This week, an e-mail was sent to many conservative leaders, writers and broadcasters urging us to join forces and light a fire under “the collective backsides of the American public” and lead our followers into a “sensible third party.”
How I wish it were that simple!
Unfortunately, the backsides of the American electorate have been planted on their couches for far too long. Rigor mortis has set in. Another party will not make a difference.
There is nothing wrong with the two parties we have now, except that there are not enough good people who are willing to actively participate in them. More importantly, not enough people are willing to hold their own party accountable.
Gore Vidal once said, “The two parties are really one party representing only 4 percent of the people.” I rarely agree with Gore Vidal but, he’s right. We have become a nation of political couch potatoes.
Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives and everything they owned – their sacred honor – when they signed the Declaration of Independence and went to war with the British against overwhelming odds. They never could have imagined that we would take their sacrifice so lightly that no more than half the citizens in this country would bother to register to vote. They never could have imagined that there would come a time when only half of the registered voters would be motivated to get up off their couches and ride in air-conditioned comfort the few blocks necessary to find a voting booth.
Those who do vote have developed a king complex. We make fun of the British and their support for the monarchy, but in America we get all excited about electing a king of our country, a king of our state and a king of our town. Then, we sit back and wait for the king to solve all of our problems for us. When that doesn’t happen, most people act as though there is nothing they can do about it. “Gee, he’s got all the power, what can I do now? Duh!”
The president is our CEO, but the Congress is, in effect, his board of directors and there is very little he can do without its approval. Sure, the president is technically in charge of the various federal agencies, but Congress has oversight and, more importantly, it controls the purse strings. Therein lies the real power.
The members of Congress are the people’s representatives. They work for us, but you’d never know it. Most people are hard-pressed to come up with the names of their two senators, much less the name of their member of the House – who is their closest link to Washington. We are much too busy watching “Jeopardy” or “American Idol” to be bothered with what is going on in government at any level.
When we do go to the polls, we vote for the “incumbent,” whoever he is, or we vote “the party” and then wonder why the party is going to hell in a hand basket.
Today, the primary concern of members of the House and Senate, no longer is doing the will of the people who sent them to Washington, but getting themselves re-elected. They are treated like little potentates. They are given large staffs, which are at their beck and call. They get their power by spending our money.
When the Democrat Party was taken over by the hard left and threw the moral issues overboard, religious conservative began moving over to the Republican Party.
Unfortunately, most didn’t go to any party meetings or watch what the party or their representatives did while in Washington. They just voted for anyone with an “R” beside his or her name – they were voting for the platform, which their elected representatives soon discovered they could ignore.
The polls show that religious people are more satisfied with their lives then nonreligious people. Also, religious Americans are more likely to be married and have children. Their lives are full – too full for politics it seems. That created a vacuum in the Republican Party that the left was only too happy to move in to fill.
The reality is the more viable political parties in a country, the harder it is to get a consensus. Therefore, more compromises have to be made.
Would a viable third party help the United States? Not for long. If you don’t watch your elected representatives and hold them accountable, you can have two parties or two hundred parties and the net result will be the same.
Think you can’t afford the time to be politically active? The truth is you can’t afford not to.
Has Trump 2.0 learned from Trump 1.0?
Josh Hammer