I have thrown this idea around on various posts on Karl Denninger's Market Ticker. I can't say how many people have thought it a good idea or failed to recognize how it would work. But, we have reached a fork in the road where the United States is headed to financial doom, the politico's represent themselves and a few constituents and the Executive branch is now structured to control the lives of the masses through personal regulation and spy networks that do little to further the lives of these people nor protect the real security of the nation.
The idea is an Anti Party. I figure, if a group could control 15% of the vote, they could restructure Congress, swing the election of Presidents and clean out government. All they would need to do is work to vote in the primary running against the incumbent, for a candidate of their own. The Tea Party has succeeded in do this in the Republican Party, but in effect it has merely divided one Party between Freedom fighters and corporate interests. This action has left the Democratic Party totally in the hands of the corporate statists and done little to fix the Federal government to be of interest in the middle class.
One must look at what the Tea Party really is. It is far from the guns, God and small government group the establishment has painted it to be. These are free market, anti control people, who are rebelling against the status quo of soaking the middle for the benefit of Wall Street, the poor and the rich in general. They are also not necessarily soak the rich people, nor starve the poor people either. Though they tend to be anti Fed and anti socialism.
Through this anti idea adopted by the Tea Party, they have been able to elect several candidates on the Republican ticket. This has the establishment Republicans in a tizzy, namely because these people are not for what the National Republican party is operated to achieve, which is more along the same goals as the behind the scenes Democrats, to strip power from the middle and play both ends of the political spectrum against the middle. All government revenue is levied against productive enterprise, which is the primary reason the USA has been in decline since the Great Society began and fantastic wealth has been cornered in the top 1% of the population. Those who have been able to assemble idle capital have done well in the trickle up economics of LBJ, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not to mention the Bush's and to some extent Reagan.
What the Tea Party really represents is the Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. These people were pushed out of the Democratic Party through the actions of the party, progressively since the late 1800's, with an acceleration occurring after Jimmy Carter, where they no longer had a place in the fascist Democratic Party of Carter and Mondale. They are not corporate Republicans, but generally middle to upper middle class workers, small business owners and middle management. They are painted by the national media as yokels and idiots, but likely the average Tea Party member possesses a better idea of economics and how the American government is supposed to work than the mainstream groups which are primarily voting to have government force others to pay their way.
The problem the Tea Party has is they have no say in the Democratic Party and the National Republicans, with their media machine, don't want them. The current demonizing of Ted Cruz is a clear point to demonstrate this reasoning. If John Boehner was a Democrat, we wouldn't ever know the difference, as he represents a different ideology than Cruz or most of the non traditional people who have joined the Republican party merely because they can't stomach the Democrats and their government control socialism. But, it isn't only the Democratic socialism they can't stomach, but the repeated wars of both parties, the watering down of civil liberties due to security issues created by the waging of these wars, the debts associated with wars and socialism and the general corruption involved at the top of both parties. The Tea Party is the current anti party in operation.
Cruz, like him or not, stood up against a real issue. It isn't that Obamacare is necessarily good or bad, but that it involves massive regulation, implied force to comply and makes a mess of the entire landscape of American medicine. American's aren't going to like Obamacare, not the middle class, which it is designed to coerce into paying the bill for others. It will create a guaranteed cash flow for the elites, which control the title of nobility drug business, the bankers who derive massive cash flow from the financing of medical facilities and the poor, which will be subsidized by the productive people of society. Someone must be blamed for the continued inaction of the US Senate, why not the guy who stood up and spoke up on an issue where preferred constituents have received a bye in compliance?
The sort of anti party I mention has little to do with philosophy, other than the philosophy of the party. It won't run candidates in any specific party, but attack named incumbents and attempt to nominate and elect candidates in the opposing party. Most elections are won by spreads of 55-45 or lower in the House and few ever go over 60-40. If we had 15% of the vote to vote as a block, against the mess we have in Congress, regardless of party, we could clean out Congress until we found one that worked. Forget you are a Democrat or Republican. If you are among the forgotten middle class, you can band together with other like minded people, nominate a candidate in the opposing party and whether he wins or not, vote for the candidate of the party out of power. If the rule of thumb is these 15% are split 5/10 Democrat to Republican, the 5% going over to the Republican side will swing a lot of seats that way and on the contrary, would pretty much wipe out the Republicans as we know them. I would suspect that 25% of the Democratic vote and half the Republican vote technically belongs in the anti party.
It isn't against the law for the Democratic Party to have a Tea Party, which will also refuse to toe the national line. Remember, the National Republican leadership treats the Tea Party as if they were the nutty aunt locked up stairs. So would the Democrats, but remember there are members of both parties that would vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for the other party. I will also note that primaries nominate the candidates and a significant minority of voters participate on those elections. The first thing that must be done to change things is to get at least one non-establishment candidate on the ballot. Which party means absolutely nothing.
Why should there only be Tea Party Republicans, when we can have Tea Party Democrats? The Tea Party or whatever Anti Party we need to develop, should be concerned with who runs on the ticket opposite the incumbent, unless the incumbent is one of theirs and is in danger of losing his spot. A 70% participation of 15% of the likely voting public in either party primary would enable them to nominate the entire slate of candidates. Eventually, they could have influence on the leadership of both parties and instead of being the nutty aunt locked up stairs, they would become king makers in both parties, directing candidates to pare back the Federal government and its regulations on us, not to mention the destructive theft of services our government has come to represent.
