Why I Remain A Republican

[Lord Jim]

Well Dale, unfortunately I can only think of a very few ways in which a viable 3rd party could come into existence, given how the Rs and the Ds have stacked the deck in so many ways, (from ballot requirements to Congressional committee assignments) to perpetuate their dominance, at the expense of any other potential party. Overcoming these built in advantages requires a boatload of cash....

The first, and most likely to have a chance of actually happening, is a scenario similar to the one in the 90's with Ross Perot and the Reform Party; a Party being started by an ultra-rich independent Presidential candidate. It's not inconceivable that such a candidate could actually win if he had the kind of commonsense message you suggest; in the polls prior to it becoming publicly known that he was a paranoid fruitcake, Perot frequently came in first. (Clinton usually ran third). Even after his meltdown, and leaving the race and then getting back in, Perot still would up with 19% of the vote in '92.

(The Reform Party actually did have a positive affect on US politics, even though it never became a truly competitive party, (largely because of the a fore mentioned fruitcakeism of its founder, and the final nail in the coffin was driven in by Pat Buchanan when he was able to hijack the party and essentially kill it off in 2000.) However the central message of the Reform Party was getting federal spending under control, and for a time in the 90's the pressure created by the party's relative success actually got the Republicans and the Democrats to work together to achieve some deficit reduction. )

The person most commonly mentioned as leading this kind of scenario is NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. I can see where it might be possible for him to win a three way race, but whether it was him or someone else, such a person, aftesr they were eleceted would have no choice but to form a new party, since if they didn't, they would be confronted with 535 members of Congress all of whom had a vested interest in making sure that he failed. I think the jolt to the system of a candidate like that overcoming the advantages of the two major parties and actually winning the Presidency, would provide a unique opportunity to build on that success by drawing a number of federal, state, and local office holders into a third party.

The second, (and least likely in my view to happen) would be for an incumbent President of one of the existing Parties leaving it and forming a new one. A sitting President would have the credibility and stature to create a party that people would take seriously. However the reason I see this as a very remote possibility is that incumbent Presidents already have nearly total control of an existing Party; what would their incentive be for starting a new one?

The final way I could see getting a credible third party off the ground would be if a number of Republicans and Democrats already in the Congress came together to form one. But you'd need to have a critical mass (probably something like 10%) agreeing to do this; if just a handful did the movement would probably fizzle.

There's a HUGE roadblock to this scenario however; for this to happen we would have to see an enormous amount of courage from a fairly large number of politicians. (10 members of the Senate; 40 plus in the House) You may have noticed, that "courageous" isn't the adjective that most immediately comes to mind when describing most politicians. For an office holder to agree to do this, it would mean giving up their seniority for their committee assignments. (And make no mistake; the Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership would work together to pull out all the stops to try and crush something like this...for once, we would see true "bipartisanship". ) It would also mean giving up a ready made organizational and fundraising system in exchange for the work of creating a new one and taking a plunge into "the unknown".

There may be other ways for this to happen that someone else can think of, but those are the only three that I can envision having any chance of success. I just don't see the sort of "bottom up" type of scenario ever happening. People just don't "rise up enmasse" too do anything, especially something as challenging, complex and difficult as organizing a viable third party. To do that requires leadership, organization, and of course, the a fore mentioned boatloads of cash.

Just look at the Libertarian Party. They've had this bottom up approach for years, and gotten no where with it. They're well organized and the field candidates for a wide range of offices all over the country. Now part of the reason they haven't been successful is that a party that believes in giving the vote minors, eliminating our blue water navy, and privatizing the interstate highway system, can hardly be said to have a "common sense" message. But the other hurdle they have never been able to overcome is the psychological, "can't win" problem; most voters, (myself included) don't want to help elect the candidate they like the least by voting for someone with no chance of winning.

It's true there's a certain element of self fulfilling prophecy to this, but that doesn't change the problem. It seems to me the only way to overcome this is to have a party that carries with it enough credibility that people will feel that its candidates might actually win.

[Crackpot]

You forget that the libritarian party are a bunch of fruitcakes made up of what is essentially two different factions: The "legalize it" and the "Lets gut the government into something completely ineffective" camps.

[liberty]

The sad fact of the matter is, that nowadays,...

We have two parties...

The party of greed...

And the party of envy....

This is not a healthy situation...

Precisely!

So how does one become less greedy or less envious?

Leave both the major parties who are only mirror images of themeselves.

I reiterate: the future of our REPUBLIC does not lie with either the democrats nor the republicans as they are currently constituted. The only hope I see is for everyday working Americans to leaves both of these dinosuars en masse and establish a political apparatus based upon the populist notions of hard work, thrift, and common sense. What we have now is a twin botched abortion that panders to the greedy and lazy among us.

GOD HELP US ALL!

Dale, if we do not change our ways we as a society and a nation are headed for an economic and social catastrophe. I can understand the people in Africa that are receiving free HIV medication not understand what happened the day in the future when the life saving medication stops coming. But there is no excuse for an American not to know the situation. Every month that passes the national debt gets larger and still there is sign of concern in congress except for a few republicans.

[Gob]

The whole "party" system just doesn't work for me. People get too subsumed into party dogma, and stop thinking of what is right for their constituents, and vote with what is best for the party.

I'm (by American standards, ) hard left on some issues, but on others (by American standards,) I m centrist. There is no party out there who represents me.

[Crackpot]

I agree (and I've said a similar thing many times in the past) The Parties (at least as far as the US ones go) have become more interested in serving the party rather than the people.

IMO the Republicans are mach better at this in so far when they have the majority they mange to get their members to vote in lockstep while the Democrats collectively take aim at their foot.

It's that reason I currently find the Dems to be the lesser of the two evils.

[Gob]

Interesting article..

One of the defining qualities of Americans must be their optimism. To Europeans, it can sometimes appear to be an overly cheerful enthusiasm or a wilful reluctance to look harsh facts in the face.

Obama's election was one expression of that optimism - the audacity of hope - embodied in Bob the Builder's constructive phrase "yes, we can".

But gloom appears to be the new mood in the US these days. Commentators on the left like Robert Reich warn of a double dip recession. So do commentators of the right.

Those giving investment advice say they see the signs everywhere. While cooler commentators keep their heads, there's no doubt whatsoever the jitters are out there.

In the country, rather than in print and on the internet, this may not be down to predictions but because of what is happening now - or isn't happening.

A recent survey suggests eight out of ten of those who lost their jobs in the last couple of years still haven't found a new one.

President Obama is sticking to his guns, unwavering in his big picture policy prescription. He wants to refocus America, to once again become one of the world's great manufacturers and exporters - rather than just being one of the globe's biggest consumers.

This vision is how Mr Obama sees jobs coming back.

In a speech today he said, "This is where American jobs will be tomorrow. Ninety-five percent of the world's customers and fastest growing markets are beyond our borders. So if we want to find new growth streams, we've got to better compete for those customers - because other nations are. As I have said many times, the United States of America should not, cannot, and will not play for second place. We mean to compete for those jobs - and we mean to win."

While this may be excellent analysis of the problem, the difficulty is the policy prescriptions - such as more free trade and a rebalancing of the Chinese currency - hardly go to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter being that America doesn't make enough of the goods the world wants to buy.

In a thought provoking article in Times, Anatole Kaletsky argues forcefully that Obama's prescription is right.

But he sees one big threat - pessimism itself.

He contends this is largely caused by intense political polarisation, adding that he hasn't seen such intense mutual hatred since Scargill and Thatcher faced each other in 1980s Britain.

Is it time to abandon bipolar bipartisanship and for Americans to pick themselves up and dust themselves down?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters ... imism.html

[liberty]

I am more interested in solutions than I am in parties. Even though I am a Democrat I frequency see the Republicans as the lesser evil. They are better supporter of freedom as illustrated by their resistance to the Soviet Union in the cold war although there were some democrat exceptions. In the past the Republicans where more fiscally responsible, but now even they are starting to loss it.