Posted on 10/27/2023 1:52:24 AM PDT by mbrfl
This is an open question on what a third party or a revamped, RINO-free Republican party should look like. The goal for most of us here is to establish a party that's more beholden to the people, not the special interests. The election of Mike Johnson appears to be a good step in the right direction. But my question is less about how we go about establishing such a party, whether a brand-new party or a reformed GOP, and more about how the party structure might be changed in the future to keep the Establishment/Globalist interests at bay.
For example, maybe the whole nomination process should be shortened from the year long, primary based campaign that we currently have, to a shorter process - possibly relying more on caucuses than primaries. Might this be helpful in minimizing the influence of the wealthy donor class and make it possible for true citizen politicians (as opposed to career politicians) to rise to the top?
I don't know the answer(s), but it's a discussion worth having, IMO. Any thoughts?
How many third parties are there already, isn’t it about 50 of them currently?
The politicians need a ton of money in order to run campaigns. That money often comes with strings attached, meaning that these donors are listened to far more readily than the voters are. If a political party did what the parties used to do, with maintaining precinct organizations that meet on a regular basis, the parties would have plenty of volunteers and the politicians would be able to campaign without having to balance the donors interests against that of the voters. There’s no guarantee that corruption would be ended, but the politicians would no longer be so dependent on donors.
People have managed to make time to spend hours a day on their phones. That is time that could be repurposed.
We are faced with many challenges.
One of the most sinister and potentially nation destroying is this self-hating woke ideology being pushed in colleges. It includes many of the outrageous patterns of modern leftism:
CRT (critical race theory)—threatens to bring back segregation and blames most ills on one race
gender neutral theory—girls can be boys, boys can be girls, heck boys can be lesbians etc it’s potential is destruction of the family.
The USA is inherently evil—we got this way by stealing and enslaving, we should make amends by reparations etc.
Ron Desantis has shown a path to combating this. He has actively sought out the worst DEI ( diversity equity inclusion) proponents pushing this quasi Marxist woke philosophy on our young and he has fired many of them. Kicking them out of the upper level Florida educational systems.
This is at least one facet I would like to see implemented in a RINO free party.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/15/1176210007/florida-ron-desantis-dei-ban-diversity
Drop the normalcy bias.
We are a precarious situation.
For starters, a party that never, ever, at no time, not under any conditions, at any point makes a *compromise* with the democrats, RINOs, or uniparty for anything. EVERYTHING these backstabbers do (regardless of party) has to do with confiscation then redistribution of your wealth regardless of outcome.
Just stop it completely, we might end up with a balanced budget and won’t see a total collapse of our country. Sadly we’re too late for that.
Exactly what it looked like coming out of the Civil War in 1865.
A party that has an infrastructure big enough to have ballot status in all 50 states and DC.
(insert meme of Rodney Dangerfield here)
“How bout Fantasy Land!??”
Many 3rd party social media bots chant the same slogans year after year here because they refuse to accept that their 100%er dogmas are unviable electorally. They imagine that if they just stamp their feet and hold their breath a magic new perfect party will emerge.
It will not. Here is why
There aren’t enough of the dogmatic 100%ers who agree with each other to form a viable 3rd party much less a national political party
When this was tried in the 1990s under Perot. The same sort of 100%er political dogmatists immediately started fighting with everyone else because they could not have their way politically 100% of the time. The result was, like every other time it has been tried, the suppose replacement party splintered into smaller and smaller 100%er tribes until it finally died.
Success in politics in the US Constitutional Republic requires the ability to build coalitions of interests groups to vote for your candidates and the ability to compromise with those groups on set of core principals all can support.
That is exactly the thing that the 3rd party 100%ers refuse to do in the existing party structure. Because of that, they are politically irrelevant.
I would rather have a party that is beholden to the Constitution.
>>”The politicians need a ton of money in order to run campaigns. That money often comes with strings attached, meaning that these donors are listened to far more readily than the voters are.”
Precisely. It seems to me that when we speak of politicians being “bought”, that is the biggest part of it. Of course, once in office there are other ways Senators and Reps. can be bribed, but there are laws to address that, and it’s a riskier endeavor. The biggest carrot the donor class can dangle in front of politicians is the promise of campaign money to help them stay in office. That promise alone is enough to buy their loyalty.
So, the great challenge is to try and find a way to lessen the influence of big donor money from the process. But that’s been tried for years and is exceedingly difficult. We’ve seen SuperPacs, the Citizen United decision and other changes in campaign financing, and donors have always found ways to adjust to any changes. So perhaps the problem can’t be solved with laws but through voluntary adherence to party rules. If the nomination process can be cleaned up, then maybe that would be good enough.
You can paint a car but you still. have the. same ugly crap underneath. Start all. over with a new “American Party”.
Riffing off your post, there is a power structure in this country. One can wish it away or try to dismantle it, but I think that is a lifetime of wasted effort.
I much prefer to work within it. Doing this we see the occasional victory (as we seem to have just done!!) and at least push that Overton window to the right.
That does NOT mean we get our way every time. Even on FR we often disagree on what “our way” is and we are a small bunch. This is a huge country. Of course coalitions must be built and alliances leveraged. Otherwise you will find yourself in a perfect party of one.
Where to draw our lines? That is what we fight about, even on FR. I will keep fighting within the existing power structure.
Exactly. And that's why RINOs should be voted out of the Republican party. The VOTERS are overwhelmingly MAGA. The party belongs to the voters. Why should WE leave and have to build up an infrastructure from scratch?
Primary every last RINO. They have outed themselves in a big way since 2020. It should be our constant goal: replace RINO with MAGA every election cycle.
I knew many Ross Perot supporters. They were not 100% in dogmatics lockstep. My basic impression of those in my family was, they wanted economic conservatism without the embarrassing social conservatives.
Nothing unique about them IMO
I understand your points and they are valid. My question had less to do with whether we should or shouldn’t have a 3rd party, and more towards, what should OUR party look like, whether it’s a revitalized Republican party or a new, 3rd party. Are there any reforms to the nomination process that might help bring about candidates who are more beholden to the voters than to the donors?
The primary strategy is the strategy and we do utilize it. We could always do better.
Get on your central committee (be a delegate or committeeman). Find good candidates for local office or be one yourself. Organize, donate, volunteer, campaign, get elected. Some of those locals can/should eventually get higher office, up into the state and national levels.
This is grass roots politics. This is what works. It’s a hard slog but fun if you like politics and you accept the fact that you will not always win. Over time it pays off.
I think something along the model of the Conservative Party in NY could be effective if implemented nationwide.
That is, build a separate, parallel structure that puts up and supports a slate of MAGA/tea party/conservative GOP candidates in every district. For those few states that allow candidates to run on multiple party lines (like NY), establish immediate parties. For the rest of the states, wait a few election cycles until the new “party” apparatus is staffed, functional and effective. Then, file within the remaining states with the “new” party.
In re reforms, my criteria is to find and promote those who adhere totally or mostly to our national and state platforms. We have a good national platform.
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