While I believe a two-party political system has many advantages, the problem with our two-party system nowadays is that it isn’t, really. One wing of our uniparty talks about unity, while doing everything it can to be divisive, while the other wing talks about bipartisanship, meaning “surrender our principles and accede to the other wing of the uniparty’s demands.” And so we end up with R.L. Dabney’s prophetic 19th Century utterance,
“Conservatism’s history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward to perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It tends to risk nothing serious for the sake of truth.”
Yes, he was talking about conservative vs. “progressive” as to both political and social matters in the 19th Century–which were somewhat more separate in the 19th Century than today. How much more valid are his words today? (OK, so there is some small difference between the two “major” parties. The Dhimmicraps–leaders and rank-and-file, it seems–want to drive the country over a cliff into the abyss of socialism/communism at a brisk 100mph, while the Repugnican’t “elites” demur. They feel a more sedate 75mph is in order… )
So, some would “send a message” to one party or the other by voting for a third- or fourth- or firth-party candidate. The problem with that is that nobody’s listening to the so-called message. The only way a third-party candidate can send a viable message is by either winning an election or getting a plurality of the vote. Apart from that, third-party candidates are dismissed by very nearly everyone as simply cranks. No, the only way an “independent” (ain’t no such critter*) or third-party candidate can make waves big enough to be heard is to have a big enough base of the candidate’s own to actually win office… and then be successful in making changes that are positive, whatever base deems positive.
By that set of criteria, Joe Lieberman is an almost successful third-party (a party of one?) candidate/officeholder. To be truly successful, he’d have to have effected positive change in the party he left, at the very least, and he’s not done so.
When I see a viable third party form that espouses my views, I’ll jump on board lickety-split. Until then, unfortunately, I’ll probably still be limited to votes against the worst candidate, more often than not. Fortunately, reviewing this year’s offerings at local, state and national level, I can vote with some degree of positivism on almost half the races. Heck, adding Palin to his ticket even gave me a positive reason to vote for Juan Mexicain (and hope for a Palin presidential candidacy down the road, a candidacy that may well be a step in reform of the Repugnican’t Party).
But third-party? Not until someone with a positive record of accomplishments and genuine reform comes along to challenge the Uniparty.
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