A new political party for 2012: A summary

For a minority of Americans, there are sufficient reasons to want to start a new political party. I am one. However, it may be premature for the rise of a mainstream new party. There are obstacles. California requires 103,004 signatures to qualify a new party by registration or 1,030,040 to qualify by petition.

For the 2012 primary, that has to be done 4-5 months before the Feb. 5 primary, i.e., by October-November 2011. That probably isn't going to happen, even though there are 15 parties trying. There isn't enough time to qualify for the next election cycle.

And, there are other problems.

The mission statement of the American Third Position Party is "to represent the political interests of White Americans." They appear to be white supremacists. The Christian Party wants to do "amazing exploits for God", whatever that means. The Twelve Visions Party of California appears to be anarchist. The We Like Women Party appears to be on hallucinogens. Those parties are flaky. The Working Families Party of California makes some sense by focusing on some key issues, e.g., campaign finance reform and wages, but it is based on labor unions and grounded in hard core liberal ideology. Not good enough.

Given the situation, it is unlikely that any third party will qualify in time for the 2012 elections. The existing third parties, Libertarians, Greens, etc., provide a more mainstream range of ideologies. That's probably why they are qualified already.

I am a secular pragmatist. My interest is in transparency, intelligent policies and limiting the influence of (1) special interest money and (2) political and religious ideology on creating thinking in politics.

This blog tried to provide a number of reasons to start a new new party and show different ways to approach politics. It is too late to do that for 2012. There is no point in continuing to try.

Regrets

My regret is that the voice of reasonable moderates and pragmatists will not be represented in any meaningful way in the imminent battles over the size, scope and function of government in California and at the national level. We will get what hard core Republican ideologues can force on hard core Democratic ideologue foes and vice versa. Reason and rationality will take a back seat to preconceived but largely incorrect ideologue notions of what reality is and how we should fix our political problems.

There's always tomorrow

I can see the disaster coming but can do nothing to blunt it for now. What will be left is to try again for the 2014 elections and then see if any of the damage the two parties will inflict can be contained or reversed. It's daunting, but not hopeless.