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>>>And about bringing up issues - what's the average influence of voters on issues where the two parties agree? Do these ever come up for public debate?
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>>What do you mean by 'public debate' ? People publicly debate things all the time. Nobody stopping them. Do they get publicly subsidized airtime? No. Do they get a forum paid for by my taxes? Hopefully not. But nobody is suppressing them. Minority opinions ( many of which I share ) are just that - the opinion of a minority. Hence there are fewer people making that argument. Political parties most often take positions according to what they think will get them the most votes ( when you hear the words "Big Tent" you know you are talking about "To hell with principle" <g> )
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>>But one thing I don't think we lack in this country is the expression of minority, unpopular or downright strange opinions <s>
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>With "Do these ever come up for public debate?" I meant do these ever get on the agenda of any policymaking public talk... place, i.e. do they ever get listed as issues anywhere? For instance, the immigration and gay marriages were both listed and discussed everywhere. So did the fate of Social Security. Was the fate of FCC or SEC discussed? Was the issue of paid vacations discussed? We've seen that there's a huge discrepancy between what vacations are guaranteed here and in other developed countries - seems to be that both parties don't think that's an issue, so we don't have it tossed around in the media, nobody seems to mind.
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>Or let's try something that hurts more: companies outsourcing jobs probably still have the tax benefits they got for creating the original jobs here. Which party will pick that issue and push it through the media?

Again, demand driven. First, identify a company that has tax breaks ( specifically ) and outsources jobs ( how many, to where ) contrary to the spirit of the tax break. ( i.e they had to get the tax breaks originally because they created domestic jobs )

I don't think it would be difficult at all to find either a politician or a media outlet who would be interested. (I'm sure such cases exist, but until someone identifies a specific case it is hard to get media or politicians fired up about a generalized impression that something is happening. You have to put faces on it.) And I'm sure some elements of both the media and the political culture are looking for test cases.

But this is not the fault of the system/society/government etc. there is a lot of stuff going on and issues will get attention according to the number of people they impact and teh skill those who care employ in getting others to care. Both media and politicians are followers as often as they are leaders, though both would prefer it otherwise.