You can’t polish a turd
First, apologies for the lack of blogging. Work exploded in a volley of terminations, resignations, and yours-truly getting handed additional crap to clean up.
Democrats (not liberals per se) have some flaws. For example, my biggest criticism of them is that they don’t like to let facts get in the way of their opinions. This illustrated by the typical stance they take on issues such as foreign aid, gun control, and taxes. Foreign aid is great, if it serves its purpose. But it doesn’t. It lines the pockets of politicos from those countries in a lot of instances. I doubt our aid to Haiti gets to the people who need it. Yet, if you suggest that maybe we should cut the aid (since it’s only making the rich in Haiti richer), then (to some Democrats) you obviously don’t care about the little guy. Despite the facts that the money doesn’t get to the little guy. Gun control and taxes, which the Democratic Party has historically wanted more of, haven’t been proven to provide the desired effects.
Republicans (and again not conservatives per se) have flaws themselves. Most of us moderate conservatives take no issue with gay marriage, think abortion (though not a good idea generally) should remain legal, and aren’t racists. Yet, several Republicans are these things and they, of course, get tons of press coverage and reflect poorly on us moderate conservative types.
Now, SKB (taking a queue from Instapundit) thinks the solution is possibly a third party. The thing that sparked my interest was this exchange:
From Instapundit: Stephen Green writes:
I’m a Falwell-tweaking, gay-marriage supporting, drug legalizing, pro-abortion, pro-immigration, anti-trade barrier, wary-of-organized-religion kind of conservative.
You know, one of those conservatives.
From South Knox Bubba: SKB writes:
That’s funny. I’m a pro-business, anti-tax, gun-toting, second amendment supporting, tough-on-crime, personal-responsibility-advocating liberal.
You know, one of those liberals.
I suppose, I’m both of these types myself. And I think maybe Bubba’s on to something with this whole third party thing. But I think that party exists and they’re called Libertarians. Libertarians are more than Republicans who smoke weed. At their heart, they’re constitutionalists and value personal freedom & responsibility. But some of them are nuts.
Is a third party the answer? Could be. But the third party will never be successful currently. Look at Perot, Nader, and the Blue Guy. All of them have largely failed at politicking. Our two-party system prohibits any other party from really standing a chance at accomplishing anything significant. Plus, to get federal funding for campaigns a party must win 5% of the popular vote. Nader came close but didn’t quite make it. Even Perot has stated that his runs for office were taken seriously in the media because he had some bucks!
So, what does this nifty new party need?
It needs dollars. Something it likely won’t get since the Democrats get all the money from exploiting people and government programs. And the Republicans get all the big business money and cash from the wealthy. The third party has its work cut out for it here.
It needs good marketing. It needs a snazzy new name and a means of reaching its target audience. Maybe one of those old USFL team names or something. I don’t know. But it needs to draw interest, be catchy, and a nifty little theme song would be cool too.
It needs morally superior candidates. Everyone knows Gore got funding from the Chinese and everyone knows Bush had a DUI. I realize that in this day and age a candidate has to essentially be superhuman in order to not have any skeletons in their closet that some witness, former associate, or member of the press can uncover and make public.
It (and its candidates) needs to stick to its guns. Gore lost a great deal of support when he changed his longstanding stances on gun control and abortion to be more popular in his bid for Veep. So did [insert any successful politician’s name here]. This gets back to morality. The party can’t appear to be wishy-washy in its convictions.
I’d say SKB and company have their work cut out for them. I’d be happy to support any attempt at unfucking our two-party system but I think without resources and moral certainty the attempts will fail.
Adieu.
