Ezra Klein makes an interesting point about Americans Elect:
[I]f a high-profile incumbent, under threat of a primary challenge from the far right or left, takes the Americans Elect route, the practice could spread. (Are you listening, Senator Dick Lugar?) In that case, Americans Elect could help undermine one of the major methods by which parties enforce ideological discipline. It might give legislators like Bennett, Castle and Murkowski a license to cross the aisle — and survive. Then, if nothing else, we’d see more clearly how much polarization is baked into the system, and how much is a product of the particular people inside it.
Ed Kilgore makes the obvious observation: that teh polarization is really about how far right the Republican party is.
There are plenty of moderate Democrats in Congress, while it’s a vanishing breed in the GOP. For that matter, by any measurement, the Democratic “base” is significantly more diverse ideologically (and in every other way) than its GOP counterpart. All the examples of potentially liberated moderates Ezra cites are Republicans. So it’s reasonable to ask: are Republican moderates more successful in places where the disciplinary power of primaries is weaker?
If Americans Elect becomes an avenue for “independent-minded” candidates to bypass party primaries, you can bet your Charlie Rose tote-bag it will be Bayh-Lieberman-Bloomberg-type Democrats who go third-party to stick it to the silly hippies. Not non-crazy Republicans using an alternate route around the big winger spanking machine.