There seems to me a widespread frustration among many of the American electorate to their 'centrist' mainstream parties.

Is there any chance that a nationwide third party could garner enough votes to successfully challenge the Demo-clan bi-hegemony in contemporary US politics?

I, myself, am getting quite peeved by Bush's socialism. Bush budget contains $10 in new spending for every dollar in tax cuts, Libertarians say


Prescription drugs for seniors : blatant welfare, which has not even the thin "I have paid into it all my life" argument to give it any type of legitimacy. I believe this will be the largest increase in federal entitlements in 20 years.

Farm bill : huge public subsidy (i.e. giveout)

The current crop of Republicans are spending money like drunken sailors. Maybe it is the current political environment. Maybe they want to steal votes from the Democrats. Whatever the reasoning, they are doing us all an injustice. The only problem is, the alternative (the Democrats) are worse.

I would be interested in a third party, but it needs to be viable, which none are currently.

3rd party would be OK, but honestly, I don't see one coming to power in my lifetime.

Lets say you have a Green Party President. Are there going to be enough Green's in Congress to prevent a presidential veto override? Doubt it.

I think it's going to be a long while before any 3rd party comes to power.

--cheers

A third party is only going to become a significant player if the "reforms" to ballot access laws, and other electoral matters (not suffrage made during the late 1800s and early 1900s are rolled back.

Me, I think I'd like to see more choices. The "political" market is oligarchic in the extreme.

if you are saying that will there ever be another party overtaking the current major 2 parties, i'd have to say no because people are used to Democrat & Republican & voters hate change. Plus the other small parties have not much as a platform

There is no reason to think that a third party could not develop. If either one party got fairly dominant while a third party started emerging, that third party could become more popular than the one in decline. (a la Labour over Liberal in England)

Or if one party became more dominant and had a major idealogical split (say libertarians and fiscal conservative departed from the Bush camp if Bush dominates the next 5 years in politics) and something like the Bull Moose Party split from it. It could happen.

Most likely the model would remain the same as the Populist Party. The major parties react to a rising threat and coopt the ideas and leaders into their fold.

To beat my dead horse, I think the rise of more independent parties with chances of electing members to congress would be greatly facilitated by increasing the number of representatives. This would allow for more diversity of opinion within the party and a better chance for independent to emerge and win local elections.

In the (relatively) short term, I could see a libertarian-leaning centrist party winning the Presidency, or at least winning a plurality in the Electoral College and throwing it into the Senate, if they had some luck and played their cards right. It'd be basically a replay of the Jesse Ventura Minnesota scenario on a national scale. It'd take a candidate with name recognition, as Ventura had, and one who could spark the imagination of people who usually don't vote, as Ventura did. It'd have to be a similar platform to Ventura's too to put together the coalition: pro-choice [u]and[/url] pro-gun, etc. I'm not suggesting Ventura be the candidate since he kinda dropped the ball in Minnesota by caving to the big government agenda, so his success as governor was marginal at best, but someone that could pull off the same kind of scenario.

Hmmmm.... I really don't see a third party being a national force anytime soon. I think they would have to start out first in local politics and grow from there. I used to live in Simi Valley, California where some of the members of that city council were members of the Libertarian party, but frankly, I couldn't see any of them holding a national or even state office.

The problem I see with parties like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party is that they seem to be pretty narrowly focused on their specific ideaology and thus fail to appeal to the general population at large. At times, it seems as though their candidates are almost afraid to think for themselves and instead revert back to the specific party platform on each issue.

It seems to me that were a thrid party to emerge and truly become a national force, it would have to be composed of people with different ideas all united to a common theme of changing the status quo. I honestly don't see any parties like that out there right now.

The big challenge facing any third party right now is the lack of a large number of supporters and of recognition. For the most part, third parties are small groups (think Dem. Socialists) with a fairly small number of supporters. Of course there are exceptions to this (i.e. the Green Party and the Libertarians), but for the most part they lack support. I think that if a third party wants to gain power, they need to consolidate into one party with one ideology. Of course this wouldn't be easy. However, they would gain a lot of supporters and might stand a chance against a weak major party (think the Dems today: no front-runner, fighting amongst themselves, etc.) if they could get their act together. A third party has a real chance to succeed if they just combine. It's true that most Americans wouldn't favor the change from a two-party system, but if they found that this third party had a chance and a clear ideology, I think they could be won over. If the Dems don't start getting back to the left and fixing their major problems, we might see a third party beating them in the next election.

I wouldn't say the libertarians were much bigger than the Democratic Socialists.

I don't think that a third party will become a reality any time soon. It's just not in the intrests of business. Debate will be kept in a very narrow spectrum in which only certain ideas are acceptable. There may be a third party in the future, but not anytime soon. I support the Green Party to help make people aware, not because I have any illusions about them getting elected.

That's an interesting point. A green president would have one helluva time doing anything when the republicans and moderate democrats outnumber him by a very large number.

Of course, I think a libertarian would have an easier time since their half of their platform appeals to roughly half the population, whereas a green will only appeal to far left dems and greens, which are not in great numbers.

I am surprised Al Gore wasn't found by a river strangling Ralph Nader. At any rate, I support liberal third parties. One of the few things I agreed with Gore on was that a vote for Nader was a vote for Bush.