Thanks to Wikicommons.
By now, most folks have heard about the infamous “Tea Party” movement. With the 2010 mid-term elections for Congress creeping up, US politicians (particularly Democrats) are getting worried about re-election. In the months ahead, Republican hopefuls may be looking to Tea Party participants for party favors.
In a wonderful, albeit long, article for the New York Review of Books Mark Lilla thinks that
Right-wing Republicans hope to lead the [Tea Party] movement by following it. Establishment Republicans will make fools of themselves trying to master a populist rhetoric they don’t know and don’t believe in.
Lilla doubts whether the Tea Party movement can actually advance the Republican’s as Tea Partiers are
convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that.
Over at Democracy in America, E. G. Austin questions Lilla’s view on the ineffectiveness of the Tea Party as a political tool as
they are working within the system, holding rallies and raising money to fund primary candidates; that suggests a certain level of trust in the institutions themselves.
This begs the question then could the Tea Party, and other voters, be looking for a third choice? Recently the Tea Party stopped three term Republican Senator Robert Bennett’s reelection hopes and Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist is hoping that Tea Party votes will help his independent reelection bid.
In an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, Mark Penn points out that Americans
peer at more than 100 varieties of coffee drinks at Starbucks and wonder why they have only two bipolar choices in politics.
Penn goes further to say that American’s are finally getting fed up with only two options.
socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters believe, especially after what happened with health care, that they have no clear choice: They must sign on with the religious right or the economic left. It is just a matter of time before they demand their own movement or party.
Challenging Penn’s view on the wants of the masses, Jonathan Chait of the New Republic asserts “pro-government social conservatives” rather than what Penn describes are
the cohort that’s being ignored, both by the Democrats, who are more socially liberal than their base, and the Republicans, who are far more economically conservative. The parties are more responsive to their elites, who lean more socially liberal and economically conservative than the voters.
Chait further states that not only is there a lack if demand for Penn’s “Third Party”
first-past-the-post voting and the electoral college makes third-party campaigns extraordinarily difficult.
We at US Democrazy still aren’t sure; what are you’re thoughts? Do voters want a new choice? Do they just want changes within current choices? Is the Tea Party the political party of the future? Or in a simple summary what do American’s really want?
You know who could answer this question better than we can, you the readers. So why don’t YOU voice YOUR opinion. It’s the next best thing to voting.
People need to think beyond just Republican and Democrat when they vote. A third party would help break some of the deadlock in Congress. There are independents in Congress, but not enough to make a difference. Is an party like the Tea Party a good option? That is up to the individual to decide. If the people of the United States of America want change then they should get out and vote intelligently. If every eligable voter votes as they feel is best for the country then we would see a change in Congress, the White House, state and local government.
The Maine GOP adopted a platform over the weekend that was entirely written by Tea Party people. Coupled with the Bennett debacle (not conservative enough? really?) , I think this portends a trend of state GOPs taking on Tea Party positions as their mainstream ideas.
I think that would be all well and good if it weren’t for the stridency requirement that comes along with it. Demanding that your politicians believe absolutely everything that you do and throwing them out if they stray just once is politically naive/stupid. If this is the way the GOP is going to trend, it’s going to result in a whole lot of ineffective Congress members come November, which is unfortunate for the people…
I think the GOP is riding the Tea Party wave, which is going to result in short-term gains only. Today the Tea Party is popular with some, the GOP sees this and wants to capitalize on it. This unto itself, a party taking the pulse of (what is mainly already) their constituency, isn’t problematic.
What is problematic is that the Tea Party movement will implode. I think it bears a significant resemblance to the “Know-Nothing” Party of the mid-1800s.
Hitching your ride to the wave isn’t so good when there’s a rocky shoal ahead.
But I think it’s all pretty debatable.
The timing of this post is interesting in light of the recent British election and its aftermath. Like in the United States generally, elections to the British House of Commons are conducted on a first-past-the-post basis. This has the effect of only requiring a plurality of votes to win elections. For this reason, there are only now two dominant British political parties, Labour and Conservative.
The Liberal Democrats, now set to go into coalition with the Conservatives, are a third party built mainly from the remnant of a once major force in British Politics, the Liberal Party. In every election, the Liberal Democrats win seats in Parliament, but they usually have no imput in forming the government.
Britain has a sort of curious system in which there are parties which compete only regionally. Due to a clearly-delineated base of support, these regional parties will never form the basis of a government at Westminster. Such parties, nonetheless, have a function in shaping the broader national debate in British politics.
There are important dynamics which set U.S. politics apart from those of the United Kingdom. As a presidential republic, minor parties in the United States have more difficulty in projecting broad levels of influence. More significantly, however, the two-party dominant system of the United States limits the potential reach of third parties. As an major policy votes in Congress during the Obama or George W. Bush administration show, there is little actual party discipline in the U.S. system resulting in part from the “big tent” nature of the existing parties.
As a result of these factors, it is difficult for credible third parties to emerge in the United States. Those which do exist, however, aim too high. Nick Clegg, who is to serve as the Deputy Prime Minister under David Cameron, led his Lib Dem party into the recent British election not anticipating to come out on top, but to increase the number of seats held by members of his party in British parliament, and to influence the national debate.
Third Parties fail in the United States because they aim too high, and are too narrowly focused ideologically. If the Green Party and the Libertarian Party focused on winning governorships, or seats in state legislatures and not on presidential elections, they might one day be relevant. Until then, third parties will not matter in the U.S. political system.