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Let's Have Another Party
Carl McMurray
January 4, 2010

The title may sound like an attractive call to action in a college frat house. It also may sound attractive to folks who have become disenchanted with our two party system of political wrangling. But like the college freshman upstairs puking out his alcoholic foolishness, let me tell you it is not as attractive as it sounds at first glance.

One of our java junkies last week brought to my remembrance why a two party system is the superior system, and I appreciate her doing so. In the nineties (hmmm, never thought I’d live long enough to be talking like that!), you know, waaay back in the nineties… I was traveling to Russia almost yearly. I was there for their holidays in December and January. I was there in the summertime (you know, those two weeks in July). And I was there for their presidential elections.

The year I was there for their elections, if memory serves me right, I was startled to learn that there were some 54 parties running their respective candidates for office in the Duma (Russian congress) and for the office of President. Fifty-four parties, I’m not even sure we have that many issues between us over here in the U.S. Consider how divided that vote must have been, and what a small group of Russian it must have actually taken to elect someone. The evidence is seen in that Mr. Putin, one time head of the KGB was actually elected. A communist party member who publicly declared that he preferred the old ways of doing things to the new ways. You remember those old ways don’t you? The cold war days of threatening nuclear war constantly, when people disappeared in the middle of the night? When Bibles were contraband and church buildings were blown up? The truth of his words has been seen in the last five or six years as over THIRTY-TWO Russian journalists have been assinat…. Excuse me, murdered. Each one was known for speaking out against Putin and not one has had his murderer found or tried. Strange coincidence, eh? Is it any wonder that there was such an uproar awhile back when our own President tried to silence FOX news because he perceived they were speaking against him?

Anyway, consider this in an American context. Correct me if I’m mistaken but my understanding is that only about 37% of Americans vote. 37% is all that put Presidents and Senators and Congressman into their privileged thrones of power over the rest of us. Of that 37%, our Presidents are usually elected by a small measurable margin. In spite of the rhetoric, rarely do they come to office with a “mandate” from the American people. That’s just malarkey. Clinton had no such mandate. Bush didn’t either, and Obama won by about the same margin as his predecessor. He was given no such mandate, in spite of what Mother Pelosi says. Now take that 37% of active voting Americans and divide them into Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Green Party people. That’s about 9% each. Add an abortion party, an anti-war party, a fiscal conservative party, an anti-gun party, and an atheist party. That 37% just split into about 4% in each party. And it goes on and on. Pretty soon, almost any drunken keg party would be able to elect their own President because of such division. Putin walked into office in Russia partly because it simply didn’t take that many votes to do the job. Are you ready for 4 or 5% of Americans to tell the other 95% how we shall live, what taxes we shall pay, and what liberties we shall give up or pay for?

No, two parties are not the perfect system, but it’s closer to the representative system than any other on earth. Dividing up into smaller and smaller one issue segments is certainly not the answer because evil men will always be the first to lay down their issues and unite in order to overcome good men.

Thanks for reading. Now, tell me what you think about that?

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Comments:
Mac
January 6th 2010 12:52pm--
Nice point John. Thanks for sharing. Sounds like an excellent argument for term limits, which we'll never see btw, since that would require our politicians to vote themselves out of office for the common good. I believe that they believe they are far to valuable for that. hmmm, so I guess we'll just have to do it ourselves. ha. Thanks for sharing John.
Dennis
January 5th 2010 8:33am--
The winner take all system we have means a third party can only act as a spoiler and not the winner. There is a reason we have always had at the most three parties and the third party eventually disappears or is absorbed by one of the other two. If we had a system that took the percentage and divided congressional seats to the parties based on percentage of the vote they received then a third party could survive.
Having said all of the above, eventually one of the two major parties will either adapt or disappear. What we need is for true Republicans once again take over the party of Reagan and not be Democrats-lite.
Just my thoughts.
Mac
January 6th 2010 7:56am--
Thanks for dropping by Dennis.
John Baughn
January 6th 2010 9:59am--
Further consider this: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid weld nearly as much power or more when reaching into our taxable pockets or controlling our lives through the laws they ram through. Now further consider that they reach their positions of power usually because they out last their competition for those positions of power by getting elected over and over (at one time in the eighties there was a greater turnover in the old Soviet Polit-bureau by death than in congress by elections). In the case of Pelosi, she represents a single congressional district that contains right around 250,000 to 300,000 voters; of which only about 75,000 to 100,000 vote; of which she usually carries about 60% or, being generous, about 60,000 votes. Bottom line: about 60,000 voters has stuck us all with Nancy Pelosi!!!!!