Tag: Party politics

The Evil We Embrace

Note:  This was draft I was saving for when the country gets into the meat of the next election but my blogging buddy, Judy Thompson, over at https://sayitnow.wordpress.com/ asked a question about political parties whether there should be a 3rd or maybe none at all….so I decide to answer her with this post (it will be back during the next election).

College of Political Knowledge

American Politics And The Process

Paper #1

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

― George Washington

George was a sharp person and foresaw the problems these ‘parties’ will cause and yet the people flock to these unprincipled ‘people’ en masse.
“Evil’….yep the party system is evil look what it has done and continues to do this country.
I have been write against the whole two party system for decades….I feel that this country as long as it embraces this stupidity is doomed to failure.
Look what these monstrosities have done to the political system of this nation…they have made the divide deeper and more dangerous….they seldom deliver the needed programs and policies to keep this country moving forward….the candidates promise the world and deliver crumbs

Like many Americans, I have been increasingly disappointed by the candidates promoted by political parties because they tend to back candidates who are ultimately focused on personal gain and/or only advancing issues predetermined by party priorities while moving further away from responding to the needs of their constituents. According to The Guardian, in the 2024 election, the number of eligible voters who did not cast their ballot is more than the total of those who voted for either of the party candidates. So, maybe the real issue is that our political party system just isn’t working for most Americans anymore. Assuming this is even partially true, what if, instead of just complaining about the parties or holding our noses and voting for the “lesser evil” every November, we actually fired the parties—took away their grip on our democracy and built something better.

For decades, we’ve been told we only have two choices. But more and more Americans don’t feel truly represented by either major party. We’re exhausted by the noise, the blame games, the endless culture wars that solve nothing and only serve to increasingly marginalize portions of our citizenry. Americans want real solutions on housing, healthcare, education, wages, and the future we’re leaving for the next generation. And we’re not getting them. So, maybe it’s time to ask a radical but necessary question: What if the problem isn’t just the candidates but the political party system that keeps producing them?

The Case for Firing the Parties

A. They Were Never Supposed to Be Permanent

Political parties aren’t mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. The Founders didn’t design a system based on organized political factions. In fact, they explicitly warned against it. George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, foretold that political parties would eventually “become potent engines” for individuals to seize and abuse power, dividing citizens and distracting the government from serving the public good. In a letter written by John Adams in 1780, he regarded the division of the republic into two great parties as “to be dreaded as the greatest political evil.” In a 1789 letter from Thomas Jefferson, he wrote: “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

Yet political parties arose almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified. These early versions of political parties formed largely out of necessity to organize debates and mobilize voters. Political parties were tools for winning elections. But over time, the tool began to control the system itself. Today, parties aren’t just optional organizers of ideas, they have become gatekeepers of power, often more loyal to themselves than to the people they claim to serve.

https://thefulcrum.us/bipartisanship/dangers-of-two-party-system

Our political system without these beasts would be more open and would promote collaboration between the politicians without the restraints of some silly party mechanism.

Gerrymandering would not be an issue….

I say the sooner we get rid of these thugs the sooner this country will return to its place as the trend setter for democracy.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Gerrymandering Saga

The battle for redistricting has arisen yet again many years before it should Texas and now California are playing the game using gerrymandering as the weapon in a the ideological battle.

This whole system is so screwed up….it allows a party to pick its voters not the voters to pick the party….time to flush this crap down the toilet where it belongs.

But how do we fix this cancerous practice?

Partisan gerrymandering makes it harder for voters to hold their representatives accountable. Congressional district elections become uncompetitive. With reelection in the general assured, candidates are focused on catering to their own party base, which tends to be a more extreme subset of their constituents. Through this process, partisan gerrymandering often reduces effective representation in Congress and can play a role in crowding out moderate and independent voters.

But here’s a twist: President Trump’s new wave of extreme gerrymandering may actually backfire, paving the way for electoral reform. Partisan gerrymandering is unpopular with voters, as we’ve seen repeatedly in recent years. Voters in states such as Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, have supported nonpartisan redistricting commissions.

In 2021, Democrats tried and failed to pass the For the People Act, a bill that would have limited partisan gerrymandering nationwide and implemented non-partisan redistricting commissions in every state. But Republican senators blocked the bill.

…

One proposed solution is bipartisan redistricting commissions. These can fail when the parties cannot agree on a map. For instance, the Virginia commission deadlocked in 2022, leaving the courts to draw the maps. Then there are more radical solutions that effectively blow up the current electoral system as we know it, such as multi-member districts or aproportional representation. But we think it is unrealistic to get rid of a system that has been in place for two hundred and fifty years.

…

Our approach, which we call the “Define-Combine Procedure,” splits the map drawing process into two simple stages. First, one party divides the state into twice the number of needed districts—for example, 20 sub-districts for a state that needs 10 congressional seats. Then, the second party pairs those sub-districts into the final 10 districts. The result is a fairer map than either party would have drawn on its own. Instead of mutually assured gerrymandering, this approach leads to mutually assured representation.

https://time.com/7309565/americas-gerrymandering-problem-fix/

I disagree.

The only way to fix this problem is to get rid of it altogether…..and one way would be to do away with political parties (will cover this at a later post) then there is no need to go in search of party loyalists.

I think their solution will just morph into more problems if enacted.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

How Did It Come To This?

In recent years the question has been asked and there have been many answers….how did our two party system become so toxic?

I have said that I believe it became hard toxic with the election of Reagan and his policies of culture war top define politics and let the country go to crap in return.

But the truth of the matter is the party politics started way back with the 8th president, Martin Van Buren….(that is right time for a little history that few have the knowledge of in this day and time)

When Martin Van Buren arrived in Washington to be sworn in as a senator in 1821, he told a friend he planned to “build up a party” for himself. It was an odd time to be party-mongering, and Van Buren an unlikely party-monger. Republican James Monroe had run unopposed in the 1820 presidential election, and “every politician in Washington, with varying degrees of enthusiasm … was calling himself a Republican,” writes James M. Bradley in Martin Van Buren: America’s First Politician, a lively and illuminating new biography of our eighth president—the first to be born a U.S. citizen. Absent a strong opposition party, Van Buren lamented that politicians were appealing less to ideals and more to personalities, and wished, as he put it in an 1827 letter, to unite citizens through “party principle,” rather than “personal preference.”

Born in 1782 to a tavern-keeping family in Kinderhook, New York, Van Buren had little schooling but made himself a lawyer, rising to the heights of power despite his lack of military experience or strong family ties to ensure patronage. At 5-foot-6, he was considered notably short, and friends and foes called him the “little magician” for his outsize political talents. He proceeded swiftly from senator to secretary of state, vice president and president. And though he failed to win a second term, Bradley says, “He built and designed the party system that defined how politics was practiced and power wielded in the United States.” We are living in the world Van Buren created.

In the first decades of the Republic, leaders had generally called themselves Federalists or Republicans, but “few imagined that parties would be a permanent feature of the nation’s political life,” Bradley writes. “They expected parties to disband once the Republic was more secure and its great issues settled.” Van Buren plowed ahead, with the thoroughly modern view that parties were not a regrettable necessity but a revolutionary means of achieving and using power. With Andrew Jackson, he co-founded the Democratic Party in 1828, cannily banking on Jackson’s personal appeal to win that year’s election; Van Buren became Jackson’s vice president, and the Democrats dominated politics until 1860. “He didn’t think that politics should be a hobby for gentlemen to practice in their spare time,” Bradley says. “A party had to have an organization, a structure, a personality, and it should be run by professionals.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/martin-van-buren-created-americas-partisan-political-system-were-still-recovering-180985643/

So you see this whole party politics is not some new concept but rather it has been building slowly and steady until we have the crappy system of today.

Just thought you might like to know

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Pathetic Party System

A mere few days and the nation will have it say on who is to be president…..the problems this country is having goes back to the pathetic party system that we hold dear.

We all are well aware of just how divided the country is and that division is along political party lines. This system has held this country back for generations and made hatred and suspicion the norm for politics.

I do not expect many to agree with me on this for most Americans get their identities from their politics….

First the advantage…..

Political parties are essential institutions of democracy. By competing in elections parties offer citizens a choice in governance, and while in opposition they can hold governments accountable. When citizens join political parties, volunteer their time, donate money and vote for their leaders, they are exercising their basic democratic rights. Participation of citizens in political parties offers unique benefits, including opportunities to influence policy choices, choose and engage political leaders, and run for office.

Before I go any further…..when was the last time you influenced policies….how can it be so democratic when the only choices you have are the ones the system gives you?

Americans dislike and distrust our political parties; a mere 11% of Americans express high confidence in them when compared to many other institutions, reflecting their well-deserved reputation as a vulnerability to American democratic stability. And yet, parties are essential organizing institutions in any modern democracy. The size and complexity of the multiple levels of government in the United States and the diverse and distributed nature of the electorate necessitate organizations that can serve as the connective tissue of our politics and promote a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. Accordingly, “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.”

Yet, there is a natural impulse to view the parties as the problem and seek to further weaken or even try to eliminate them from our politics completely. Despite the understandable frustration with our political parties and a historical context that includes their intentional exclusion from the Constitution, a variety of reforms that weakened parties over time have served only to exacerbate the problems we have today.

For a healthy democracy to function effectively, it needs political parties.

While there are many ways in which political parties contribute to stabilizing and bolstering democracy, the following are vital to sustaining a system that is representative, responsive, and resistant to authoritarian takeover.

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/why-do-we-need-political-parties/

Resistant to authoritarian takeover?

Then explain the GOP and its Project 2025.

Then what are the disadvantages?

A two-party system is a structure where two major political parties rule and dominate the government. Political parties are significant as they represent specific social, economic, and political issues within a given space of interest. They establish a philosophical platform linked to voters, aiming to facilitate the election of a specific candidate to public office.

Candidates aiming at public office use their individual party’s platform to share their concerns with voters. They also propose different strategies they’ve set in place to tackle these problems in case they’re elected to office. There are many disadvantages of the two-party system, and we’ll address some of them in this article.

Read the disadvantages!!!!!

https://goodparty.org/blog/article/disadvantages-of-the-two-party-system

The biggest problem for me is the promotion of centrism.    There was a time when it was a good thing but these days it is the kiss of death to our way of life.

I tend to agree with Jesse Ventura….”I will not be a Democrat or a Republican. They are the problem, not the solution. We need to abolish political parties in this country.”

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will Dems Jump Ship?

The election of 2024 is just mere months away…..and my choices are slim and none of the two parties….and as of last survey the two parties are basically tied up with the voters….

By one basic metric of politics, Republicans have made gains against Democrats since the last presidential election: The Pew Research Center finds that the nation is roughly split between voters who identify as Democrats (49%) and Republicans (48%), reports the Hill. That’s a contrast to the lead-up to the 2020 election, when Democrats held an edge of 51% to 46%. However, it’s more in line with historical norms.

  • In broad strokes: Republicans “have made significant gains among voters without a college degree, rural voters and white evangelical voters,” per the New York Times, while “Democrats have held onto key constituencies, such as Black voters (though numbers are slipping) and younger voters, and have gained ground with college-educated voters.”
  • Blacks, Hispanics: The poll of 10,000 registered voters found that the share of Black voters who are either Democrats or lean Democratic dropped from a peak of 91% in 2016 to 83% in 2023, per the Washington Post. Over that same span, the share of Hispanic voters in the Democratic camp dropped from 68% to 61%.
  • Key shift: White voters without college degrees were roughly split between the parties as recently as 2007, but they started shifting toward the GOP when Barack Obama was president, per the Post. Last year, they leaned Republican by a margin of 63% to 33%.
  • Key point: “Both parties are more racially and ethnically diverse than in the past,” according to Pew. But demographic shifts result in differences. “The share of voters who are Hispanic has roughly tripled since the mid-1990s; the share who are Asian has increased sixfold over the same period. Today, 44% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are Hispanic, Black, Asian, another race or multiracial, compared with 20% of Republicans and Republican leaners.”

So what does this mjean?

Nothing right now for it is a momentary snapshot of the electorate…..but it looks like low information Dem voters are starting to lean GOP…..and we know what that means, right?

Speaking of voters changing sides….remember RFK, Jr?  The Dem then Libertarian and now considering an independent run…..but what is the anti-vaxxers true reason for the run?

It is stated that it is to rid ourselves of Biden.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s stated platform in the 2024 presidential race centers on promoting an “honest government,” a “clean, healthy environment,” and the protection of civil liberties—but his New York State director last week boiled down the Independent campaign’s true goal at a meeting with Republican voters: ensuring former President Donald Trump wins the election.

Speaking at a meeting last Thursday, Rita Palma first checked to make sure there were “no Biden voters in the house” before telling her audience that her “No. 1 priority” is to ultimately take electoral votes away from President Joe Biden.

“The Kennedy voter and the Trump voter,” said Palma, “our mutual enemy is Biden.”

States including New York, California, and “most of the Northeast” are likely to vote for the Democratic president, she continued, but if Kennedy, whom Palma referred to as Bobby, is on the ballot in New York, the campaign could help “get rid of Biden.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/rfk-jr-trump

This is how American politics works now….I know it is idiotic.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember Nader?

You should because he was blamed for the loss of Gore campaign to the Bush campaign in 2000….he ran as a third party candidate and I believe he got something like 90,000 votes which according to some was the reason Bush won over Gore in that election.

I have heard his name batted around as a possible candidate to take on Biden and Trump….I believe that is highly unlikely…..and now it is official…..Nader will not challenge.

Ralph Nader isn’t exactly overflowing with praise for either major party, but he’s not planning to launch a 2024 White House bid. The 89-year-old consumer activist told the Washington Post in a recent interview that he wants to help President Biden get re-elected. “I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

“We are stuck with Biden now,” Nader said. “In a two-party duopoly, if one should be defeated ferociously, the logic is that the other one prevails.” Nader, who first met Biden in 1973, described the president as “better than he has ever been,” but “still terrible on empire and Wall Street.” The Hill describes Nader as “infamous” for what was seen as a “spoiler” role in the 2000 election. Nader, who won the Green Party’s nomination, received almost 3 million votes nationwide in the election, which Al Gore lost to George W. Bush by a very narrow margin. Nader ran as an independent in 2004 and 2008.

Nader told the Post that he doesn’t plan to formally endorse Biden, but he has been contacting Democratic officials and operatives for months with ideas on how to improve the party’s pitch to voters. He said most of his calls have gone unreturned. In the interview, Nader discussed his long history with Biden. He said they first fell out over the Robert Bork nomination hearings in 1987 and that the break became permanent after Biden publicly blamed him for Gore’s loss in 2000, with the then-senator saying Nader “is not going to be welcome anywhere near the corridors.”

So all you scared people out there can rest easy for Nader will not be your whipping post in this election.

But I still see someone out there that could challenge Biden and that idiot Trump. 

Who?

Stay tuned to IST and learn the answer.

Today is National Coffee Day….I raise my mug to my fellow bloggers….have a great day and a relaxing weekend.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

All Eyes On The Shutdown

At least all eyes in the media is laser focused on this sham of a governmental game show…..Dems have offered a compromise but that was a fart in the wind….things are looking close to dismal.

IST has a rundown for those that prefer to stir clear of the MSM and their constant tomfoolery.

The magic—or dreaded—number is four. As Reuters reports, the US is four days away from what would be the fourth government shutdown in a decade, and things aren’t looking very promising. The Senate is barreling forward with bipartisan temporary funding that House Republicans have already said they won’t support. If Congress can’t manage to pass legislation for President Biden to sign by 12:01am ET Sunday, millions of federal employees will be furloughed, among other consequences. The latest:

  • On Tuesday the Senate handily (77-19) voted to start debating a temporary measure that would provide funding through Nov. 17 and greenlight about $6 billion each in aid for Ukraine and US disaster response efforts. The House GOP opposition is partially rooted in an insistence that any short-term funding measure also take on the issue of migrants at the border.
  • The AP reports Speaker Kevin McCarthy is pushing for a Friday vote on House Republicans’ own stopgap funding measure that would see many federal agencies lose 8% of their funding and include that hard-line border security measure.
  • Politico’s take: “McCarthy is already facing the threat of a far-right rebellion, one that would be virtually guaranteed if he put any Senate-negotiated plan on the floor with billions of dollars in Ukraine aid—not to mention a lack of further spending cuts and no border policy changes.”
  • The Hill sums up the Senate’s chess move: the hope that “if they jam the House right before the deadline, McCarthy will relent and bring it to the House floor, where it would likely pass in a bipartisan vote.”
  • CNN flags one potential Senate wrinkle. Getting the measure passed in time would require a sped-up process that all 100 senators would have to vote in favor of, but GOP Sen. Rand Paul has said he will “slow walk” any bill that contains more money for Ukraine.

This whole thing is just a game politicians play.

Now you know as much as anyone and you did not have to sit through endless commercials to get to it.

You are welcome!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Party Of War

Yes I am antiwar so I keep informing my readers about the wars we start and fight and seldom finish.

I remember the days when the GOP was the party of war….I protested against their many wars and their many mash-ups to war…..but recently the GOP is not the only party of war….the Dems and liberals are as much of a warmonger as their counterparts.

a remarkable column by Stephen Kinzer appeared in the Boston Globe. It was headlined: “Republicans Return To Their Roots As The Antiwar Party.”

More significantly, the subheading ran: “Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that.” It began:

“With Americans now engulfed in passion for Ukraine, it wasn’t surprising that President Biden proposed sending $33 billion worth of weaponry and other aid to Ukraine’s beleaguered military. Nor was it surprising that Congress raised the number to $40 billion, or that both the Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor. Hidden within that lopsided vote, though, was a shocker: Every single “no” vote – 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House – came from a Republican.

“Since the Vietnam era, Americans have come to expect antiwar rhetoric from liberal Democrats. Cancel that. This month’s votes in Washington signal a dramatic role reversal. Suddenly it is conservative Republicans who oppose US involvement in foreign wars.”

Strikingly not only did the “conservative” Democrats vote for the $40 billion that included more weapons of death and destruction for Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian. All the “progressives” did so, including AOC and The Squad, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and all the rest. It was a clean sweep.

The Democratic Party, Now the Leading Party of War

The truly sad part is that the sop-called progressives, The Squad, are just as pro-war as any GOPer…did lobbyists and their massive cash reserves change minds?

Is there another reason the ‘liberals’ have become the party of war?

Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matt Duss (an alumnus of the Saudi- and UAE- funded Center for American Progress) published a widely discussed essay in The New Republic in which he declared that American liberals and progressives need to prioritize expressions of “solidarity” with Ukraine over policies that might put an end to the bloodshed.

In this Duss, a reliable weathervane of liberal opinion, is hardly alone among liberal commentators and policy practitioners, after all, Democrats on the Hill unanimously voted for each of President Biden’s billion dollar aid packages to Ukraine.

What accounts for the enthusiasm for war in Eastern Europe against Russia among American liberals?

James W. Carden: What Accounts For the War Lust Among American Liberals?

The Squad has had some excellent policies to follow….but this seems to be an eye to re-election and not keeping the US from engaging in war after war that benefits no one but the industry.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP–The Party Of Stupid

Today’s GOP is a far cry from the noble party of 1956……and since 1980 it has been in steady radicalization….today it has NOTHING to offer the country other than ‘chaos and instability’……

The GOP are not a political party as we have known such for most of our history. They are closer to a camp of oligarchic terrorists, employing techniques used by Fascists and other authoritarian regimes, and excoriated in 1984, to attempt a slow-moving coup, , whose aim is the destruction of voting rights, constitutional democracy, and the creation of a one-party state.

…

Political strategist David Plouffe said on MSNBC last week, “They`re not hiding what they`re doing. …they`re not only trying to make it harder to register to vote, they want to change …who gets to decide who wins elections….” “[T]his is existential. If you think that this Republican won`t go to the …furthest extremes to hold on to power, to steal power, to deny voters their franchise, I don`t know what you`re watching.”

https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-gop-are-not-just-trying-to-suppress-the-vote-they-are-trying-to-control-the-count-kpkn/

Back to the ‘chaos and instability’ thing…..

Newly leaked video footage of a recent event hosted by the right-wing group Patriot Voices shows Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas openly admitting that his party wants “18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done” as President Joe Biden, a bipartisan group of senators, and congressional Democrats work to pass climate and infrastructure legislation.

“Honestly, right now, for the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022,” Roy says in the clip, referring to the month after that year’s midterm elections. Republicans need to flip just a handful of seats to take back the House and Senate.

“I don’t vote for anything in the House of Representatives right now,” Roy says in response to an audience member’s question about the sweeping infrastructure and safety-net package that Democrats are planning to pass unilaterally alongside a White House-backed bipartisan deal.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/07/leaked-video-gop-congressman-admits-his-party-wants-chaos-and-inability-get-stuff

Is the American voter this naive?   Or maybe a better word is….STUPID….that they allow this obstructionism to continue?

Just on the word of a notorious liar…..that goes beyond ignorant into the realm of extreme stupidity.

Not to worry….the Dems are just as worthless as the GOP.

Dems have great ideas they just do not know how to translate that into action…..in other words they are great at defense but have no offensive strategy.

There are a few that try to bring about these ideas but the so-called ‘centrist’ always win and the ideas become lackluster at best.

So another American party of stupid.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

A GOP Split?

Happy Mardi Gras….for those that celebrate……

For years now I have been telling my readers that the GOP was heading down a dangerous path….a path that could not bode well for the Party.

Like I said for years….https://lobotero.com/2020/07/08/is-the-gop-collapsing/

After 4 years of Trump the GOP is divided…..true conservatives and the Trumpites….so is the GOP over?

The GOP’s dire need for an alternative reality is well-founded. Demographics are changing. The number of people of color is increasing and whites will be in the minority in a bit over 20 years. Despite Hispanic Americans’ increased tilt towards Trump in 2020, unless Republican Party completely overhauls its platform and outreach efforts, most POC won’t vote for these politicians who stand in stark contrast to their interests.

Trump intuitively knew something that past Republicans didn’t get. Today’s conspiratorial and overtly white supremacist wings of the Republican Party, formerly disconnected from and disillusioned by the GOP, needed a proper welcoming in order to win elections. From Charlottesville’s “very fine people on both sides,” to the Proud Boys’ “stand back and stand by” comments, Trump signaled very clearly that these hate groups are embraced as part of the GOP.

The GOP Is Over

The GOP is losing donors by the barrel….one of their biggest donors…one of the largest is the Chamber of Commerce and they have cut ties with the GOP…others will follow….

The popularity of the Lincoln Project has given rise to the idea of conservatives forming a new party to counter the authoritarianism of the Trumpites.

Just how divided is the Republican Party? Divided enough that some 50 former Republican officials are on board to form a third US political party to serve as a counter to a GOP under the thumb of a wannabe autocrat, according to Reuters. The outlet cites “four people involved in the discussions,” said to involve former elected Republicans as well as officials who served in the past four Republican administrations. Evan McMullin, the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference who ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, tells Reuters that more than 120 people—including former Rep. Charlie Dent—participated Friday in a Zoom discussion about a center-right party that would focus on adherence to the Constitution and rule of law. McMullin notes that about 40% of those on the call supported the idea.

“Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy,” McMullin says, noting call participants were shocked that so many Republicans in Congress voted to block certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. An “extremist” wing led by former President Trump “has taken the [GOP] over,” McMullin tells the Washington Post, adding that some officials believe the party is “irredeemable.” Asked to respond, Trump spokesman Jason Miller tells Reuters that those involved in the talks are “losers [who] left the Republican Party when they voted for Joe Biden.” The Republican National Committee has a very different take, however, pointing to a recent statement from Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. She noted infighting would distract from the 2022 elections, and that winning is only possible “if we come together.”

I like the idea….maybe now the voter can have a real choice….but then that may be just my wishful thinking.

Apparently most Americans would like to see a third party as well…..

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me,” Ronald Reagan famously said after becoming a Republican in 1962. According to a new Gallup poll, a record number of Republicans now feel their party has left them. The poll found that 62% of Americans feel the two main parties “do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.” That’s the highest proportion since Gallup starting asking the question in 2003, and it now includes a majority of Republicans. Some 63% of Republicans now believe a third party is needed, up from 40% in September last year. Among independents, support for a third party was at 70%, while 46% of Democrats would like to see a third major political party, down from 52% in September. The poll also found that a record 50% of Americans now identify as independents.

ut while most Republicans now desire a third party, it would take more than one extra party to encompass their views. Some 40% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said the party should become more conservative, while 24% wanted it to become more moderate and 36% felt it should stay the same. Some 68% of Republicans wanted Donald Trump to remain as party leader, compared to just 47% of GOP-leaning independents. Among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents, 34% wanted the party to become more liberal, 34% felt it should become more moderate, and 31% wanted it to stay the same. No third-party candidate has carried a state in a presidential election since segregationist George Wallace won five Southern states in 1968, though Ross Perot took 18.9% of the vote nationwide in 1992.

Any thoughts on the GOP?

Any thoughts on a new party?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”