Matt Miller: Why We Need A Third Party

The Washington Post:

Why should we have to choose between timid half-measures and anti-tax fanaticism?

Read the whole story: The Washington Post

Comments

[Ernst Angst]

04:52 PM on 09/26/2011

We already have a third party. Also a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and even more.

What we need is a media that INFORMS the public as to what issues and choices are out there and not attempt to set the dialog for the nation. They don't do that because they are all conglomerate-owned and wedded to the myth of the 2 party "system" (i.e., the Status quo is the only way they go).

It would be nice, too, if the various states would remove their exclusionary laws regarding other political parties and candidates, that are not Democratic or Republican, on their ballots.

[Freedomaphile]

11:43 AM on 09/26/2011

Are you kidding me?

We already have a problem with one party being leveraged by a smallish but fanatical group.

Three parties will create more opportunities for this sort of thing.

Look at Israel. Small fanatical parties swing control of government and extract concessions to their point of view.

This is why Israel can not deal reasonably and fairly with the Palestinians.

[treadway123]

02:01 PM on 09/26/2011

We have a third party already! The T.P remember? Look at the mess they have made in Congress! Even the common sense GOP can't shine through there!

[Oceras]

11:19 AM on 09/26/2011

A third party is a perennial pipe dream. The reason is money. The money in politics is too heavily invested in the two major parties for the "investors" (a more honest word to me than 'contributor') to see a benefit in quitting one or both and moving funds to a third.

The only way to get reasonable reform in the nation's political system is to institute nationwide campaign financing reform on all levels, by which I mean public financing of political campaigns. Only when the playing field is equal will candidates begin to engage in rational debate. As it stands, candidates must keep one eye on the voters and the other eye on the "investors". As it stands, tremendous amount of time must be devoted to fundraising, which not only reduces time for honest debate, but also breeds suspicion and distrust among voters who feel that a candidate is being bought.

Our record of third parties is poor. It's better and cheaper to clean up the acts of the two parties as they are currently composed. Governments should be thought of less than it is as giving people a chance to govern than giving ideas a chance to be heard, examined, and debated.

[polidoc]

02:28 PM on 10/01/2011

also, electoral and ballot access reform. And while we are at it, let's bring back public service requirements on all broadcast licenses and extend that satellite and cable. I'm sick of seeing paid for advertisement when we should be informing our citizenry.

[cyclone70]

11:04 AM on 09/26/2011

Well past time for some viable third parties. As correctly pointed out neither party represents the interests of the people on mainstreet.

the problem is that election laws are rigged against third parties, as is redistricting. if someone is popular enough to overcome that, them they have to overcome the portayal as kooks and fringies by the corporate media machine.

mr Miller presents some great ideas here, however I must take issue with the often repeated globalist mythology he presents petaining to the post WWII "america the only economy left standing" meme

The post war US boom was fueled by demand and production at home - trade was not a large part of that.

under Speer, Germany's industrial production grew every year up until the end of the war despite allied attacks - and the marshal plan allowed european industry to rapidly rebuild and modernise

britain despite attacks industrial base remained largely intact post war, as did canada and australia.

Japan was not a major player in world manufacturing prior to the war and yes japanese industry was terribly devastated, bbut again like eurpoe the US helped to rebuild and modernise the industries, ultimately to become major competitors to the US

the characterisaztion the the US succeeded because every one else wast devastated is overly simplistic and quite frankly incorrect. the US gorwth of the 40s thru 70s which was the heydey of US industry, was fueled by domestic demand and consumption

[rikilii]

10:50 AM on 09/26/2011

There are plenty of "third parties".  The problem is that the average American is too dumb or too lazy to find out about them and vote for them instead of the status quo.

[DCinFrance]

10:41 AM on 09/26/2011

I would argue that we don't have a two party system in the first place.

Given the money that is on the table, I doubt any number of "parties" would make any difference to that fact.

It's time to take the money out of the equation. Public funding, no private funding, and election propaganda reduced to six weeks prior to election.

[shinola]

10:45 AM on 09/26/2011

Emphatically: Yes! Add to that: Abolish the Electoral College, so a president is elected by more states than just Florida and Ohio, and I think your comment is perfect.

[Independent4America]

10:38 AM on 09/26/2011

Good article. What we need to do is to make lobbyists illegal, set term limits for congress especially in the senate and take out the private money from the election system to truly reform who gets elected. The two parties are ruining this country and they prove it all the time. Yet people keep thinking that electing their side will fix things but it never does and its not going to becasue both sides are broken and doing the wrong things.

[cyclone70]

11:05 AM on 09/26/2011

making lobbying illegal would be a great start but the current SCOTUS won't allow that to happen

[Oceras]

11:31 AM on 09/26/2011

Some lobbying is essential. What needs to be controlled is the access of the lobbyists to politician. No group that extensively lobbies a politician beyond some to be decided limit should be able to donate funds to that politician.

[RTIII]

10:19 AM on 09/26/2011

I read the article, and it' sgood.

The only problem is that the article does not acknowledge that the Main Stream Media will not give air time to ANY group that does not advance (and especially not to one that threatens) their staunchly conservative viewpoints. (There is no such thing as a liberal media and there never was in the USA - it has always been a pay-to-play, rich-person's-megaphone system.)

Without Main-Stream Media for advertising the new party and its ideas, it has NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER.

For this reason, the only reasonable thing we can do is take over the D party. ...The R party is 100% ultra-conservative. The Ds, at least, have about half their members as reasonably centrist and a small handful can be called liberal or progressive. ...That means the D party is MUCH easier to try and reform.

We need to get cracking! This means NEVER ACCEPTING a "blue dog" just to get the seat out of R hands - it doesn't do us any good to get the seat and then have all the policies watered down to the point of uselessness while at the same time getting the blame for what results "because the numbers say you are in control." Well, guess what? Liberals / progressives haven't been in control since FDR.

[Spiral Architect]

10:25 AM on 09/26/2011

Nice spin. I was a Journalism major in a liberal college and we were taught how the media was liberal. There are a few execptions of course (Fox and WSJ lean right) but NBCABCCBS, MSNBC, CNN, Time, Newsweek, USA Today, NY TImes, LA Times, Miami Herald, PHilly INquirer, Esquire, Rolling Stone, AOL, Yahoo, AP etc..are all liberal. They don't merely lean left either, they are liberal through and through.

[BillZBubb]

10:38 AM on 09/26/2011

Baloney. You must have went to a community college. The media is owned and managed by big corporations. Those corporate exectutives are almost uniformly conservatives. They call the shots on the big issues and they have turned journalism into simply an echoing of he said/she said pieces without any analysis. So, for instance, when a conservative lies and says lots of scientists are making up data to support the facts of climate change, the media just reports that.

If you look at the big issues, almost every major news organization parrots the right wing framing of issues. The classic example is the bush/republican decision to invade Iraq based on a pack of lies. The "liberal" media never gave any real coverage to those who challenged the right wing--and there were facts that refuted the right wing WMD claims. Instead, the public was fed a litany of lies from Pentagon hacks who echoed the republican talking points. And that was in every major media outlet except the McClatchy newspapers.

[Oceras]

11:37 AM on 09/26/2011

It would be an easy task to list conservative media and make it seem as though the MSM is conservative to a large degree. "Through and through" is an absurd statement. I've read or heard many a report from most of those you listed that I consider to have had a conservative bias.
You have to get over the fact that simply because you disagree with something does not make it liberal. As a journalism major (journalist?) you should know that you evaluate information on its correctness, not on a decision that it is liberal or conservative.

[just sayin]

10:11 AM on 09/26/2011

A third party only works in a parliamentary system of govt.

A third party under our present system means that we could have a President entering office with only 34% of the vote. Depending on their policies and those of their opponents it wouldn't be impossible that 66% of the country was diametrically opposed to their views from Day 1.

We could end up referring to the present gridlock as the “Good Old Days.”

[shinola]

10:35 AM on 09/26/2011

I have to disagree with you, and especially your use of the word "only" in that first sentence. A third party, even if non-viable in terms of "winning" an election, does provide a pool of voters that can sway the platform of one of the other parties. If one is a Green, as I am, and sees, say, the Democrats being forced to curry the favor of more left-leaning non-Dems out of necessity to win a tight election---bingo!--change has happened. Right now, the Dems just take Dem voters for granted, trotting out the tired and hackneyed: If you don't vote for us, you get them. That is a nullified voter, one taken hostage.

[just sayin]

11:16 AM on 09/26/2011

I understand your theory but hasn't the reality been that third-parties draw votes from their most compatible rival, leaving the candidate who is least sympathetic to their views with the win? Look at the 1912 election or even the 2000 election.

Unless you can somehow count on the third party to withdraw before the ballots are set in stone, the best place for that kind of message is in the primaries. (That may be what happened in FL this weekend - the far right was sending a message to the front runners by voting for Caine.)

Thanks for the thoughtful, well-reasonsed and civil reply. F&F

[Veneita]

10:11 AM on 09/26/2011

A third party is only effective in a parliamentary system where you have coalitions that create governments. Unfortunately our framers created a conservertive winner-take-all system that have repeatedly proven that third parties cut the electorate against one of the major parites with the other one coming out as the winner. Think Perot 1992 and 1996 whose candidacy resulted in the election of Bill Clinton and nader 2000 who "progressive efforts" got us george w. bush.

[REDSTATEREFUGEE]

10:22 AM on 09/26/2011

x 65.....Well-reasoned..... So, it seems as if we are stuck with the same old same old....

[Gentleman Agitator]

10:43 AM on 09/26/2011

Or we need a parliamentary system.

[Gentleman Agitator]

10:48 AM on 09/26/2011

Clinton was going to beat the ineffectual Dole anyway. Nader deserves his share of the blame, but other shenanigans were a foot that help put Bush in power as well.

[polidoc]

02:30 PM on 10/01/2011

Nader does not deserve "blame". But you are right to point out that there were plenty of other shenanigans going on....

[usna73]

10:03 AM on 09/26/2011

Meaningless pablum absent a complete change of government to a Parliamentary system, which is long overdue. Try selling that to a population which quotes fairy tales from a book that is thousands of years old. Chaos and genocide has greater odds of coming before.

[ArchbishopBenevolent]

09:44 AM on 09/26/2011

The Tea Party is currently the best option for a viable third party. You may not agree with their platform but they are the most viable.

The Tea Party could represent the racially disaffected and religiously intolerant constituency of the Republican party. The current Republican party could better represent those who want to corporate kleptocracy.

[RTIII]

10:20 AM on 09/26/2011

The only reason they get any air-time is because they're staunchly hard-right, which is what Main Stream Media wants. There have been in recent times MUCH larger rallies and other efforts from Progressives and they get ZERO air-time and the media even lies about the size of the events - though mostly they just don't report them at all.

[Fizzligg]

09:42 AM on 09/26/2011

Gee, HP, is this guy's face really worthy of appearing on the main page for NO LESS than THREE stories? Throwing the over-exposure flag, here.

[firstep]

09:38 AM on 09/26/2011

A viable third party candidate is Obama and the Democrats only hope in 2012. Funny how HP is promoting that.

[RTIII]

10:21 AM on 09/26/2011

You'll have to explain that.

[TexianLife]

09:21 AM on 09/26/2011

A 3rd political party will not improve anything.....it would be just another party wanting power.

[enigma2]

09:24 AM on 09/26/2011

..and money.