02-17-2012, 06:18 PM
(02-17-2012, 04:32 PM)Bolty Wrote:(02-16-2012, 11:01 PM)kandrathe Wrote: Unless there is a huge grass roots movement to propel up a third party, they instead tend to drag down one of the two major parties with them.
The interesting thing to me is that with the advent of the Internet, there was (supposedly) a construct now in place to make a 3rd party possible from a grass roots perspective. Finally, a medium making it possible for mass communication that could not be filtered and controlled by governments and corporations - sorta like this website, it's just filtered and controlled by me without any outside influences (not even ads!). Now we've seen how hard governments and corporations are working to take this medium down (ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, and many more to come), so maybe that golden opportunity has been wasted.
Then again, any new movement (e.g. "Tea Party") would more than likely just get absorbed into one of the two major parties. Anything gaining enough popularity to get significant media attention will in turn draw the attention of the two parties, and one of them will try desperately to absorb it rather than have both fight it.
Think all the political talk here puts us on some FBI watch list? That Bolty guy, running a subversive website rampant with COMMIES and "socialist Europeans!" Fox News would have a field day.
Interesting point. How big would this 3rd party have to be to actually change the two party status quo? Even if it out of nothing would get 30% support still the two others would fight over the win.....and strategic voting would bring that 30% down to maybe 10%.
Political entropy is opposite from the thermodynamic one....it will drift towards a two party system if your system of voting and representation is like it is in the US.