Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Nader, Third Parties and GOP Dirty Tricks Here in Oregon
I’ve long been a proponent of third (and even fourth) parties - hell, sometimes in the last several years, I’ve wanted the Democrats to act like a second party, instead of moving farther and farther to the right and caving in to Bush. I’d much rather see a coalition-type government here, than two big parties that don’t address many issues.
For a long time, the Democrats have been weakened by their lack of cohesion and now even the Republican party is a rough fit for the different constituencies within it, as evidenced by the growing unease of fiscal conservatives with the skyrocketing deficits. These constituencies come from many places in the political spectrum, not just liberal and conservatives, but moderates, libertarians and others. There are religious blocs, environmentalists, cultural warriors, people who are concerned with economics, war, labor, social security, etc.
I often think that this country would make much faster progress on any number of fronts if these different groups could form coalitions to advance ideas and agendas, rather than be held hostage to partisan squabbling over otherwise unrelated issues. Coalitions that would be much more fluid and flexible than the lumbering monolithic parties we are saddled with. Coalitions that are formed and disbanded as needed.
I left the Democratic Party in the wake of the 1994 elections when the Democrats started moving to the right. It became a more and more uncomfortale “fit” for me. I voted for Nader in the next presidential election. However, I couldn’t vote for him in good conscience in 2000. It was obvious this time that with the election as tight as it was, a vote for Nader was as good as a vote for Bush - sometimes it sucks to be right. I’m still registered as an an independent.
Unfortunately, the two parties are now so polarized that they have become roughly analogous to the Soviets and U.S. during the worst of the Cold War, locked and loaded and no way to back down. This holds the rest of us as hostages, forced to swallow our objections and to vote against the worse of two evils at times, rather than for our hopes and for what we really want for our country. There’s no way in hell I can live with four more wars, sorry, years of Bush and his utterly corrupt crew.
The only way third parties will become viable is to build from the grassroots up and not try to field candidates for federal office until the third parties have weakened the major parties enough that they themselves are just coalitions of the smaller parties.
Who I have voted for:
1972 - McGovern
1976 - Carter
1980 - Anderson
1984 - Mondale
1988 - Dukakis
1992 - Clinton
1996 - Nader
2000 - Gore
- Bob Woods
And here’s one more reason why I’ll vote for Kerry this year:
Wed Jun 30, 9:55 AM ET
By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - A watchdog group says it will file a complaint with federal election officials, accusing two conservative organizations of illegally helping Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign, possibly with support from President Bush’s re-election campaign.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington planned to file its complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. It says the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy violated election laws last week by telephoning people and urging them to help Nader get on Oregon’s ballot in November.
Spokesmen for both groups denied wrongdoing.
Both groups acknowledge trying to influence Nader’s petition drive Saturday in Oregon, in hopes that getting him on the ballot would take votes away from Democrat John Kerry and help Bush win the battleground state.
But Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group’s executive director, said Tuesday that the conservative organizations are also corporations that are prohibited by election law from making campaign donations. Sloan said she also would name the Nader and Bush campaigns in her complaint because of reports that some Bush-Cheney volunteers may have made similar calls from Bush campaign offices. “If Bush-Cheney was soliciting those corporations to assist the Nader campaign, then that’s a violation,” she said.
Mike White, executive director of the Oregon Family Council, said there was no coordination with Bush’s campaign. “I had my volunteers call and encourage them to go to the (Nader) convention, but I don’t think that’s federal election activity,” he said.
Chris Kinnan, spokesman for Citizens for a Sound Economy, said an outside lawyer assured him the phone calls were proper. “We’re confident that we can answer any charge,” he said.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said he had not seen the complaint but called it “frivolous.” “We will respond accordingly if and when we receive it,” Stanzel said.
Sloan’s group also filed an FEC complaint against Nader last week saying the consumer advocate violated federal campaign laws by accepting office space and telephone service from a public charity he created. Nader has called all the complaints frivolous.
