He's right. Ideas, innovation, and true competition are stifled by money.
Political health rests with the competition of ideas not with competition for money. At this moment there is more competition of ideas in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party which, until recently, was a coalition of groups generating competing notions for the country's future.
The Republican Party encompasses angry Tea Partiers, neo-libertarians, neo-isolationists, nation-building interventionists, Wall Street bankers, neo-conservatives, Reagan worshippers, and so on. Having drifted into something called "centrism" in the 1990s, for lack of a successor to the New Deal, the Democratic Party is intellectually adrift and reluctant to take principled stands that might find disapproval, especially among the moneyed elites.
Throughout much of our history we welcomed unknown dark-horse candidates as the source of new thinking responding to new realities. They challenge the system, conventional wisdom, established power, old coalitions, shopworn policies and stale party networks. Intellectual innovation rarely comes from front-running, establishment candidates. They have too much to lose. Why rock a boat which you already command?
Meritocracy makes way for fresh thinking and new faces. But even those who originally emerged into positions of power on merit, soon become resistant to change, innovation, creative thinking, status-quo challenging, and the kind of leadership that looks over the horizon and offers bold new directions. Those in established positions and power becomes cautious, vague, careful, and guarded.
The nation will not benefit from a Money Primary that nominates two candidates before a voter is heard from. Unlike big political investors, and that is what major contributors are, everyday voters want new faces and new ideas. Party activists who participate in caucuses and vote in primaries should have a choice.
Nomination of candidates in a Money Primary is the inevitable outcome of a corrupt, money-driven political system that is more concerned with power, position, and privilege than with the national interest.
There are more than two families who can govern America. If we permit our national leadership to be selected by money changers in the halls of politics, we will be little different from Argentina.
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