Chuck Hagel Suggests Third Party
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 3rd Party
Is Chuck Hagel right in his new book? Do we need an independent president or a third party? Hagel, a Republican who’s been critical of the war in Iraq, is clearly frustrated at being pummeled by his own party for his contrarian viewpoint. I’m sure he’d be happy if he could join a new party less focused on enforcing party loyalty.
Whether or not we need a third party is one of those questions that shows up every election cycle. The general perception is that, if neither the Dems or Repubs are offering intelligent policies, then a third party could. Unfortunately, a third party would still be a party – meaning even if it’s more “centrist” than the current parties, it’ll quickly succumb to the same internal power games and distasteful compromises that afflict our blue and red friends.
What we need, I think, is not a new party but a revitalized commitment to independence within the two major parties. Their exists now a purge mentality that has resulted in the frustration of men like Hagel on the right and the near-banishment of men like Joe Lieberman on the left. There should be more room within the parties for policy differences. This may sound like fantasy, but there is hope.
The nomination of the less-than-purebred Republican John McCain indicates the bulk of voters themselves are more accepting of independence than their activist brethren. While McCain has done some well-placed pandering to the so-called base, he hasn’t disavowed his maverick streak. If other elected officials showed similar courage, the parties would eventually reach a critical mass of independence where there would be too many heretics for the activists to try to purge. I don’t know if that’s realistic but it’s more achievable and would be more useful than attempting to cobble together a third party.
As for now, I welcome Chuck Hagel’s dissent from his own party. I think that is something we need more of and I applaud him for staying true to his beliefs even as he’s attacked for doing so.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 and is filed under 3rd Party. 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.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but usually when either of the two major parties has a split, they reform somewhat to regain their lost members (or at least gain different members) so they can compete with the remaining major party again? A split party can’t win elections and therefore won’t be useful.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
3rd or 4th options will never work until we can vote for 2nd & 3rd choices; where you hold rounds of voting and in each round, knock out the one with the least votes and then count all of those voters’ next choice and keep going until there’s a majority. The problem is, counting a tiered voting system would take a lot longer and be logistically impractical if it weren’t done digitally.
Also, it’s not feasible to hold something as public as an election digitally with proprietary software. Ok, I suppose it is feasible, and it is happening, but there’s very little trust in a system like that. Public efforts need to be run on public software - if the people don’t trust the system, then the election is meaningless. (Whether it actually is legitimate or not)
March 20th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
I could be wrong, but I think the main problem is redistricting by both Dems and the GOP. There is no incentive for compromise when the overall majority of seats are virtually safe and unchallenged. If the majority of Congressional seats were in play most of the time in *every* election, I guarantee you that hyper-partisanship would be a lot tougher to pull off. The key as always is increased competition, for ideas, for policies, etc. On the other hand, you wouldn’t also have such stark differences between the parties cause everybody would be playing it safe trying their best to buy off the electorate with what they think they would want at any particular point in time, so I dunno…Anyway, that’s the way I see it…