Posted by
Dawnsblood on Sunday, September 24, 2006 5:10:19 PM
Joe Gandelman has an excellent
essay up on his blog 'The Moderate Voice". It starts like this:
Are independents voters the key to Democratic and Republican victories
in 2006 and perhaps 2008? Or have the two parties become so repugnant
to some voters that even that conventional wisdom could be outmoded?
There is an increasing school of thought that perhaps the country is
heading out of its bile-filled "mobilization election" era where
political party bigwigs can just press a little hotbutton and voters
registered for their party will angrily flock to the polls to save the
USA from being destroyed by members of the other party.
But is that a pipe dream — one that will look silly in the next weeks
heading up to election day and after the votes are counted?
As a self-defined moderate, Joe identifies more with independents than either party. So he looks at it from that viewpoint. I personally consider myself conservative but not a Republican though I vote that way the vast majority of the time. All that having been said, I do think the two party system is broken and it will not be fixed anytime soon. Both parties are so deeply entrenched, with laws and influence that it would take nuclear weapons to make a third party feasible.
Lets look at North Carolina for a minute. It happens to be the state I live in so I know it better than others. Here it seems as though every election the Libertarian Party (sometimes the Greens) have to spend oodles of money just to get permission to be on the ballot, while the Dems and Repubs get free rides.
I'm gonna make a confession, there was a time I was excited about the Republican party. In the heady days of Gore vs Bush, I gave a heavily as I could. It was the first election that I voted straight Republican and I felt good about it. Before that I researched every canditate, I still mostly voted Repub but the occasional Dem would get my vote if they seemed to be of good character and judgement. In 02, I was still pretty partisan. A few local Dems got my vote (mostly judges), but still it was mostly a GOP ballot. In 04, I pulled another all party lever for the Repubs, except at city council level where there were only Dems running for Mayor. There was a difference in this one though. I was wavering a bit. Bush and the Republican party was getting me angry. Guest workers, McCain-Feingold's incumbent protection act and the Prescription Drug Benefit for Medicare had me angry. Had I wanted any of the above, I would have voted for Al Gore, not the Republican candidate. Now it was Bush vs Kerry and it was time to think. All of the above probably would have been passed under Kerry too. There was no chance I would vote for Kerry, but I did briefly consider not voting in protest but... The GWOT was underway and had to be won and tax cuts that the Dems would repeal are driving our economy to greater heights. So I voted all repub.
This brings me to 06. Now the threat is to the House. I have one vote on the matter. Robin Hayes is currently my Congressman. He and I largely agree on policy with a few big exceptions. Those being CAFTA and Prescription Drug benefit. His opponent is Larry Kissell. Mr Kissell stands for cut and run, opposes CAFTA and wants to tie our interrogator's hands. So once again I have to vote GOP.
It will probably be the same in 08 to. The Dems top three are probably going to be Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Mark Warner. For the Repubs it looks like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Let me just say I am not excited here folks. Likely once again I'll be voting GOP in 08, but I d@mn well wish I had a choice.