There are things that happen only once in a blue moon: world wars, pandemics, Haley's comet, blue moons — and the American Republican Party actually demonstrating, if not a full spine, then at least a brain stem. The House GOP defenestrating Liz Cheney from its number-three leadership position is the spine-showing, blue-moon event.

The narrative is that Cheney was symbolically guillotined because she courageously stood up to "Trump's lies" about the 2020 election, which was, as everyone knows, the most honest election in U.S. history.  But in a series of events lifted right from Orwell, the 2020 election was the "most honest election" in history only because it has been branded as such.  Six months and some change after the election, people who maintain this still have not been able to answer why the avalanche of coincidences and historical firsts converged on this particular election.  For example, they still cannot explain why Democrat centers, such as Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, stopped counting at 10:47 P.M. on Election Night, only to resume the counting in the predawn hours of the morning.  They cannot explain how Joe Biden managed to snag the presidency while winning only one of the bellwether counties scattered across the country (all of which have accurately predicted presidential winners consistently, some since 1960) or how in some precincts, he received close to 100% of the vote.

The GOP finds itself in a bifurcation, with a large percentage of its base acknowledging the host of questions hovering over the election and a group of elites who proclaim that unless you close your eyes to those questions, you are part of the problem.  This environment made Cheney's ousting necessary.

We in America have gotten the entirely wrong ideas about political parties.  Here — but I would guess especially on the right — they have come to be seen as the equivalent of social clubs, mere markers to buttress your political identification.  It's true that there are fewer and fewer substantial differences between the two parties, so that now both parties support immigration avalanches, transgenderism, the redefinition of pre-political institutions and basic words, and the laughable idea that America is an idea and not a place; they part only on why they support these things.  Be that as it may, the rule still holds that the parties (especially the GOP) act primarily as social markers.  But this is antithetical to the nature and purpose of a political party.

Political parties exist for a dual purpose. They act as the focal point for a key idea, a position, or the core of first principles, which they then strive to spread throughout the rest of society (through campaigns, debates, and other such events) and advance, particularly through legislation and policy proposals.  This nature underlines a forgotten axiom: political parties are not the natural environment for "free thinking."  This doesn't mean that there can be no discussions, debates, or arguments within the party.  What it does mean is that once the idea or core principles have been decided upon (however that happens), people can either acquiesce to those ideas and principles and join the party or not.  In the latter case, these people can and perhaps should start their own party (an easier proposition than building your own platform).

To attempt to be everything for everyone or to be a "big tent" will only lead to a party trying to go in contradictory directions simultaneously.  Worse, it will choose a course of action but then lie to certain segments of its members to make it seem that it is still open.  John McCain spent decades in the Senate supporting mass immigration only to tell Arizonians that a border wall needed to be built when election time rolled around.

From this comes an inescapable conclusion: political parties are supposed to be multiple and are not supposed to be everlasting.  The fossilized two-party American system is a sore thumb standing amid the rest of the Western world.  Canada, Australia, France, and Great Britain all have more than two political parties.  Furthermore, new parties are created whenever a new idea, a new need presents itself: Nigel Farage's UKIP was created in 1991 due to suspicions regarding the European Union; France's National Front was created in 1972 to be a reservoir for French nationalism.  Even the United States, in the 19th century, was a bastion of various parties, some of which included the Whig Party, the Anti-Masonic Party, the American Party, and the Liberal Party.

The reason we have a fossilized two-party system, I believe, is the people who represent the parties.  The Democrat party was founded by Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren — two names that won't send people into orgasmic frenzies anymore — but was the party of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.  On the Republican side, the Great Emancipator towers over it, as does, to a lesser extent, Theodore Roosevelt and, within living memory, Ronald Reagan.  Ironically, given our pathological hatred of our own history, being part of these parties gives a feeling of belonging to the Great Causes of History.  Being a Republican means that you are part of the party that ended slavery in America, never mind what the party's positions are now; being a Democrat means you can count FDR, JFK, LBJ, etc. as fellow fraternity members, meaning you are part of the tide that ended the Depression, literally promised us the moon and went to war on poverty, even though Kennedy would probably be read out of the modern party if he were to come back.

For too long, commentators and the usual gaggle of talking heads have warned that forming a new party will "split the vote," ensuring the other side's political dominance for the foreseeable future.  It's ahistorical hogwash that belies another implication: reform, new ideas, new positions, and new situations are supposed to conform to our frozen system.  Expecting them to is as ideological and utopian as anything that's peddled by today's charlatans.

Image via Pexels.

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