Is A Third Party Necessary?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in General PoliticsNope. Or so says Austin Centrist.
It seems to be that it is not that complicated. Merely supporting Centrists from either existing party should do the trick with far less brain damage. The less candidates need to rely on funding from ideologues the more likely their judgement is to be balanced. In every race there is one candidate who is relatively more moderate - a little more centrist. Send them money.
Agreed.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 and is filed under General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
But what do you do when, as here in Utah, there are no more centrists, only politicians that are fanatical whackos about different things?
April 17th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
I’m going to completely disagree with the premise of this post. We need at least the threat of a third party because it forces the democrats and republicans to stay honest and not completely abandon the middle for their base.
I’d love it if one of the legacies of the Bush presidency and all the “pander to the base” bullshit that went with it, was the emergence of a centrist party or coalition.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I think I may be with Kevin on this. I’m not so sure a third party is a bad idea. I don’t know that it should define itself as a centrist party, but perhaps simply as a new party with its own set of principals. A successful third party would certainly make it hard to gerrymander.
And the two parties are fossils, skeletal remains of once-vital ideas. A third party might open up the debate. Maybe life doesn’t have to come down to more government vs. less — or in the current situation, more government taxation vs. more government borrowing. Maybe there’s a different way to look at politics.
The Dems and Reps don’t have a big idea between them. They squabble over which special interest will get how much tax money. What is there in either party that’s worth preserving at this point? What does either party have to do with the future?
You know what party I’d like to see? The Google Party. I’d like to see a party with big dreams, and a love of technology, and faith in the future, and an obsession with education. I’d like to see a party that talked about the next hundred years. Show me a party that’s going to cure disease, and take us to Mars and end poverty. I want my Star Trek future, I don’t want another 100 years of theocrats or bureaucrats.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:00 am
We may or not need a third party, but we do need a SECOND party. The unitary Democan/Republicrat party is responsive only to big money corporate interests and ignores the average American.
But what good is more of the same, only less so, when our Constitution, the very foundation of government, is under assault from within??
A cabal of wealthy corporatists are using religiously blinded theocrats, election laws, and black-box voting to permanently eliminate our rights of representation as set out in the Constitution.
How can “We the People” expect our government to be responsive to our needs when only millionares can be elected?? When election laws are rigged to prevent all but two parties, Republicrats and Democans?? When black-box voting overturns our will through secrecy and fraud??
Make no mistake, the cabal of corporatists have decided to “downsize” our government to a single party of the most closely held mobsters.
The corporatists folly is that they left the radical evangelicals in power and the radical evangelicals are now consolidating their power into a single party of the most closely held mobsters. The same wiretapping, warrantless sneak-n-peeks, and seisure laws that can befall any of us chattel, is now also a threat to the corporatist’s own power, kind of like the bin Ladens are a threat to the Saudi Royals.
The Swift-Boating of Kerry and the casting off of the Democrat Party corporatist minions is our one last chance to set things straight.
“We the People”need to hijack the Democrat Party from the Bush-lites still controlling it. Creating a new party from scratch or joining with an existing minor party is not a option since the state and federal election rules are so skewed against them, it’s unworkable. The Libertarian and Reform parties are proof of that.
First, “We the People” must eliminate the the brain dead corporatists and single-issue activists remaining within the Democrat Party. We need to bump aside the top-down style of the DCCC and DLC that keeps the power of the party in the hands of a few and make the Democrat party of, by and for the people. We must toss the unreliable apoligists and BushCo friendlies overboard.
We need to build on Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy to groom candidates, stragegists, and operatives at local, state and national levels.
We must insist on voter verifiable paper ballot systems.
We must insist on true campaign finance reform instead of tinkering around the edges. Preferably this comes in the forms of public financing of campaigns and mandatory free media in exchange for the broadcasters use of the public’s airwaves. This is the only way we can make our government once again accountable to “We the People” instead of “We the Multi-Millionaires”.
We must insist on consistant rules on setting uniform district boundaries instead of the obscene gerrymandering we have now.
Once we do that:
We must insist on instant runoff elections.
We must change state election laws to give all parties, with membership of 1% of that state’s population, equal standing.##
We must insist on eliminating the Electoral College in Presidential elections so that third, fourth, and fifth parties have a true shot at national elections.
By doing these things, we can move from a republic ruled by decree into one ruled by consensus.
##
Examples of 1% rule:
Smallest State
2004 Population of Wyoming - 506,529
Needed for Party Equality - 5,065
Registered Voters Total - 232,396
Registrations By Party
Republican - 146,328
Democrat - 62,385
Libertarian - 328
Non-Partisan - 23,355
Largest State
2004 Population of California - 35,893,799
Needed for Party Equality - 358,938
Registered Voters Total - 15,625,180
Registrations By Party
Democrat - 6,754,308
Republican - 5,466,404
American Independent - 304,066
Green - 156,914
Libertarian - 86,330
Peace & Freedom - 67,511
Natural Law - 29,078
Non-Partisan - 2,671,142
In both cases, only the Democrat and the Republican parties meet the 1% threshold so there would not be a huge immediate disruption to the status quo. However if people believed that a third party could be a legitimate contender, more people would drop out of the Non-Partisan category to support a third party. Even if you changed it to 1% of registered voters, there would be no change in Wyoming and only the AI and Greens would clear the hurdle in California.
The point of the 1% rule is that you won’t have 50 guys with a megaphone demanding to be included in debates or claiming TV time for promoting crackpot agendas unless they can actually convince 1 in 100 that they are worth hearing from.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:27 am
Eustochius has my vote here–but as a precursor I suggest supporting existing centrists’ PACs–examples Wes Clark, John McCain, etc. The more attention we give these guys, and the less we give the extremists, the better things will be.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Does anyone worry that a third party would end up in the same shape as the other two? How would we prevent that? Also, even if it started out with the premise that it would be centrist, it would have to take positions on the issues, just like the others. At that point, would it not have to be stubbornly supportive of those positions, just as the other two parties do?
I’m not against the idea of a third party, those are just questions I thought about while reading the comments here.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:43 am
We already have three third parties. How many do you want?
For the people who want something always conservative, we have the Constitution Party. For the people who want something always progressive, we have the Green Party. For people who want to be socially conservative and fiscally prudent, we have the Libertarian Party.