Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
I know the ethos of the officer corps in the US is pretty strong, but everything can be broken down. If the civilians were to select higher officers with a certain criterion in mind and do that over the years, that would have an effect.
The US officer corps is a fairly cohesive, quantifiable, and predictable tribe.

Political parties on the other hand are defined by their volatility and stochastic behavior.

I would be more inclined to bet upon on a political party fracturing and perhaps reshaping/reallocating scarce resources to efforts more representative of the populace it hopes to represent.

There are historical precedents for the latter scenario.

Progressive Party (United States, 1912), From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progres...tates,_1912%29