It has been interesting watching the Jefferson [D-Crook] aftermath, and hearing the 3rd Party calls as GOP and Dem Congressional leaders attempt to insulate themselves from criminal felony investigations. Then one couples that with A.L.'s recent post about partisanship and mindless rage in "Votes and Outs." Peggy Noonan has obviously been thinking about these things, too - and she ties them by opining that political developments are making a 3rd party possible.
"Their idea is that the two parties are too polarized to govern well. It is certainly true that the level of partisanship in Washington seems high. (Such things, admittedly, ebb, flow and are hard to judge. We look back at the post-World War II years and see a political climate of relative amity and moderation. But Alger Hiss and Dick Nixon didn't see it that way.) Nancy Pelosi seems to be pretty much in favor of anything that hurts Republicans, and Ken Mehlman is in favor of anything that works against Democrats. They both want their teams to win. Part of winning is making sure the other guy loses, and part of the fun of politics, of any contest, of life, can be the dance in the end zone.
But the dance has gotten dark.
Partisanship is fine when it's an expression of the high animal spirits produced by real political contention based on true political belief. But the current partisanship seems sour, not joyous. The partisanship has gotten deeper as less separates the governing parties in Washington. It is like what has been said of academic infighting: that it's so vicious because the stakes are so low.
The problem is not that the two parties are polarized. In many ways they're closer than ever. The problem is that the parties in Washington, and the people on the ground in America, are polarized. There is an increasing and profound distance between the rulers of both parties and the people--between the elites and the grunts, between those in power and those who put them there."
Worth reading in full. She has serious criticisms for both parties, and my sense is that she's more in tune with the sense on the ground than the folks in Washington are.
I think many of Ms. Noonan's observations are on the money, but no third party. The Constitutional structure is not conducive to a third-party. An independent Presidential candidate? Perhaps. John McCain is the only name that springs to mind, but how does that square with immigration fervor?
BTW Bush did not run as a Concorde coalition guy -- he promised to lower taxes and increase entitlements. Immigration? Gore wasn't much different. People's priorities change. In 2004 it was WOT. I'm guessing that in the coming Presidential primaries, immigration will play a more important role in both parties if Bush doesn't diffuse it. Budgets too.
The total meltdown of both parties would please me to no end, but what would a 3rd party's platform be? I would hope that it would include an anti-abortion plank (to take one example), others would disagree vehemently, and we're back to square one.
Ben, I see your point. My response? That party would have an abortion compromise plank. It wouldn't necessarily even give details. It would just say:
As concerned as we are with the issue of abortion, we feel that concern pales in comparison to the concern over how we resolve it. We don't claim to know the best solution; rather, we claim we have to find it, and find it together.
I think there's a strong desire for people to have a third choice, someone who is a centrist with pro-American ideals. The dissatisfaction of the electorate was strong enough that Ross Perot managed to get a sizeable portion of the vote despite his flakiness and conspiracy theories.
The New York Observer is printing rumors that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering a run for President as an independent using his own funds. Granted, it's far fetched at the moment, but I think a candidate like Bloomberg could win the election.
but what would a 3rd party's platform be?
It could adopt my favorite, the Constitutional Union Party Platform of 1860
Something for everbody?
So, PD Shaw: how'd that work for them? I seem to recall their candidate won just a few southern states...
I have been saying for a couple years the time for another try at a third party win in 2008 is gaining momentum. Many at LGF suggested I was wrong in citing illegal immigration as the play maker for a 3rd party rise. Couple the immigration issue - 70% or thereabouts of Americans want the issue resolved - with dissatisfaction with the ®'s and their reluctance to use the power they hold in the Executive and Congressional branches to slam the left and good, and we have the makings for a viable chance for a new party. If not for the strong political and financial interests that have so much lobby power in the legislative and executive branch this might have occurred a long time ago. It will take many with huge kahonies to stand up against those powers that insist on status quo, but it can be done, as long as the nominee doesn't go wobbly ala Perot in his I'm up-I'm down- I'm up campaign that initially held promise for a change in Washington.
how'd that work for them? I seem to recall their candidate won just a few southern states...
I wouldn't have voted for them, they were being deceptive in attacking regional factions -- they were a regional faction of Upper South former Whigs.
How about this for a party platform:
1. End illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration.
2. Eliminate foreign aid.
3. Reduce dependency on foreign energy sources.
4. Reduce all foreign military deployments/bases.
5. Oppose new free trade agreements and withraw from the WTO.
6. Security check each parcel of cargo coming into the country; cost recouped by tariff.
Not my kind of platform, but I bet it would poll well.
The immigration issue is the catalyst for a 3rd party in 2008, as there is no clear left-right position on the issue. The political landscape is divided into 4 quadrants now, which will lead to massive confusion with a 3rd party.
Hello?? Guys??
The immigration issue is so yesterday. It looked like a workable wedge issue but ended up blowing up.
We're back to a amendment to eliminate the non existant gay marriage now.
Do try to keep up. ;0)
PD,
Change #4 to 'Reduce all European bases and eliminate all foreign say-so in our military deployments,' and I could vote for that.
"How about this for a party platform:
1. End illegal immigration and reduce legal immigration.
2. Eliminate foreign aid.
3. Reduce dependency on foreign energy sources.
4. Reduce all foreign military deployments/bases.
5. Oppose new free trade agreements and withraw from the WTO.
6. Security check each parcel of cargo coming into the country; cost recouped by tariff.
Not my kind of platform, but I bet it would poll well."
Yeah, and its gonna be real hard to stop Pres Patrick Buchanan from being reelected. Or something.
Re made-up party platform
#12 A viable third-party would have to take roughly equally from both parties, and I think reducing U.S. military involvement overseas would find some appeal on the Left and the Right, so long as its not imprudent (immediate) and defeatist.
#13 Its not Buchanan-ism because it leaves the social wars to the two parties that probably won't give up many voters for them. And the packaging could be more optimistic.
Of course poll-driven parties have to contend with the fact that public opinions change, except for the opinion that politicians that change their opinions are unscrupulous.
How about this for a 3rd party platform?
Dissolve both the House & Senate. (A representative group formed basically because the idea of national votes for everyday bills was impossible with 3month pony express mail service) Replace the current group with 3 public broadcast channels. These channels would 24/7 run loops of pro/con for bills. To get a bill started have a local signature number to get on the local ballot if approved go state if approved national. Have regular issues voted on by majority vote and amendments or constitutional changes laws ect.. done by majority of at least 2/3rds.
With today’s technology we could vote by internet/telephone ect.. for speed and the appropriate qualify questions to cut fraud. By the way make fraud a treason charge resulting in way over bearing punishment to keep such things not worth the risk.
Also I would go with a Presidential election system that would be a runoff style. Have multiple candidates’ election then top 2 have a runoff. This would keep fresh ideas in the system because 3rd parties could get large voter because people could actually vote for a 3rd party they more agree with first then the lesser bad selection for the final. Today’s system makes it were if you vote 3rd party you basically give the worst choice victory by splitting the vote on what would have been a win for the lesser bad candidate.
Why do this simply that it would end the special interest and the “payoffs”. You can’t buy 300million votes for pork filled bill. With everything forced onto the table people would again feel empowered and have no one to blame but themselves.
I also don’t buy the idea that if majority rules is allowed that the people would bring it all down or do some insane act against the minority vote. And just incase that’s the reason for the constitutional issues needing a majority of 2/3rds vote. To think that if the majority of 2/3rds voters would agree on something that a representative government would do any different makes no sense to me short just being some elitist fantasy of being above the peasant’s simple ness.
I would like to see a majority vote for a tax increase. Also all of these hot button issues could be solved like yes/no death penalty, Abortion, welfare, immigration ect… the representatives don’t fix or allow any of these issues to ever end or be decided. They instead both have a direct interest in keeping these issues alive forever for campaign phrases and stumping for contributions. The current representative government has no interest in fixing any problems because the devil you know is better than the one you don’t mentality rules them.
I also would love to see the Mainstream Medias polls found out for what they are not fit to wipe my a*s with. the media and their BS polls would be crushed weekly instead of every 4yrs like now. Even today I think if the Iraq war was put to national poll the media would be shocked. If nothing else our soldiers, allies and yes our enemies would know full well were we stand instead of always looking broken and divided emboldening our enemies and damaging our allies/allies moral/faith. And if the majority says surrender so be it in that case the nation would not deserve to live or win the war any way.
A great side bonus would be that short the elitist anyone who disagreed with the platform would be basicly admitting their views the minority view.
Two things. One, Noonan is completely washed up on seeing/believing that no one thinks the Democrats could run things worse than the Bush II White House over at Homeland Security. Two, the idea that the immigration is only for the benefit of the illegal immigrant. Let's just ignore the partisan line about groveling to your interest groups.
Third parties will work but only if at the local level the election apparatus is standardized so the extremists in both parties can not control whom is on the ballot. The center can probably move forward from there.
This looks like a good time to make the pitch for IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). With this approach you rank the candidates in the order you prefer them. Leave off any you plain aren't willing to vote for. Your first choice gets your vote. But if he's in last place then he's out, and then your second choice gets your vote. The last place guy after the recount is out, and if he was your second choice then your third choice gets your vote.
You can vote for as many candidates as you want to. You can vote first for a third-party candidate that you think isn't likely to win, and you haven't wasted your vote. If you vote for the second-worst candidate at the bottom then your vote will count against the worst guy regardless.
There are various arguments why this is good, beyond the chance for third parties. There is also a big variety of similar voting schemes, and some of them are probably better than IRV for arcane reasons, but are harder to explain.
If you think this is worth doing, you might campaign to get it for your local elections. Town or county. A small number of local elections are already done that way, and the more that are the more people will get to see it in action. The more local elections are done that way in your state, the easier it will get to use this method for state elections. It's a long slow slog to get this used. A third party advocating it might help a lot, but don't depend on any particular breakthrough, keep at the long slow slog too.
I agree with Noonan that the folks inside the Beltway, of both parties, have lost touch with the American people, but that doesn't translate into a viable third party. Historically it has resulted in takeover of an existing major party.
My bet is on a grass-roots uprising in the GOP. The Democrats are too far gone in snide elitism.
I like the proposed party platform. I would suggest adding:
1. Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.
2. Look at funding of NPR and PBS; maybe put it to a vote how much money, if any, they get.
2(a) Keep track of the slant/bias of all publicly funded programming. If a program has a proven bias of more than 55%, cut its funding.
3. Pursue and prosecute leakers, both the babblers in the CIA/NSA/FBI, and the media who choose to treasonously print and air national security secrets.
4. Pass a law forbidding any further filibusters, ever, in either the House or the Senate.
5. Pass a law that Helen Thomas MUST retire.
As long as we're re-considering military deployments, when can we get out of Korea?
South Korea is a rich and powerful industrialized democracy. The Norks are a rotted out Stalinist hell-hole. The South can defend itself, so let's pull out.
Unity'08 is one third-party movement in its infancy whose platform sounds somewhat similar what has been proposed so far. Their PR hook is nominating one Democrat and one Republican as their presidential ticket, but their selling point is being centrist/moderate as a contrast to both parties.
Who knows if it'll really take off or go the way of the Bull Moose Republicans , too early to say.
Tom's right (#18), there's never been a succesful third-party in U.S. history. Joe Trippi is wrong that the internet has provided new social and economic tools which will make the parties obsolete. These are the tools by which politically active people will control the parties.
Just because it's never been done before doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried now. Perot's candidacy did pretty good, and he was a nut-job. If you put up Guiliani with sufficient financial backing, and a platform that included the issues above which are important to the American people and not just to the EU and American lobbyists, I think it would be a VERY interesting horserace.
I think making abortion a litmus test question is stupid. No one is going to fall for it to answer it, and rightfully so. None of the recent Supreme Court judges did, and we all respect them for refusing to be drawn into that tired old debate. That's thinking small, like the Democrats do when their litmus test question is either "Is Bush worse than Hitler?" or "How fast can we get out of Iraq, and do we want to say that we left because we won the war or we lost it?"
J Thomas (#17), Instant Runoff Voting is a terrible idea. As bad as our politics get, do you really think things will be improved by making Congress more like the Knesset or the Italian Parliament? Color me highly sceptical.
And tagryn (#21), that selling point is laughable. The main problem of winner-take-all and the two-party system is that the parties are too much alike! These things pressure them to converge (Exhibit A: Bill Clinton), so what reasonable expectation is there that The Middle™ is fertile ground attracting voters away from the established parties? By being centrist, such a party guarantees minimal difference from the competition!
Kirk P. - Well, the Libertarians, Greens, etc. have tried remaining ideologically pure and eschewing moderation. It doesn't seem to have worked too well for them in terms of electoral success, however morally satisfying it might be. I suppose one can argue that that is because the system is rigged to be only two-party. As someone who sees the political spectrum of likely voters as bell-shaped with the majority somewhere in the middle, rather than U-shaped, I think it more likely because they were peddling platforms that had little appeal to most voters.
Both parties are doing so poorly in the polls because they are seen as not serving that majority center well, not because the majority isn't positioned there to begin with.
Kirk Parker, I think the theory is that a centrist third party might take a majority of votes from both the established parties this time around because a lot of people are sick of the first two parties.
There's a chance that we'd be worse off with more that 2 parties. I think we'd be better off with 3 good parties, or 2 good parties and 1 bad one, or 1 good party and 2 bad ones, than we'd be with just 2 bad ones. But maybe we'd do better to turn bad parties into good ones than try to make new ones. I dunno.
I do want to point out that IRV is very different from the french, italian, or israeli systems. With those systems you get to vote for one party out of a bunch of parties. Each party has a list of candidates, and the top N candidates on their list take office depending on how many votes the party gets. In that system you only get one choice -- one party. You don't get to choose which politician to vote for at all. Your vote might decide whether the first guy on the list makes it, or it might decide whether the 50th guy on the list makes it. Some of the guys on the list might be there because they attract votes, while others are party hacks who need to be legislators so they can be better at intimidating other party members into following the party line. If you don't follow the party line, why should you be on their list of candidates next election? Go find some party that wants you. So instead of 100 or 400+ individuals watching out for their districts' interest with lots of DINOs and RINOs, you get 17 or 20 parties watching out for their special-interest voters' interests.
With IRV you vote for as many candidates as you personally like. You can vote for a republican first in one race and a democrat first in another. Republicans can run two different candidates if they want. The two can say "I heartily approve of my fellow republican and I want you to vote for him. And here's the stand I'm taking that he isn't. .... Vote for both of us. But if you agree with me, vote for me first." Someone who has no reasonable chance of winning can run for the exposure. He can later say "70% of the voters voted for me." Proving he's acceptable to 70% is a good start.
With IRV you have a way to discourage negative campaigning, if you want to discourage it. Vote against the candidates who do negative campaigning, and also the candidates who got smeared if you believe the smear. It hurts both. But negative campaigning isn't that much help when there are multiple candidates with similar platforms. Paying good money to hurt one of them, when you could be improving your own position.... In theory you should be friendly with the guys whose stands overlap with yours. Encourage people to vote for them -- after you -- and they encourage people to vote for you after them.
There's strong theoretical reason to think it would be different from party-list systems. But would it really? Would it be good? Maybe it would tend to get centrist candidates to win when a better system would throw everything to one extreme or the other. We don't have a lot of experience with IRV. So I'd like to get it put in place for local elections first, and if that works out try it in some states, and try for the federal government after a lot of people have seen it in action and like it.
Also, I think it might be a good system for one party's primaries. It ought to produce candidates that best represent the voters from that party, without a lot of negative primary campaigning to split the party for the final election. That might not actually be a good thing, but I think it ought to be a good thing.
How's this different from the Constitution party?
The 3rd party can't just be Harder republicans, because there's already an "ultra conservative" 3rd party that's worthless and incompetant.
Actually now that I re-read #1, that also apes the "Reform party" from 92-2000 as well.
The only reason for a third part is to bleed votes from the Republican party.
Davod, a second reason for a third party is to bleed votes from Democrats.
A third reason is to turn the Democratic Party and/or the Republican Party into a third party.
But if we had IRV then you could vote for a third party without actually bleeding votes from anybody. But if there's any politician you wouldn't find acceptable, don't vote for him.
J (#26),
I'd be perfectly OK with a party deciding to select their candidates via IRV. On the other hand, I'm such a neanderthal that if they want to choose them via the proverbial smoke-filled room, I'm OK with that, too. Just so long as the general election is run honestly and fairly, the parties can do what they want in deciding who runs under their banner. (Or so I wish; here in WA it has been anything but open and honest recently.)
Kirk, I tend to agree with you. I believe IRV might be a good way for them to do it, and it shouldn't require a constitutional amendment or a big change for state governments. But the parties should get to decide. If a party uses a smokefilled room to choose a great candidate then I'm liable to vote for him.
What I don't like is watching two parties choose bad candidates and then I get to choose between them. Bush has amply confirmed my opinion of him since 2004, but I would never have voted for Kerry if there was an adequate alternative available.
If one's idea of a third-party is merely addition or subtraction from an existing party, then it's not really a third-party movement. Its party schism. See election of 1912 and notice who won.
The 2 major political parties in the UK are so close to each other too, although some would argue that it is Tony Blair who is closer to the conservatives then his own party.