Friday, February 15, 2013

For now: look past the donkies and elephants

I don't see how new original ideas and solutions to our (U.S.) nation's problems can come out of the two major political parties as they now stand. For the past several election cycles, the Republican party has blamed every lost election on the lack of ideological purity, forcing their candidates further to the right. The result is a very predictable list of legislative priorities on which they will not compromise. Their opponents, the Democrats, have spent so much effort pursuing the purported Republican electoral advantage that their recent legislative proposals are repackaged and rebranded policies of the moderate Republicans of yore (need I mention that Obamacare = Romneycare).

To recap: along the left-right political axis, the members of Republican party are densely positioned on the distal right whereas the members of the Democratic party are minimally scattered just slightly left of the Republicans. So neither of the two major parties are proposing any new ideas or solutions to the incredibly complex issues we face today.

We need to look to elsewhere, either to the left of the Democrats or rotate our perspective beyond the linear left-right axis into two or dare we, three, dimensional space. The Green, Socialist, Libertarian and even the progressive wing of the Democratic parties have innovative ideas and proposals. We should bring them front and center to the public arena for the American people to discussion, dissect and debate.


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