I'm making this post by Skinner into the basis for a thread [View all]

[Boojatta]

A party that has no ideological orientation will not attract any members.

It might attract a few people who want to run for office. But think about it. The purpose of political parties is for like-minded people to work together to elect people to office. If you take away the broadly similar ideological outlook of the members, then there is no reason for a political party to exist.

Let's say some guy creates a party and says "I want to run for office, please join my party to help me get elected."

The first question anyone is going to ask is, "Uh, why would I want to spend my time and money helping to get YOU elected?"

Which answer is going to get the desired response?

OPTION 1: "I just want to get elected. You should help me, because that's the nice thing to do. My political ideology shouldn't matter."

OPTION 2: "You should help me get elected because I am going to fight for the issues you care about."

The above is from the thread entitled:
"Non-Partisan Political Parties: Already Exist or Logically Impossible?"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002441328

I disagree with Skinner, but I think that Skinner's point of view deserves serious consideration, and I am willing to listen to anybody who wants to convince me that I am wrong and Skinner is right.

If you want to understand what people are doing, then it's often helpful to know what goals they are pursuing. For example, can you describe a goal that Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright were pursuing? I think that they were trying to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. You can get into somewhat more detail, but I think that the vast majority of the details concern how, not what. I already described their goal well enough to help anybody who is confused about their behavior to understand what motivated them. Their methods, tactics, strategies, plans, and so on don't explain their goal. It's the other way around. Know their goal, and you would have been able to understand (but not predict) what they were doing.

Now, can't your goal be to solve political problems? Isn't it possible to have a goal that is basically that simple?

If political ideology provides techniques for solving political problems, then political ideology comes later, after the goal. However, it occurs to me that political ideology could in many cases be an obstacle to solving political problems. Aren't there plenty of examples of problems being solved by thinking outside the box?

As for the notion that people who simply want to solve political problems would be motivated to conceal their political ideologies, what if there's not much there for the question of concealment to arise? Some political candidates eat ice cream occasionally. What flavor? If it's vanilla, then there's no story. Nobody is shocked by vanilla. It carries with it no hint of scandal. It's like the Deism of some of the Founding Fathers.