SS109 wrote: Social Libertarian? Would allow homosexuals to marry, some would legalize drugs and prostitution.
But, in order to appeal to more people, the party would be forced to take a more moderate approach and perhaps leave prostitution and drugs off the table for now.
"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln
Wily Fox aka Angela wrote: isn't that what the tea party is? a third party?
The TEA party is not an actual political party Wily, at least not yet. You can't go down to the County Clerk and register as a member of the TEA party as you can with Republican, Democrat or American Constitution parties.
I'm interested in your opinion on my idea to weaken the power of the political parties themselves and their special interest groups by doing away with the ability of the political party to limit the number of candidates from their party that can appear on the ballot to just one and with the party ticket in general for the executive office at the state and national level. Do you find it to be something you could support? Do you think the people would have been better served in the last election if they could have voted for Romanoff, Bennet, Buck or Norton instead of only Buck or Bennet? Do you think the people would have a louder voice if the last ballot for President had contained Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Biden, McCain, Romney, Paul and Giuliani with the top two vote getters in each state then having the EC votes from that state cast for them?
hey PS... while I know the tea party is not an "actual" party, yet, I think it's the intent to become one. They did a good job of getting into the system via the GOP, but I think the GOP and TEA party are too far apart to be inside on one party.
on the voting idea, I would refer back to Rockdoc Franz's post about informed voters. my only "fear" would be that without a primary (where most of the voters are more informed) then it would really be a crap shoot in general elections.
FWIW, I think the TEA party folks are more in line with Jefferson's republican form of government than the modern day GOP is and are more deserving of the Republican nameplate.
The problem as I see it is that he parties have become too powerful and beholden to their special interests. I think that is true regardless of whether we are talking about the Democrats or the Republicans. The likelihood of getting a 3rd party candidate, or even one from one of the two major parties running as an Indy, elected is very small because of the power the two parties have amassed over the last 200 years. Usually, as in the 1992 election, the result of having a third party candidate is that members of 1 of the 2 major parties end up splitting their votes and the person from the party that remains unified wins. I know of many Democrats who would have voted for Clinton instead of Obama if both were side by side on the ballot and I know many Republicans who would have voted for Paul instead of McCain if both of their names were on the ballot. There is more than one member of the party who would make a good representative in almost every election, so why not let more than one from each party onto the ballot? Why should we allow all the unions to pool their money behind one Democrat and all the oil companies to pool their money behind one Republican? Isn't that precisely what allows our elected representatives to be purchased by the special interest groups?
