Note my phrasing. Yes, there are dipshits in the Democratic Party. Bernie, I'm looking at you! This is a guy who thinks that the passage of a constitutional amendment on campaign finance will create a socialist utopia. Why? Because he's a moron. He can win in Vermont, delude a bunch of people into thinking he has a chance nationally, and come illusorily close, in some Xeno-like way, to a presidential nomination, but he can't win nationally, and while most Democrats share his preferences on campaign finance reform, most aren't so deluded as to think that getting their way will create a socialist utopia. Few are as stupid as Bernie Sanders. Of course, Sanders isn't even really a Democrat, if we're being technical. But, there are other idiots in the Democratic Party. Some are even pushing to remove Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader in the House.
There have been two modern congressional leaders worthy of the highest praise: John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi. Both were brilliant strategists and both acted in good faith. They are on opposite sides ideologically, but they acted in the nations' best interests as they each saw those interests. Contrast that with someone like Ted Cruz, who is just out for his own self-aggrandizement. On policy, Ted Cruz and John Boehner were never far apart, but Boehner wanted what was best for the country. Cruz will always sacrifice that for his own advancement. Cruz is a piece of shit, and Boehner was always a statesman. Pelosi, same deal. A lefty, to be sure, but no matter how far-right you are, if you are thinking clearly, you have to acknowledge her good faith in addition to her obvious brilliance as a strategist. The idiots, like Linda Sanchez, who want Pelosi to step aside, are just as bad as the Republicans who pushed out Boehner. Pelosi, Boehner... good. Idiots who push out good leaders... bad.
My point, though, is that idiots like Linda Sanchez are rarer, and the ones who exist don't control the Democratic Party the way the fuckwits in the GOP do their party. How do we know? Boehner is gone, and Pelosi is still there, even though there have been noises about Pelosi since the 2010 election.
The question, though, is why? Why do Republican primary voters keep selecting unintelligent people at a disproportionate rate? More importantly for Kasich, what would it take for them to stop selecting unintelligent people at a disproportionate rate, because that is the condition for fixing the Republican Party, by Kasich's standard.
There are two possibilities:
1) Underlying preference changes
2) External signal changes
One of two things is the case. Either the electorates who keep choosing Trumps, Moores and similar defectives as their nominees actually have an underlying preference for idiocy, or they are responding to external stimuli that can change. If it is the former, then "fixing" the Republican Party as it is right now is extraordinarily difficult because it requires getting people to behave in ways that they are not predisposed to behave. If so, then Kasich may be shit-out-of-luck.
However, there are models in political science suggesting that voters may be somewhat more malleable. The public may have some basic predispositions, but according to John Zaller's "RAS" model, they selectively accept and reject messages based on a combination of those predispositions and the level of uniformity of the messages they receive. If Case 2 is correct, then Kasich's problem is that GOP primary voters have simply received and accepted too many messages that they should be supporting anti-intellectual blowhards who don't know shit about policy. It isn't that they intrinsically want those people in office. They've just had those messages received and reinforced so many times that moving in the other direction is hard.
What are the messages? How have they been reinforced? ... What would it take to move in the other direction? That's what it would take for the party to be "fixed" by John Kasich's standard. Tomorrow...
