From a
letter to the editor of LJ World:
The real problem is those extremists in both parties that drive our debate. In an environment where the majority of our national legislature is assured election by political association, the extremes in the two parties dominate.
While the majority of the electorate self-identifies as moderate, they seem to have little influence with the party leadership loyal to those extremes. The old not-so-sneaky trick of splitting the national leadership in the search for compromise no longer works. On the contrary, compromise may be fatal to the political survival of an elected official.
Perhaps the only way we can address hard problems like our debt crisis in the political environment prevailing today is to establish one or more centrist parties to which the moderates can gravitate. The abrupt and erratic progress when the electorate infrequently grants political control to one of the existent parties may just be too disruptive to justify the continuation of our two-party system. We might learn from our many democratic allies that a multiparty system better serves the public interest.
The piece has sparked an interesting discussion in the comments section as well.
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5 comments:
One way to structure a third party is the make it issue based. Scientific surveys can be conducted issue by issue and the elected politician follows the results. It takes the ideology out of setting the party platform. Please read http://thenewthirdparty.blogspot.com.
Thanks for the link. You should check out ruck.us if you haven't seen them yet, ljp. It's a new online networking/organizing tool that lets people organize around issues independently of the parties.
I absolutely agree with ljp's statement that the general party platform / set of issue stance principles would be better put to the American people at large, but individual politicians inside a party can't be expected to agree with said platform all of the time. The party rank and file get to decide who they want to put the party name onto.
I looked through ruck.us; it is a good starting point. However the A.) B.) C.) D.) answer format is a bit simplistic. Also, there are no references if one would like more information about a topic nor is there a section for comments and debates. But if you have to start somewhere, the best place is to start with the issues. Issues matter, politicians and political parties matter less.
I'm curious, what particularly "marginalized" views are they talking about? I've been observing self proclaimed centrists for years, and the vast majority seem to fall somewhere within the camp of center-right economic views mixed with vague social libertarianism. Mostly the calls to cut "entitlement spending" with some modest tax increases (or closing of loopholes) seem quite prevalent in the media.
Also, I find the idea that both parties are run by differing ideological extremes mildly amusing, given it requires a microscope nowadays to determine the differences.
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