Would you support the formation of a viable National Centrist third-party

I'm not talking just about the idea. I'm talking about logistics and ground game, getting a viable, centrist third party formed, up and running.

Would you support this, or not?

What would be the advantages? Disadvantages?
Would a third party have a chance at actually winning electors in national presidential elections?

Vote and discuss.

 

I feel that America is based on a Two-Party System composed of the Democrats and the Republicans. A Third Party would not be practical and many voters would feel that they would be throwing their vote away by voting for a Third Party candidate.

 

How about we get a real conservative party first?

 

The term "Centrist" seems to be a big old bag of tricks. Who exactly do you define as centrists? How are "centrists" different from "moderates?"

 

No I would not support that, I would rather like to see 4 parties, with both Republicans and Democrats dividing in two.

 

A third party is not viable under the American system.

 

Yeah...Call it the Republicrats.

 

Third parties historically have functioned as spoilers. TR's Bull Moose party in 1912 put Wilson into office, and the genesis of the modern nanny state. H Ross Perot in 1992 handed the election to Bill Clinton, who brought us gun control, the War on Tobacco, and Hillary.

We have two basic models: collectivism and individual liberty. We only need two parties. The main challenge is keeping the GOP on the straight and narrow path of favoring individualism. If there is another model, to justify the existence of another party, I'm all ears.

 

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For the last decade or so, Congress has become an organization of eunuchs. The Republicans full of loonies and the Democrats full of cowards. I see no difference in the Republicrat duopoly; two sides of the same money grubbing party beholden to the corporations whose combined mantra is, "Party Before Country." We need a third party.

 

Being not American I will not vote in this poll, anyway I would submit to your attention the long experience of some European countries [Italy included] with parliaments where more than 2 parties are present.

Centrist parties are even worse than the wings ... since they tend to show a Machiavellian double face to attract the left moderates and the right moderates. In other words, usually centrists parties have got no clear identity.

A USCP [United States Centrist Party] could bring the nation in war today and sign a treaty of cooperation with Moscow tomorrow. It can increase the taxes today and grant free services to great capitalists tomorrow ...

In a word: politically unreliable.

 

I'm not a centrist, so I think the idea is silly.

Not sure what would happen politically with a centrist party. I do know that third parties drain votes from the party that they most resemble. Ross Perot is the main reason we had Bill Clinton for President. His third party sucked more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats. The Green party is probably the reason GW Bush got the Presidency in 2000.

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Parties have changed several times in our history.

 

The bolded, real big :

there is no evidence to support your claim. But there is real evidence to prove the opposite:

At the close of the DNC in the summer of 1992, before Perot entered the picture, polling showed Clinton 55 / Bush 45.

One election eve, the final CNN poll put out TWO sets of numbers:

Clinton 43 / Bush 37 / Perot 20

(That CNN poll was absolutely on the mark, btw)

and in a theoretical two-way race, without Perot:

Clinton 55 / Bush 45.

So, no, Ross Perot did not ruin the election for Bush. All he did was to reduce a Clinton +10 margin to a Clinton +6 margin, which means he hurt CLINTON more than he hurt Bush.

 

Ok, define for me what a real Conservative party should look like. I am interested in hearing the nuts and bolts from you.

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Wrong on both cases. According to news reporting of 1912, Wilson was leading Taft long before Teddy Roosevelt began his bullmoose march.

And vis-a-vis 1992, please see posting no. 12.

Thanks.

 

People like you are the problem. Hoping that lying politicians who work for the rich/elite and the integrity of the plutocracy they have built, will finally do as they promise... ...and they all lived happily ever after.

 

Not a centrist party per se, but a more than 2-party system yes. This would require restructuring how voting is done though. It would require voters to rank candidates via some kind of runoff for single positions or do proportional representation. The problem with proportional is that America is based upon representation of discrete geographic areas rather then the population. That concept is silly, but would likely require a constitutional amendment to get around fully.

So probably ranking candidates and applying an algorithm would work (instant runoff). It'd be pretty simple. Just drop the bottom candidate over and over again and then recalculate until you have one left. This would likely help us break out of the Republican/Democrat situation, but things would get more complicated and coalitions would form. Overall I think it would improve things.

 

There is no such thing. We have a republican party, which caterers to big business/mega corporation, and the super rich. And democrats, who are supporters of big business/mega corporation, and the super rich. The only difference in the two parties is the self riotous caricatures they play on TV as conservatives, and liberal. Neither of which they actually are.

If a third party started, it too would be beholding to the rich, or it would be determined irrelevant by the corporate media.

 

Now, that is an interesting idea. I'm not totally against it.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, there are five parties that usually get above the 5% hurdle in the parliamentary elections:

The CDU (Christian Democratic Union), which is called CSU in Bavaria, but it's the same party. They are considered center-Right in German politics and would be Conservative Democrats by US-American standards. Their party color is black.

The FDP (The Free Democrats),who call themselves "Die Liberalen" (The Liberals) are not Liberal in any American sense of the word. They are the most capitalistic party in Germany and appeal to the ultra-rich. Their party color is yellow.

Usually, when it comes to forming a coalition, CDU and FDP (which is the smaller of the two parties) join together.

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SPD (The Social Democrats), the center-left party of Germany. Those would be essentially, the Progressives, by American standards. Their party color is red.

Die Grüne/Bündnis '90 (The Greens) - self-explanatory - hard to the left on social issues, undefined on economic issues. Their party color is, unsurprisingly, green.

Those two parties tend to get together to form a workable coalition.

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And way out there: die Linke (The Leftists) - the old remnants of the E. German Socialist party, with a lot of Communism as a forced mechanism in the works. Their color is also red. None of the other parties want to have anything to do with them and on the federal level, no parties have ever offered to build a coalition with them, either.

In 2013, Merkel's party (CDU) won the "Bundestagswahl" (parliamentary elections), but the smaller sister party, the FDP, for the first time in Germany's history as a modern Republic, fell under the 5% mark and therefore was not seated in the Bundestag (essentially, House of Representatives). It will be interesting to see what happens in September, 2017.

A new party sprung up, called Alternativ für Deutschland, or AOD (Alternative for Germany), a hard-right leaning, anti-immigration, anti-muslim party, and they too were just under the 5% mark.

The one point that this information makes is that a multi-party system usually requires coalitions to be built so that a coalition will have a majority (considered to be 48.6% in Germany at this time) to rule. The party in that coalition with the most votes gets to put up it's 'man' as chancellor, and usually the smaller sister party puts up the Vice-Chancellor, who is simultaneously the foreign minister (Sec'y of State).

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BTW, I am a fan of the instant runoff system and think that it's a pretty stabile model to work with.

 

And in another word, just exactly what both parties in the US do today.

I don't know why a centrist party doing what you say surprises you anyway. That's what they are, yes? They do whatever they think is best for themselves at that moment, in the hope that whatever is good for their members is good for the nation. The thing is that ALL parties use that philosophy to do just that thing, at least in theory, and that's why we are where we are now

I want a party that isn't going to throw me under the bus. That they say they won't is no guarantee, I know, but at least they shouldn't start right out by saying how much throwing me under the bus is the necessary and right thing to do

 

Well I didn't say anything remotely close to those imaginary thoughts that you attribute to me.

I support candidates who support limited government and individualism, such as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. If I am presented with a choice between a John McCain who wants big gov't, and Barack Obama, who wants colossal gov't, I will vote for McCain.

 

OK fair point. This is something I always kind of assumed, because I am old enough to remember the election, and a lot of Perot's rhetoric was fairly conservative. Also I recall distinctly that when Perot dropped out, he cited a revitalized Dem party under Bill Clinton as one of his reasons.

But I looked around a little bit and it does appear that many if not most analysts don't think Perot threw it to Clinton. It's not a 100% slam-dunk, however. There is other evidence besides polling:
http://race42016.com/2011/04/20/did-ross-perot-elect-bill-clinton/

(more numbers state by state at the link).

 

It's my daily political experience ... here in Italy today we've got a centrist party [formed by a part of the moderate right supporting Berlusconi] which today gives its votes to the leftist government [Renzi]. So that the Minister of Interior, Alfano, was Minister of Justice in the government of the opposite side.

In other words, the center changes side.

Imagine the American Centrist Party governing today with the Reps and tomorrow with the Dems ...

 

That is more possible with a parliamentary system.

Here, the Republicans are divided, but they would probably have less influence if they separated. And, they would have no more influence in the presidency, either, since Congress doesn'the affect that.

In Italy, a third party can affect who is prime minister.

 

I don't support the existence of any political parties. Political parties divide nations, and ought to be abolished.

 

Rather than give prospective candidates yet another platform to hide behind why not just get rid of the DNC/RNC co-op monopoly we have now and find leaders that can stand on their own 2 feet.

 

We might not have gotten the second bailout, which the people were against, and we would have gotten a single payer healthcare system, which was Obama's first idea and what the people were for. Not bad by my reckoning, but then I agree with the majority of the American people. Conservatives don't, and never have.