>Under a parliamentary system, citizens vote for parties, not
>individual candidates. The party with the most votes selects a prime
>minister, who serves as a kind of president, from the ranks of the
>legislative branch. Under a parliament, Kelleher said Wednesday, you
>can't have a president of one party playing the blame game with a
>Congress controlled by the opposing party while the nation's real
>problems and real people wait endlessly for real solutions.
This Kelleher is either astonishingly ignorant or has been grossly misreported.
A parliamentary system is not anything of the sort. A parliamentary system of government simply means that government is responsible to parliament. The blame game isn't necessarily be ruled out, a government doesn't necessarily need a majority in parliament. It just needs to retain the "confidence" of parliament. (That is, a vote of "no confidence" in the government should bring down the government. In a bicameral system, with two houses of parliament a government might have a majority in one but not the other.
The voting system Kelleher thinks defines a parliamentary system is not even typical. Most parliamentary systems are made up of parliaments where individual members of parliament are directly elected. Personally, I think that voting for a party that then appoints politicians, instead of individual candidates is quite dodgy. Though it does seem to be the trend to move this way. If you really want to follow New Zealand.
Obviously it would be impossible to have such a system in the USA, where there has not been anything that the democratic world would recognise as a political party for many decades. It would first be necessary to reform the electoral system in the USA to actually permit political parties to stand candidates for election under a consistent manifesto.
No doubt if that were the case, My Kelleher would have little chance of obtaining endorsement to stand as a candidate for office on behalf of such a hypothetical Republican Party. The article goes on to make very clear that those in charge of the purported Republican party wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas