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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

1) I really like that in the UK system if the leader is crazy the party can just kick them to the curb rather than basically having to support them even when they do terrible things.

2) The US system of open primaries where anybody can vote that we adopted in the 70s seems like a mistake in retrospect and there's a good reason no other country does things this way. The UK Conservative party's system, adopted in the 2010, of allowing people who pay party fees to vote in primaries seems like an even worse idea in terms of candidate selection though it does have the advantage of raising money for the party.

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If I wasn't living in this timeline, the current Republican politics would be HILARIOUS.

In short [0], the idea of republicanism is that the people cannot be trusted to make political decisions; you need elder statesmen to do that. In other words, you need grown-ups. To this end, we have the electoral college, which is supposed to block any egregiously populist president. Well that is not how it worked out.

0. So short that it is misleading. I won't defend anything I say here, even though I believe it in principle.

If you don’t have any intentions of defending your beliefs, why do you put them out there?

It’s like throwing a punch with no intention of getting in a fight. You’re just bound to get your ass kicked.

Not only is the UK not a republic but Republicanism isn’t about needing a grown up, it’s about time. Understanding the implications and reading through a 150 page proposal on the bill is not possible for the majority of the population.

> If you don’t have any intentions of defending your beliefs, why do you put them out there?

The internet has lost it's privileges in this regard.

I was talking about US Republicans.

Well then you’re still wrong. US republicans believe in small government, so they don’t think they should even be there.

Neither is good. Too many indirect elections. It should be easier for commoners to choose their leader.

US parties _can_ do that, too (and notably did with Nixon). The refusal to do it with Trump was a moral failing of the Republican leadership, not an inherent systemic limitation.

Does it matter? It will never happen again in the US.

... Wait, what? The US will never get a bad president who should be removed before their term ends again? That seems... optimistic.

That's not what I said. I said they never will be removed. Politics in the US have crossed a point into some kind of dogma.

There’s also a large quantity of people that feel he did nothing wrong. It’s generally the left, some independents and a few republicans that think he’s horrible.

Primary election participation varies by state. The U.S. does not have a blanket open primary system, and the federal government cannot adopt one without an amendment to the Constitution.

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