It's Time for a Third Major Party
Posted: Sunday, February 05, 2012
by John Sammon
Sammonsays
It’s time for a major third party to compete for the White House if for no other reason than the injection of new blood and new ideas for a mix that has gone stale. Neither of the two traditional parties has shown they are capable of running the country. It shouldn’t take a genius to figure it out.
Even I understand it.
These ideas would eventually be adopted at the state and federal level.
Then there was the People’s Party of 1896, composed of poor Southern farmers calling for a graduated income tax, an eight-hour work day, and government control of railroads. Its candidate James Weaver won four states in 1892, and the party and its ideas were largely absorbed by Democrats under William Jennings Bryan in a losing presidential election in 1896. Interestingly, the People’s Party was described as a “populist” movement with a bunch of “have-nots” demanding their fair share of America’s wealth from banks and monopolies, and was thus among the very first “99 Percent” movements.
Today, we have the miniscule Peace and Freedom Party formerly run by consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader, a left-leaning entity that champions environmental protections, free access to health care and institutions managed by the people who work in them. The Green Party has environmentalism as its focus, while the Libertarian Party espouses personal freedoms, avoidance of military interventions, limiting big government and free trade.
There are others, from the United States Marijuana Party, to the conservative Tea Party. None have mounted a serious challenge to the two major parties.
It fascinates me to hear both Republicans and Democrats constantly say, “I’m right, you’re wrong,” when they both have such uninterrupted dismal records of abject failure. The candidates and everybody else stress how divided and divisive things are and how different are their philosophies, but it’s actually the opposite.
Both parties are similar in nature. Much more than the rhetoric from them indicates. The system in place will remain basically the same.
We have consistently skyrocketed as a debtor nation under both parties and under each succeeding president of both parties. If you’re reading this and you vote two-party, what makes you think anything will change? Has it ever? Ask yourself, when was the last moderately successful president of the two parties? At least whom you perceive so?
If you’re a Democrat, perhaps Bill Clinton.
If you’re a Republican, perhaps Ronald Reagan.
That was a while ago. Both of these men had some serious failures to their credit.
If you say George Bush Jr., you’re a liar.
If you say Obama, you’re naïve. He got Bin Laden, but many of us are still standing in unemployment lines. That hasn’t changed.
Republicans have one candidate who wants to turn school children into janitors and plant a militarized colony on the moon so we can claim ownership of it, while your unemployment benefits run out. The other candidate is a compound interest shark who burns out companies, pockets the proceeds and moves on. Can we assume either of these Republicans will make things rosier? The last Republican Administration launched two wars that didn’t achieve after 10 years a clear victory in either, at a cost of $800 billion (for Iraq alone), when original predictions pegged the cost at $60 billion.
What can we expect from a new Republican president next January?
More influence peddling from lobbyists on Capitol Hill, more corporations running amok, more savings and loan fiascos, more deregulated slashing and burning the economy, more overseas tax shelters, more obscene lower investment tax breaks for vulture capitalists even though the idea they create jobs is a fiction, more shipping jobs to China to take advantage of slave labor, more breaking unions, more eroding the middle class, more failed trickle-down nonexistent benefits and jobs philosophy from the ultra rich, and of course tax breaks for the billionaires. And a new war with Iran.
The economy imploded almost to the exact day George Bush left office. Forgive me if I don’t express overwhelming faith in another Republican president.
The backlash from the accumulating fiascos of the Republicans in 2008 swept Democrats into office, but what have they done with it the past four years? Democrats, they seem to be impotent. Nothing fails a Democrat so much as success. They’re afraid. Their actions are apologetic, tentative. In the face of charges from their ultra conservative adversaries that they’re unpatriotic and disloyal---they often seem to wilt. They cave in. They try and compromise. It’s almost like two thieves, Republicans and Democrats, understand each other. Not since FDR have we had a strong Democrat. Okay, Truman too.
Obama only got Bin Laden because U.S. intelligence finally figured out where he was hiding--- on Obama’s watch. But that’s just the luck of the draw.
Obama’s other achievement, the troop withdrawal from Iraq, came about largely after the puppet regime we set up refused to grant immunity to Americans who commit crimes in the country from being prosecuted in Iraqi courts. Those ingrate Iraqis refused to let us rule their country as a colony.
Obama health care is a legally-challenged, watered-down-to-make-it-acceptable to Republicans which it isn’t type plan that if I had to characterize its chances physically, I would say it has Downs Syndrome. Despite the fact the basic premise is well-intended, if you’re a Democrat that is, getting more Americans in need in front of a doctor, the party has a long history of social experimentation that for one reason or another in the end didn’t work. Call it Murphy’s Law, much of the time it doesn’t achieve the intended consequences, but simply layers on more bureaucracy, like the ill-fated War on Poverty of the 1960s. Social Security is the exception.
Widespread individual prosperity is probably a better way to improve health care rather than socializing it out.
The problem for Obama is that he has to portray an 8 percent unemployment rate---- as a recovery. I remember when it was 4 percent. I’m a voter. That’s Obama’s problem.
Democrats believe in throwing money at problems. The $800 billion stimulus bailout was ironically the same amount as that we wasted on Iraq. The stimulus didn’t work.
What can we expect in the event Obama is reelected? Tax raises on the ultra rich, even if seen as fair, achieving little overall in the face of continuing unemployment, layering on more debt from health care, maintaining tax shelters already in place including the 14 percent investment tax that mythology says creates jobs, more lobbyist influence peddling, tax cuts for groups the government says are dispossessed, but having little overall impact on the rest of us because the housing market in the country collapsed. And war with Iran.
Both parties supported military intervention in Iraq based on false premises (weapons of mass destruction) even though more Democrats opposed it. Both parties have demonstrated they consider the introduction of American troops without a Declaration of War as a viable instrument of shaping foreign policy rather than for pure defense as the founders intended. Thus, Obama’s recent actions in Libya.
Lobbyists for both parties contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to promote what’s best for their investors, not what’s best for the country.
Both parties offer up candidates whose sole viability rests on the amount of money they can raise. This offers the spotlight to crooks and hacks devoid of idealism. For example, an unknown write-in candidate for president in 1992 whom I once personally interviewed, when he attempted to speak at the Democratic Convention held in New York, and he was a registered candidate, was physically locked up in a closet by goons of the party. He was going to sue, but never did. His last name was Smith. In this case, Mr. Smith didn't go to Washington.
The present system is corrupt.
Both parties regularly give themselves pay increases, have free mail and travel allowances to exotic destinations at your expense. They have consistently increased these through times good and bad. Since 1992, both parties working as a team have adjusted their own salaries upward 12 times while refusing six times, and every single year from 2001 through 2008. Congressional pay has increased double from 1990, from $89,000 to $169,000. It’s a bipartisan effort.
Differences in parties?
There are actually few differences between Republicans and Democrats.
The value of a third party is like the value of getting a third opinion about a prognosis of cancer, and this country has cancer. The value of different perspectives and ideas. A third party powerful enough that it couldn’t be ignored by the Democrats and Republicans, would perhaps force the Democrats and Republicans to temper their philosophies to draw voters from the third party. This could lessen the current divergence of the two and its non-compromising, paralyzing impact, which is much like two mountain goats locking horns.
The third party would say, you want our votes, you have to adopt some of our ideals.
There has never been a political third party set up to represent principally the Middle Class.
I propose the new Middle America Party. This new third party would represent the Middle Class majority of Americans and protect us from sonsofbitches of the extreme right and left, a party by, for and of the Middle Class. The Middle Class deserves its own party.
The Middle Class is vanishing under the two traditional parties. A third party dedicated to the Middle Class might save it.
What will be the first order of business of the Middle Class Party? A flat tax for all Americans, the same rate for all. This might cause some problems, but it’s fair, it’s right. Next, give war-making powers back to Congress as the founders intended. The president is again mandated to get a Declaration of War from Congress before committing troops. No more Julius Caesar-style presidents sending troops any time anywhere. That could help save $1,600 billion in lost revenue fighting unnecessary wars taking out weapons of mass destruction that don’t exist.
More on the new Middle Class Party platform later.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Lots of great content, history and reasoning. I love the name. Looking forward to more.
The architects of Washington D.C. deliberately designed it to be easily taken over by revolutionaries (anyone who's had the misfortune of trying to drive there would agree wholeheartedly). Our founding fathers believed revolution was necessarily to maintain a healthy democracy. For all we bloviate about remaining true to the founding principles of this country, we have utterly failed in our American duty to revolt. Not sure if a third party will do the trick, but -- at this point -- anything's worth a shot.
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