Wow. I don't know when I've seen a post by a person I know to be intelligent so completely lacking in understanding of the way the system he's talking about works.silverscreenselect wrote:Jeemie wrote: I'm tired of using such rationale- it will keep us foreveer mired in two-party politics (there's already enough roadblocks to a third party in place- we can at least TRY and start removing the "wasting your vote" mindset as one of the roadblocks).
I personally feel events are moving in this country that are going to screw us up for years to come...and neither Obama nor McCain will be fundamentally different in their danger to screwing up the country more.
What bothers me about the third parties is that they seem forever focused on the one elective office that is the furthest away from them... the Presidency. So a Bob Barr or a Cynthia McKinney or a Ralph Nader gets to stoke their ego and make a couple of national TV appearances and in the end they've accomplished nothing other than sending a "message" that doesn't seem to register with anyone, and four years later we repeat the cycle.
I'll give the Libertarians some credit here in Georgia: they usually run candidates for Senate or Governor who manage to get 2-3% of the vote which occasionally makes a difference in a tight race. But they currently do not have one single elected representative in any state legislature. The Constitution Party has one seat in Montana. The Green party has none. These parties have a handful of city, township and county offices and a couple of mayor's offices but no way they can effectively influence state or federal politics.
The way you build a third party is from the bottom up and it's not glamorous. You don't run a former Congressman or political commentator for President and go home with your .5% of the vote and feel good about "making a difference." You make a difference by finding districts that are amenable to your candidate at the state level, running good candidates, getting them out to meet the voters at churches, schools, fairs, and shopping centers.
The last Republican I voted for was the State Representative in my House District in Georgia. He came by the Tech campus and personally handed out flyers and answered questions and seemed like a reasonable guy with the generic "I'll be for you" positions, but I like the fact he sought my vote. He won the election, one of not many for Republicans in Georgia those days. Third parties could do this, and it only takes a few seats in a state legislature to begin to gain a power base.
The third parties don't even need to field candidates in every local district. Pick the five best Senate and ten best House districts. Get all your volunteers and GOTV and canvassing efforts concentrated there. Maybe you win one or two of those elections. Then the next time you have a toehold and you can expand your efforts. Third parties are able to do this all over Europe and other parts of the world; here, all they do is sell out any real future they have for the fifteen minutes of having a second-rate "name" as a Presidential candidate.
As long as third parties continue to concentrate on the Presidency, we will see the same things happening every year as this year.
Third parties in Europe and around the world can run candidates for local and state offices with success because they have parliamentary democracies which encourage, rather than discourage, multiple parties. Check out the rules some time, just for your home state, for getting on the ballot for statewide offices. Then check them out for your municipal elections. Then check them out for my state and city. You'll be amazed.
The reason this country has not had a viable third party in nearly 100 years is because the Republicrats got together after the Teddy Roosevelt debacle and fixed the rules so that third parties cannot succeed.
The Libertarian candidate for governor here actually got to debate the other two candidates in their three "debates," and he did a good job. The Libertarians have been active here in Indiana for a long time, at every level. They have attempted to insert quality candidates at every level of government, with very limited success. It's not because they didn't have good candidates, or didn't try hard enough, or didn't work hard enough. It's because the deck, including ballot rules, media appearances, grass roots organizations, etc., is stacked WAAAAY against them. Until we take back the system, and change the rules back, nothing will change.
What I actually hope is that people who feel the way DanielH do will leave the Republican Party and form a ProLife Party. If that will happen, and we can keep the Republican Party viable without the one-issue people, we would overnight have a tru three party system. That would lead, almost inevitably, to a true multi-party system. Not gonna happen in my lifetime, though.
