What Might a Third Party Do?

At 4 PM on New Year's Eve, our Congress has once again demonstrated the brokenness of our political system.  Whether our elected representatives manage to avoid the "fiscal cliff" by working out some last-minute deal is not the issue.  By repeatedly playing chicken on fiscal policy for the past two years - since the Democrats lost control of the House - the Republican majority has hampered an economic recovery which should, by now, be well on its way.

Not all the fault is on one side.  When Democrats refuse even to consider adjusting the inflation index for Social Security, that's also a sign of partisan intractability.   Still, considered all in all, the public's tendency to blame House Republicans seems just.  For two years now, since the midterms, America has careered from crisis to crisis - all entirely artificial.  The resulting uncertainty has resulted in untold costs to millions of families and thousands of businesses.

As a people, we should be unwilling to tolerate this.  The difficulty is that we have grown to accept this insanity as the new normal.

It is anything but.

Consider this:  Our national government functions much of the time without an actual budget, which in the past would have been taken as a clear dereliction of Congress' constitutional duties.

Moreover, Congress' repeated balking over raising the debt ceiling is just plain silly.  Logically, it seems the height of absurdity that Congress must decide, for a second time, that it will authorize paying for bills it has already voted to run up.

A gutsy president might well call Congress' bluff, treat the original appropriations as authorization, and raise the debt ceiling by executive order.

Maybe it's time for that.

The conduct of House majority seems, at times, little short of economic terrorism.  Ask yourself what we would do if a group of Islamist conspirators had spent the last two years doing this kind of damage to our economy.  I rather imagine we'd have, at the least, rounded them up for a nice, long stay in sunny Gitmo.

We might even have sent in a drone.

For sure, we wouldn't be calling them "The Honorable" and giving them suites of offices, big staffs, the franking privilege, and the best parking spaces on Capitol Hill.

But then, that's what happens when a problem develops so slowly that we don't feel the pain acutely.

In Virginia, there's an old folk saying about boiling a frog.  If you wish, for some reason, to boil a frog, you don't drop him directly into boiling water.  He'll just jump out. Instead, you ease him into a pot of cool water and then heat it slowly.  As an amphibian, the frog's body temperature will slowly rise with that of the water until it's too late.

The same is true of us.  When pain is inflicted suddenly, we react with anger and demand a remedy.  When the pain comes on slowly, we might recognize that there's a problem, but there is no trigger for a reaction.

At least, not until things have gotten very bad, indeed.

On this blog, I write mainly for those who agree that things are, in fact, very bad.  But I also assume that we live in a country which is not yet ready to revolt.  (Such a country would have thrown out incumbent Congressmen by the hundreds at the last election.  We're not there  yet.)

The problem, for those of us who are intellectually prepared to act, is figuring out how to take action when most Americans are not yet ready to join us.

Even among the aware, there is a kind of intellectual paralysis.  My position is that this paralysis arises from our inability to escape the paradigm of two-party politics.  The best means for a determined minority to act - in advance of public opinion - is, in Lincoln's words, to "think anew".  The first task is the creation of a small, disciplined entity capable of assuming a leadership role when public opinion has shifted. 

And then, to do the vital work of helping public opinion toward that shift.

We must understand that part of the resistance to change rests with the fact that many Americans are hostile to one or the other of the major parties.  (Some, clearly, are hostile to both.)  I believe that there are at least a few millions voters who are ready to vote out a Republican - but not at the price of electing a Democrat.

And vice versa.

And that's where a third party comes in.

Imagine that the incoming Congress included a small, disciplined group of freshmen from a Commonwealth Party.  Say 5% of the total membership - 22 members, elected mostly from previously Republican districts.  So small a group might - with the right math - be in a position to determine which party organized the House. 

It might be able to force a coalition on the House - in return for attention to a few of its issues.

Certainly, it would be in a position to say - to both sides in the current impasse - that it would act with whichever party proved more flexible in dealing with the issues of taxation and spending which have created the situation.

Now, please understand, I do not suggest a party which positions itself between the existing parties as a matter of strategy.  Any party worth belonging to is not going to define itself in terms of the present duopoly - but in opposition to it.

It will, indeed, advocate the reform of many evils upon which both major parties depend for their survival - including gerrymandering, restrictive ballot access laws, and contributions from large institutions such as corporations and labor unions. 

But in any given situation, a small, disciplined party would have the tactical flexibility to occupy the political center in order to compel the existing parties to act more reasonably. 

In my imagination, I see the Commonwealth Party as occupying the space formerly occupied by the now defunct liberal/progressive wing of the Republican party.  This would put it in the philosophical tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton - and Henry Clay.

In the present situation, I would want to see this party act as Clay did - forging temporary coalitions to resolve long-standing disputes and move the nation's agenda forward.

Such a posture would hardly be all a third party could do, but it would be an honorable place to begin.  Twenty or thirty seats out of 435 would probably suffice for a new party to play such a role.

The question is:  Are there twenty or thirty districts around the country which might - in preference to the incumbent - elect a member, not of the opposite party, but of a new party?

I believe the Virginia's Seventh District - home of Eric Cantor - could be one.

I'd be interested in hearing about others.