Are We Already A Three Party Nation?

There are lots of arguments on why we need a third party candidate or even a third party. The reasons given are simply that the two party system is a groundwork for embedded interests and a third party would create more diversification. In other words a challenge to the status quo. Diversity may be a positive in your portfolio, but is it one in politics?

I would argue it is not, and the tea party could be seen as an example of my assumption. The Tea Party grew out of the discontent over change in our 2008 presidential election, but its roots go back much farther. American discontent with their elected representatives has always been a part of the political scene and eventually most presidents lose their glow if events prove cumbersome. Only after they are gone, are they revived in history, and in the minds of the political revisionists.

So who is this third party, are they made up solely of the Tea party or do the roots go deeper? David Deutsch in the 'Beginning of Infinity' outlines the complexity of sharing power with a third party. No longer is the winner, the winner, for now they must please a faction they may not even agree with, or even the voters do not agree with. Now the third party possesses a power not given to it by the majority of voters simply because they now control what the other parties can do. You see this today with the stagnation in the House of Representatives and the impact it has had on the nation.

Afterthought: maybe we are now a four party nation, with the fourth party being the 24 by 7 news and blogosphere of each and every word someone says rightly or wrongly and then whether the words have wings to fly or broken wings that crash. Consider voters busy with life who pay little attention except this fourth party bangs away so hard, and so frequently, it creates candidates or non candidates? I'll leave the fourth party there for now.

[work in progress]

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