce Walker.

Copyright © 2006 by Bruce Walker
All Rights Reserved.

[ Back ]


© 2004-2024 by WEBCommentary(tm), All Rights Reserved