[piercehawkeye45]

I've been thinking about third parties a lot lately and I now believe we *eventually* need a grassroot "rational middle" third party in the United States.

As a background, I'm not a big fan of third party protest voting (Green, libertarian, etc.) since I would not actually want one of those parties running the country. However, I think it is clear that both Democrats and Republicans are ignoring key issues due to partisianship that, if not addressed in the next 20 - 30 years, will actually cause the United States to decline as a nation.

We have had two large protest movements in the past four years: Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. While both have had an influence in our society, it is clear that the Tea Party was more successful. Occupy Wall Street looked to successful social movements of the past for inspiration - labor, women, civil rights and Arab Spring - and I believe Occupy failed where the others didn't because the other protest movements actually had a direct tangible enemy. The Occupy movement essentially protested against the "concept" of the 1%, hoping a "rising of the masses" would force a change in politics in Washington. It should be learned that those types of movements only work when there is a direct, tangible moral issue at stake, not a concept.

The Tea Party, on the other hand, had a more active role in local and state politics, setting themselves up to take over the House of Representatives in 2010. Since then, I think it is obvious that the Tea Party also pulled the Senate and the Republican primary candidates towards their views. While the Tea Party was more successful than Occupy Wall Street, I believe the Tea Party is doomed for failure because it (1) got adsorbed into the Republican party and (2) only focused on a single issue. The debt problem will eventually cause America's decline if it is not addressed, but it is not the only big issue and it cannot be decoupled from those other issues. In order to successfully solve the debt problem, we need to look at a larger picture and solve many other issues in tandem as well.


With those two points, I think a "rational middle" third party would need to incorporate the grassroot mentality and strategies of the Tea Party, sticking to local, state, and House elections, but refuse to be assimilated into either party. The goal of this party would be taking control over local politics while influencing politics at a higher level. By being a large player at the local level and not competing at the Senate and Presidential races, it forces those candidates to address the third parties issues, forcing both Democrats and Republicans back to center while marginalizing the extreme voices. If that happens, then hopefully, bipartisanship can occur again in Washington, allowing us to successfully tackle these large issues.