Columnist Darrell Delamaide’s September 15 column says that the results of recent Republican primaries for important office is creating a political vacuum for centrist voters, and again brings up the idea that Mayor Michael Bloomberg could find success in 2012 as an independent presidential candidate.
Since when is MB the new Abe Lincoln ???
Noting the 620,000 DEAD in 1861-1865 after the Lincoln minority rule election in 1860.
“Third Forces” can only ONLY ever be temporary. It IS a two party system, but what those two parties are can change.
Only a voting system with no spoilers, without any incentive to pragmatically betray your true favorite, could ever hope to support more than two parties. That’s approval voting or score voting. (Well; that or some form of proportional representation.)
We only had Lincoln and the Republicans because the Whigs collapsed in on themselves. (It’s likely (but by no means clear) that approval voting would have resulted in a win for Douglas, which may have avoided war.)
Raving on the TV news from the moron talking heads about the Tea Party stuff in DE and elsewhere.
Only about 7 more weeks of mindless TV morons at work until gerrymander election day.
Centrist = political MORON — not knowing the difference between more or less control freak statism — likely due to the MORON teaching about goverment / political history (if any) in the rotted public schools.
The Democratic Party is plenty centrist. Mike Bloomberg is actually to the left of most Democrats. All these Unity 08/Minnesota Independence Party people are really just contrarian Democrats who like to be difficult. They’re socially liberal and they don’t support supply side economics, how is that anything other than a Democrat? They pay mouth service to fiscal conservatism (which has never really had anything to do with the American version of conservatism) but so does Russ Feingold, he’s the 2nd or 3rd most left-wing member of the Senate. If they organized a third party, first of all, it wouldn’t get off the group because of the nature of voter psychology in a first past the post system, second, if it did, all it would do is make sure the Republicans win most races, just like the IP does in MN.
Here we ago again! Mayor Mike Bloomberg has stated that he would not be a candidate for president in 2012. Even if he changed his mind, what on earth would be the platform that he would run on?
By the way, it seems to me that it is the Republican Party that is paying “mouth service to fiscal conservatism.” Just look at how the Bush-Cheney Administration ran our country into the ground for four years!
Meh. I think it’s possible that a Bloomberg run could be the catalyst for a decent third party. Hell, the Reform Party probably could have been something if Perot had put the resources into developing something more than just his own campaign.
I’m generally as negative as the next commenter here, but it’s worth noting that the UK has most of the same electoral issues that we have, and yet it’s managed to build 3 major parties. To me, it’s fully possible that, as the parties become increasingly national, room for ‘centrist’ voters opens up a ‘third’ option. Especially when you consider that voters are becoming increasingly ‘independent,’ while the nature of primaries (many closed) is increasingly giving voters options of one extreme or the other.
There’s no reason, for example, that northern Republicans and southern Democrats couldn’t form some sort of uneasy alliance with Bloomberg. You’d more or less have Democrat v. Bloomberg Party (for lack of a better name at this time) in the north, Republican v. Bloomberg in the south, and Republican v. Democrat out west.
Of course, there are other possible alliance scenarios, but that’s just one example.
It is quite possible that this country is ready for a new political party that would be strong enough to take on the two established large parties. I know from decades of experience, though, that these things are not easy. It would take more than a presidential campaign by Mike Bloomberg to get it going. In any case, the Mayor has said that he is not going to run.
#6 The Brits are going to be having a vote in 2011 on having IRV for electing MPs — likely result — end of the Lib Dems — i.e. 2 party hack groups (left Labs and right Cons) as in the gerrymander U.S.A. House of Reps.
Alaskan Independence Party
THE AIP HAS JUST COMMITTED SUICIDE!
http://newsminer.com/bookmark/9532796-Walker-says-write-in-bid-in-Alaska-governor-s-race-unlikely-?utm_source=web&utm_medium=twitter