Crossing the Floor

Our Congress used to have both Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans, which were much more able to work with each other during their terms, but those designations have all but disappeared as the parties have drifted apart. As a result, the tone has gone from "we need to find a way to work with XXX for YYY years," shifting to "We've got YYY years to pry XXX out of office!!!"

A Republican in office remains a republican until at least the end of their term, no matter how they vote.
Ditto for the Democrats. They might change party affiliation or lose party backing at the next election, but that's it.

There have been bi-partisan votes, but not nearly as many as in previous terms.

Two years ago, we in Alaska had a very ineffective and unpopular Republic governor (Sarah Palin's ex-lieutenant governor) running for re-election. He was challenged both by Democrats and by a former Republican turned Independent, named Bill Walker. Walker accepted the original Democratic candidate as his lieutenant governor running mate, and won the election pretty easily. He's a pragmatist, now dealing with a nasty state budget deficit largely engineered by his predecessor. And doing it pretty well, IMO.

caw

In the U.S. the term is very similar - "crossing the aisle". You would prolly get an interesting cock of the head but confuse very few if you said "crossing the floor" here, is my guess. The gist is pretty much the same.

Just a sidebar comment since we're all wordsmiths to some degree

jennontheisland said:

That's what we call it in Canada when an elected politician decides to break ties with the party they associated with during the election. They then either become independent or join up with some other party. Not sure if this is a thing in the US as well, but....

How many moderate and reasonable Republicans were elected? Could these people be convinced to vote their conscience and abandon the R for an I or D? How many would it take to swing the power from completely R to something more moderate that would potentially impede the Trump administration?

What would a campaign of encouraging politicians to give up party ties and vote for their country look like?

Click to expand...

We call it "crossing the aisle" here, and they can do it without changing parties (though sometimes elected officials do change party, it's pretty rare).

There's nothing to stop a member of either party from voting their conscience and "crossing the aisle" to cast their vote in a way that aligns more with the dominant position of the other party. It's become rarer for them to do that in recent years, especially Republicans. The parties have increasingly diverged on many issues, and while many Republicans may be worried about Trump's presidency, I think their concern is more based on his volatility and lack of experience and what he might do to our alliances, as well as a fear that he may actually do some things that break with Republican positions on social or economic issues. Remember, one of the things that led to Ryan endorsing him was Trump's providing a list of Heritage-Foundation-vetted candidates for supreme court nominations.

Even if a bunch of GOP Senators and congress members joined the Democratic party as an act of protest (and I don't see this happening), they wouldn't start voting in favor of LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, fewer barriers to voting, pro choice bills, pro environment bills, higher taxes on the wealthy, more spending on education and infrastructure, higher federal minimum wage, more separation of church and state, support for the ACA and so on. Not if they want to be re-elected.

And in any case, most of them presumably believe in their positions as conservatives anyway. Honestly, most in the GOP are pretty aligned with the way Trump seems to be pointing on most issues, barring some of the more extreme measures he's threatened to take against Muslims and Undocumented immigrants, perhaps, and some of his ideas about foreign policy. And nothing is stopping them from voting against any bill Trump supports that violates their conscience, even if they are Republicans.