> Who disagrees? I'm just saying that, in the two-party duopoly
> system, a large number of the far right (though not all of them)
get
> stuck in the Republican Party, whereas, with proportional
> representation, they would build their own party, as in France.
Actually, France doesn't have a proportional representation system, but a complicated two-round system and a history of proportional representation at times, which has encouraged the persistence of third parties even though they play spoiler roles quite often.
As with this past election, where the left was so divided that Le Pen got more votes than the Socialists, letting the rightwing go into the runoffs as the only liberal alternative to Le Pen.
But the Right in Europe, from Austria to the Netherlands to France have happily copied the Republicans in coopting racism and nationalism. In fact, they may be doing it more systematically than the GOP on issues like immigration. As the Trent Lott affair shows, Republicans may make coded appeals to racism, but they can't make explicit appeals, which has become pretty pro forma among right-of-center parties in Europe.
-- Nathan Newman