Posted on 06/30/2004 8:21:46 AM PDT by Protagoras
Current Political parties try to be all things to all people and end up being nothing to anyone. The differences between the two major parties are essentially those of scope and detail.
A new party may be the answer, but only if it is unlike the others in essence.
No more than six simple planks in the entire platform. Narrow in focus, leaving individual candidates to have differing positions on all issue which are not covered in the six.
Keeping it simple, working 24/7 to enact the narrow goals. Any candidate who wavers would be repudiated.
AOK.
Not interested in any new party whose plank doesn't start off with a reaffirmation of the rights to life, liberty and property for every American, born and unborn.
Your proposal will die a lingering death because it ignores the women's vote. We have a Constitutional right to free PRADAS!!!
1. Zero tolerance for any man-made pollution.
2. Confiscation and destruction of all non-government-owned firearms
3, Government-paid health care and medicine for every person
4. Government-provided housing for every person
(Housing - 1 kitchen per 6 people, 1 bedroom for each person, 1 full 3-piece bath per 6 people plus 1 powder room per 6 people, 1 additonal room per 6 people. Cable and telephone wiring in all rooms except bath and powder rooms.
All homes to be fully handicap accessible.)
5. All food bills (government-approved "healthy" foods only) to be fully paid for by government.
6. All monthly income checks to be fully equalized for each adult, with incremental increases in the monthly income check for each dependent child.
There. That's a "party platform" Hillary could run on.
Should attract a lot of Democrats....
Take a lesson from Canada. Conservatives have been out of power for a generation in Canada because of a schism in the Conservative party.
Conservatives actually make up a large majority in certain areas of Canada. Clinton proved you don't have to carry a majority of the population in a 3 way horse race, you merely have to divide the opposition. You only have to carry 34% to win...
Libertarians and real conservatives could make much more of an impact working inside the Republican party than outside it.
Look what the Communists were able to achieve inside the Democrat party. Moved in, planked the agenda, marginalized the strong defense Democrats and then started running openly Socialist candidates.
I wonder if such a platform might have something of a chance, say, 30 years from now?
Third parties can't survive in the USA. They have tried every stripe of political view. They always fail.
Perot's Reform party was fairly successful. But after the first election it support dropped in half for the second. And by its third presidential election, just 8 years after its founding, the Reform party of 2000 was down to less than five percent of its support just 8 years earlier. It lost 95 percent of its support in 8 short years.
It takes a massive division in the populous and both major parties to be on one side of that issue for one of the two major parties to fail. The Whig Party dissolved when the issue was slavery was the most important issue. There was a huge opening for an anti slavery party and the Republicans took it. There is no issue of the magnitude of slavery today.
Secondly third party advocates never seem to grasp that it takes a lot of votes to win. For example in the the 3 way race of 1992, the winner had to get over 43 percent of the vote to win. To win a new 3rd party would have to go from Zero to over 40 percent support to win. And if a third party won the presidency it could not win the senate for at least 8 years. It would likely take that long at least to win the house. Facing a third party threat of a third party president both the democrats, Republicans and the media would gang up on that party and its president. His impeachment would include conviction.
You proposal would be a failure because only about 30 percent of voters support the positions stated in your proposal. People on the left and right tend to believe that if the public just understood their positions the public would support them. That is just not true. Does anyone who supports the right, think that they would be leftists is they just knew what the left's positions were? Then do you think the left would support the right if they just knew where the right stood on issues? That is just ignorance. Both the left, righ,t and center know each others positions. Few if any are going to change sides.
The most important thing to understand is the left and right are ideologs. The center is not. The center votes on personality and what a candidate will do for them. Laying out a series of ideological issues willl never gain the center for either side. The huge falacy of your proposal is your believe that positions that you believe in can gain majority support. You must believe that centrists can be made into conservatives.
The reason both parties take less than clear cut positions on either left or right policies is they need votes to win.
The problem for a third party is it is impossible for it to succeed by taking a position that has great support. Since the demise of the Whigs both parties have been flexible in following public opinion.
When in the first part of the last century the far left party (the Progressive Party) started to gain traction, the Democrats adopted the most popular views of the Progressives. When FDR did that, the Progressives folded in an election cycle.
History shows that when any issue gains large support, both parties adopt it. Welfare reform is an example. When Welfare lost much of its support in the 1990s, both the Republicans and the Democrats adopted the same welfare reform position. The original welfare party became the anti welfare party when supporting welfare would have cost it an election.
What you and most others looking for an easy solution come up with is defining the problem as poorly lead political parties with the wrong platforms. The problem is never the political parties. The problem is the American people.
No government, no matter how totalitarian, can survive with out public support. Ask the former Soviet Union how that works.
If issues have public support they will prevail. If they don't they fail. Successful Political parties are the mirror of public opinion.. they do not shape that opinion.
Very true, and didn't mean to derail the thread. I would love to see a viable third party. I guess I was just commenting that the DNC and GOP will not stand for it, and I doubt you could force any party back into the fold - they are too far gone.
I think it could.
I think the time is ripe for a new party with such a platform, however it will take time (I don't know about 30 years though, might could do it in less time).
I think the time is ripe for a new party for two reasons :
1)Many voters on both sides feel the two parties are out of touch with them.
2)Voter turnout is pathetically low. A new party that could generate a lot of interest could make a lot of headway.
Certainly. I was talking about gridlock between branches of government, not among different parties in the same branch.
Strong Military
Workfare-only system
Militarized Borders
Withdrawal from UN
Free Trade policies
Supply-side economics and fiscal policies
I believe we should make it a requirement that for anyone to serve in the House or Senate, they need to have owned and/or run a business.
Too many of our Senators and Reps are career politicians. That was NOT the intent of the Founding Fathers. According the Federalist Papers, our Congressmen were designed to be servants to the Public. Serve a few years and then go back to your private businesses. That doesn't happen today.
Ok, then remain with your current affiliation. Good luck
And you think that it should be one of the six goals and the party would get elected on that? I don't.
Adios.
I don't think those things will create a successful party which can be electable.
Adios
Thanks.
I envision a party that endorses any candidate who embraces it's six narrow, focused, goals. No matter what party they currently are with. In the absence of such a candidate, they would run their own.
The idea is not the same as the other parties, namely to garner power, but to enact several focused laws. The success would be measured by the goals attained. Not the power gathered.
All the goals have one thing in common, they would return freedom and responsibility to the people and diminish the power of government. They would therefore make the country a better place.
That is the goal.
Hard to say, but it would be irrelevant to me personally. I will be drooling in some old folks home by then if I am still breathing.
The time to start is now, it may take a long time.
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