I have previously stated elsewhere that the core of BBs first post here makes sense. If you have a 2 party first past the post election system, only individuals with enormous strength who are able to 'sneak up the chain' to get to the top will be able to rein it in, for any period, if at all.

Both parties will always band together in mutual self interest to preserve their power to exclude any other entrant. That even happened in Australia with the massively popular rise of One Nation (sorta like The Tea Party!), but the proportional system meant that people's votes for One Nation drove Howard to the extreme Right to get those votes back. The Tea Party will be infiltrated and undermined to end up just serving BOTH existing majors, and thus neutralised.

In Australia, the proportional representation system (the compulsory voting also helps a lot too!) prevents any single party, or pair of parties being able to retain absolute power over extended periods of time. Why? Because with the US system you need to need to get inside the various parties and reform from the inside. With the proportional system, piss off the electorate, and those parties out of touch just wither and die: Viz DLP, Democrats, One Nation, etc.

The US is heading down an irreversible path towards a Big Brother society, as Orwell foresaw. Only a 'Catastrophe' that totally disrupts the US Political System and utterly removes the 2 fossilised entities will change that in the end. not in my lifetime. The same sort of 'prophecy' as John noted in Revelations, but that's another time, another story. Of course, the process will just start again...