Pretend-ependents and the Tea Party Movement

Among those who support the dictatorship of the Democratic-Republican Party and the duopoly system of government, one frequently finds two interlocking positions articulated independently of one another: there are those who are incapable of imagining a politics other than that of the Democratic-Republican two-party state, the historical determinists, and those who hide their political cowardice behind a mask of political calculus and recommend accommodation with the Democratic-Republican two-party state, the political poltroons. As an example of the former, consider the following lines from Conservative Views for the Grassroots:

We will always have a two party system in the United States. We will always have a Republican Party and a Democrat Party. In the past several decades, a new party system had emerged and it is called the Independent Party. Honestly, I call it the confused party.

The very existence of a third party and independent political tradition in the United States refutes such an a-historical perspective on political reality. As for the political poltroons, consider Mark Tapscott's recent editorial in the Washington Examiner arguing that "third party is the wrong party for tea partiers." Taking the Tea Party Convention in Nashville as an opportunity to reflect on the movement, he writes:

The Nashville event is also producing more debate within and without the Tea Partiers about whether to organize as a third party, mount an assault to retake the GOP from its disingenuous establishment leadership, or to remain independent while seeking to influence both major parties from outside. The biggest mistake in this discussion is to frame the analysis around the third-party issue . . . Third parties have mostly failed thanks to immense institutional ballot access obstacles erected by the two major parties, and the challenge of overcoming geographic separation over vast differences in order to achieve timely concerted action.

Tapscott thus provides two arguments against third party activism: 1) the Democratic-Republican Party has erected numerous barriers against third party and independent groups in order to ensure their continued monopoly on elected office, and 2) it is difficult to organize groups dispersed throughout a large polity. In his very next paragraph, Tapscott admits that the latter is no longer an obstacle to any political organization:

But the Internet enables these new armies rapidly to overcome distance and resource limitations that would hobble a traditional third-party attempt, and instead focus effectively on bringing to bear consistent demands with widespread public support on decision makers.

According to this argument then, the only reason not to organize independent third party opposition to the Democratic and Republican Parties is because the Democratic and Republican Parties have made it difficult to do so. One might conclude from this that Tapscott suffers primarily from political laziness rather than political cowardice, but he goes on to argue that tea party activists should infiltrate both the Democratic and Republican Parties: "Why settle for half a victory [i.e. infiltrating the GOP only] when Tea Partiers have within their grasp as an independent third force to be the decisive influence in both major political parties?" Obviously, this would be no small feat, and raises a number of questions: if the group is powerful enough to infiltrate both the Democratic and Republican Parties, why settle for nothing more than influence within the Democratic-Republican Party? Why not declare one's political independence and stand in open opposition to the two-party state? In the present context, one might also ask: in what sense would the tea party movement constitute "an independent third force" in American politics if they are completely dependent upon the Democratic and Republican Parties for their representation? Perhaps we need a term for two-party statists such as Tascott, who pretend that political dependency on the Democratic and Republican Parties is actually political independence from the Democratic and Republican Parties. Maybe we could call them pretend-ependents.