Richard's Common Sense

Politics Evil Twin
Common sense occasionally shows its head as in this interesting opinion piece that is definitely worth a read.  Briefly it notes that neither the left or the right really has a mandate.  Rather Americans elect first one then the other in a seesaw search for the center.  Common Sense definitely agrees.

That said, the article raises the interesting question of why neither Republicans or Democrats represent the center?  Indeed, does the country need a third choice focused on the center?

Common Sense believes that the answer to the first question is that the extreme left and right so influence the nomination process that existing political parties have great difficulty in nominating centrist candidates.  Examples of extremism influence, particularly outside money are common enough that they are no longer surprising.  Consider Joe Lieberman who couldn't get nominated by his own party because well funded party extremist managed to defeat him in the party primary.  Note that this left of center candidate won in the general election.  Or consider the recent news about House Speaker R. John Boehner who isn't ideologically pure enough according to Tea Party founder Judson Phillips who thinks in the next primary he should be challenged.

Common Sense believes that so long as political parties continue to be controlled by their extremist elements this cannot change and that the United States Congress will continue to be an ineffectual hostage to the extremes.

One way to address this is to eliminate extremist influence in the nomination process.  Such influence is largely financial.  Largely money that comes from outside the actual election, money from outside the state, money from corporations and special interest.  Were this money stopped it would, Common Sense believes, be much more likely that the nomination process would favor much more centrist candidates.

Common Sense also believes that it is long since past time that there was a third centrist party that represented the majority of American voters.  Sadly, attempts to start a third party have not met with much success when competing against vested special interest that have virtually bought the Republican and Democratic parties.  It is difficult to see how that can change until the American middle wakes up and decides that it's time to abandon the existing ineffectual two party system.

Just a common sense POV.