I’ve been told I’ve been a little slack about getting this blog up and running so here goes. This is my rant and rave page. Sort of a silent primal scream therapy if you will. So here goes my initial blow up and we’ll see where we go from there.
First, the election process just is to long – primaries that is. I mean, who cares after the first year and a half anyways? Give every candidate that can get on the ballot in 2/3 of the states – yes, 2/3. Face it, if you can get on the ballot in New York, Texas, Florida and California, will you really need New Hamphire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, N. Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota…? Anyways, give each candidate an equal amount of ca$h and 3 months to campaign in. That’ll give you a pretty good idea how they’ll manage time, money and issues over 4 years if they’re elected. Then set aside one day as the national primary for all parties and keep all results secret until the last polling place in the last state (Hawaii) is counted. And just so the little states (and voters in general) don’t feel left out, let’s jettison this winner takes all nonsense. The candidates in each party will divide up the delegates in each state according to the percentage of the vote they got. And definitely none of this party “super delegate” we know better than the people who voted junk.
After that we’d give each party 2 weeks to have a convention and get someone nominated. Then give each candidate 3 more months and the same amount of cash to spend before the National election.
No more pacts. No more special interests. No more going into debt over a campaign (c’mon, show us you can balance a budget). Just candidates and the American people.
Yeah, I know. It wouldn’t be fair to give the Green, Libertarian, Constitution, Independent, Socialist and whatever else parties the same chance at national exposure as the Democratic and Republican parties. I can see the logic in keeping the two parties that gave us a $9 trillion dollar national debt; the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq Wars (version I and II); 2.3 million people in prison; legal illegal immigration; allowed our manufacturing jobs to be shipped overseas; shoved NAFTA and CAFTA down our throats…(you get the picture)…in power to the exclusion of all other parties.
I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of this “better to have the enemy you know than the enemy you don’t know” baloney. In my mind, to paraphrase that Democratic icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself – and the Democratic and Republican parties.” Think about it, if a 3rd party candidate became president and then screwed things up, would we really notice or would it be business as usual? When the brain trust running the nation is morally, ethically, and patriotically bankrupt – along with the nation they’re running (into the ground), what the heck, why wait until we succeed in duplicating another Great Depression or go for a three-peat with World War III to think, “hmmm, maybe we should have tried something different?”
